Poster Presentation

Starting Out Right: Guiding Students
Towards ESP

Robert Moreau
University of Electro-Communications
One challenge facing teachers in many science and technical universities in Japanis how to effectively prepare first year students for English for Specific Purposes(ESP) courses. The impetus for this paper comes from challenges I have faced
teaching first year students in writing and speaking classes at a science university.
These students are eventually required to take English for specific purposes
classes in their third year. Specifically, this paper deals with constructing genrebased classroom projects for classes of mixed English abilities. Challenges inthis area include considering how to scaffold the cognitive load of learning newacademic genres. Also, assisting learners with the demanding task of acquiring
new vocabulary for producing these genres.
The topics discussed in this paper include considerations for choosing topics
that may be more accessible, and less cognitively demanding for students. In
addition, there is a discussion on adapting media from the internet as source
material for student projects. Finally the paper ends with a brief introduction of
the website, www.lextutor.ca (Cobb, n.d.) This can be a useful tool for students
and teachers alike with respect to exploring the vocabulary found in the texts
students use in the classroom.

Project Choice: Cognitive Considerations

Early in the task planning process teachers must consider which topics may be
at a suitable level for their students to engage in effectively. Starting with lesscognitively challenging tasks can be considered a way to help build confidence
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and fluency before moving on to more challenging tasks. A continuum describedby Cummins (1983) and illustrated below can be a useful tool for teachers for
scaffolding tasks.
Figure 1 shows the level of difficulty in the tasks starts from the upper lefthand quadrant, which includes the cognitively least demanding; that is to say
dealing with subject matter familiar to the students. Tasks located towards thebottom right hand quadrant of the diagram include the least familiar and thus
the most challenging topics and activities.
The following list of descriptions of some example activities, is based on thework of Myskow, Underwood and Hattori (2012). In the A Quadrant, activities
may include personal diaries, speaking about daily events or other topics thatare familiar to the student. B Quadrant activities might include an essay orspeeches on a topic familiar to the students. In the C quadrant, students could
offer opinions on a less familiar topic, or begin to use academic register. For
example, using specialized vocabulary or longer, more formal sentence structures

Figure 1. Range of contextual support and degree of cognitive involvement in communicative
activities (Cummins 1983: cited in Myskow, Underwood and Hattori, 2012, p. 24).

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Moreau(“Introduction to Academic Register”, n.d.). The D Quadrant is the mostdemanding and could include academic arguments on unfamiliar topics.
In my own classes, I have to introduce academic argument to first year
students. Some topic choices include discussing the pros and cons of thefollowing: a junk food tax, smoking areas on campus, and part-time jobs. These
topics deal with situations close to the students’ everyday lives and also generally
use less demanding vocabulary. This gives the students a chance to analyze andproduce simple examples of the argument genre by focusing on the structure
and basic language. This eliminates being dually challenged by the necessity oflearning new specialized vocabulary and ideas, as well as how to present thisinformation.
As students begin to feel comfortable with the basic argument structure, I
move towards topics that are less context-embedded and involve more technicalvocabulary. One such topic might be arguing for and against the need for space
exploration. This is a topic that the science students I have taught seemed to havesome basic background in and a topic that can be scaffolded by using information
readily found on the Internet.

Using News Media as a Source for Students

The idea of using news sources in the genre-based classroom is not new. Bhatia(1993) states that news sources “present the use of language which is fresh,
topical and current… It is possible to use this source for EGP (English for General
Purposes, EAP (English for Academic Purposes) and ESP (English for SpecificPurposes” (p. 158). Given this varied nature of news media, it can provide greatflexibility for the classroom. Also, the inclusion of more current topics could
possibly lead to increased student motivation, especially if the topics are alignedwith the students’ areas of interest.
One problem that I have found in my classes is that many of these news stories
need to be adapted in order to suit the level of the students, both in content andin language. One way to make information accessible for students in longer news
articles is to isolate certain parts of the news media used. Consider, for example,setting up an academic argument task. A list of statements from a news source,160

Starting Out Right, OnCUE Journal, 9(2), pages 158-163

both in support and against a particular issue, could be made. Students could
then have the task of categorizing this list. After the list has been categorized
into for and against arguments, students could practice paraphrasing the points
before including them in their own arguments.
Another factor teachers have to consider is the level of the vocabulary thatis used in the articles and in the next section of this paper the Website www.
lextutor.ca will be discussed.

Online Tools for Exploring Vocabulary

The Compleat Lexical Tutor (www.lextutor.ca) is a website that has a rangeof vocabulary tools, such as a vocabulary test builder, tools that deal withconcordances, word families and frequency of words. For the purposes of thispaper, the Vocabprofile tool will be discussed.
The VP-Classic tool, http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/eng/, on the The Compleat
Lexical Tutor Website, is an interface where a text up to 35,000 words can beinputted. The VP-Classic is an adaption of Heatly, Nation and Coxhead’s range
and frequency programs (these can be downloaded directly form Nation’s
homepage at http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/paul-nation). This
tool can be used to find the range of words that occur in the first and second
thousand-word word lists as well as words that appear on the Academic Word
List (Coxhead, 2000). After a text has been submitted the words are colorcoded as per the word list to which they belong. These are presented in various
ways, separately, in the context of the text, and as a set of percentages from eachword list. This tool can give language instructors a very good idea of the relative
difficulty of the texts that they are intending to use. Which difficult words toreplace with more simple alternatives, or which words to include on vocabulary
lists or as pre-task assignments can be determined from this information.
The Compleat Lexical Tutor can also be a useful tool for students. Afterdemonstrating how to use the interface, the students can input any online
articles that they need to use in class and easily see the words that they do notknow. They can also see if these words are on the academic word list or not. This
information can be used to assist students in creating their own, personalized
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vocabulary lists. It can also give students a tool for exploring vocabulary beyond
the classroom. One drawback of this system however, is that it may be difficult
for student to understand which of the off-list words might be more useful tothem than the others.

Conclusion

When constructing genre-based activities for the first year English for academic
purposes or ESP classroom there are several difficulties to overcome. Teachers are
faced with the challenge of how to make the genres being studied accessible as wellas meaningful to the students. Considering how cognitively demanding topics
may be, adapting news sources for classroom use, and employing vocabulary tools
such as The Compleat Lexical Tutor can all be ways that teachers can accomplish
this task. Gradually working toward activities that utilize more vocabulary andcontent specific to the learners’ areas of study can help prepare them for the ESP
courses they will eventually be required to attend.

References

Bhatia, V. K. (1993). Analysing genre: Language use in professional settings.
London, England: Longman.
Cobb, T. (n.d.). Web VP classic. Retrieved from http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/eng/
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly,34(2), 213238.
Cummins, J. (1983). Conceptual and linguistic foundations of language
assessment. In S. Snildner (Ed.), Issues of language assessment volume II:
Language assessment and curriculum planning. Springfield, IL: Illinois State
Board of Education
Introduction to academic register. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.york.
ac.uk/res/elanguages/index/Modulecd/cu4s4/cu4s40501.htm.
Myskow, G., Underwood, P. R., & Hattori, T. (2012). EFL writing in Japan:
Theory, policy, and practice. Osaka, Japan: Mediaisland.

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Starting Out Right, OnCUE Journal, 9(2), pages 158-163

Author bio

Robert Moreau holds a masters degree from Teachers College Columbia University.
He has taught in a variety of contexts including high school, university, and businessclasses. His research interests include genre-based instruction and autonomy inlanguage learning. rjm2141@tc.columbia.edu
Received: December 9, 2014Accepted: November 13, 2015

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