Poster Presentation

Learned Lectures: Listening Material
for Science and Engineering Majors

Samuel Barclay
Ehime University
Roderick Lange
Ehime UniversityProviding EFL students with listening material that is relevant to their majors isnecessary if they are to be adequately prepared for a future career in industry oracademia. However, for English language teachers (ELTs) without a backgroundin their students’ major, producing such texts can be a daunting challenge.
Furthermore, locating ESP listening exercises that are appropriate can be botha time-consuming and near fruitless endeavour. That task faces the authors of
this paper, who are developing an ESP programme for science and engineering
students despite not having a background in either area. This paper describes
a possible solution to this problem: A self-access database of English language
lectures by content experts called Learned Lectures (www.learnedlectures.com).
This paper begins by delineating the criteria used to analyse listening-content
appropriacy, before outlining the decisions made, and issues faced, during thedevelopment of the Learned Lecture Series.

Criteria for Analysing Listening-ContentAppropriacy

With the growth of the Internet, there is now an array of listening material
available online free of charge (e.g., Ted Talks, MIT Open Courseware, Apple’s
iTunes U, Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab, ello). To assess the appropriacy of97

Barclay & Langethese listening resources for an ESP Engineering course at a university in westernJapan, five criteria were developed by the authors:
Authenticity: Generally containing features (e.g., redundancy and false starts)
associated with authentic language use
Representativeness: Stylistically similar to university lectures or conference
presentations
Content Specificity: Content relevant to the fields of science and engineeringand suitable for tertiary level students
Length Appropriacy: Five to ten minutes in length
Level Appropriacy: Lexically and grammatically appropriate for learners ofintermediate proficiency
Upon analysis of the extant resources mentioned above, it was determinedthat none met all five criteria, and thus we decided to explore an in-housesolution.

The Design of Learned Lectures

When considering the design of possible in-house solutions, the following five
supplementary criteria were also considered to be of importance:
1. Due to differences in student proficiency it should be self-access andcontain scaffolding to aid comprehension.
2. It should contain examples of both native and non-native English.
3. It must be inexpensive to make and freely available.
4. As it is to be used by students from different departments within theengineering faculty, the content should represent both science andengineering, and the various branches of engineering.
5. It should be a rewarding experience for the presenters.
In light of the above, the decision was made to create an online self-accessdatabase of lectures in English by content experts of various L1s. Lectures,
given by volunteer post-graduate students and faculty from diverse fields within
the engineering and science faculty, provide science and engineering students
access to content-specific listening material to help them better understand thetype of lectures/presentations they might encounter in a classroom and/or at98

Learned Lectures, OnCUE Journal, 9(2), pages 97-101

international conferences.
On expressing an interest in presenting, speakers can, if they wish, consult
with ELTs to resolve any linguistic problems they may have or receive advice
about presentation style and/or slide design. Once a presenter feels prepared todeliver the presentation, the lecture is recorded. It is subsequently transcribedand subtitled, and the script is analysed using VocabProfiler (Cobb, WebVocabprofile). The video, script, and lexical profile are then uploaded to thewebsite (www.learnedlectures.com) and made available to students. It should be
noted here that the term ‘students’ does not necessarily mean only the students
that might participate in the programme that served as the impetus of thisproject, but any user of the site. Indeed, this site, through a Creative Commonslicense, is open to anyone who wishes to use it.
Using the criteria for analysing listening-content appropriacy (outlinedabove), it is possible to see how the Learned Lectures self-access database ofpresentations meets the course needs defined by the course creators.
Authenticity: Although the lectures are practiced, they are not overly
polished, as they have not been memorized by the speakers. Therefore, they
contain features of natural speech.
Representativeness: Although lectures have not actually been recorded
at a conference or lecture, they are similar in structure (i.e., introduction,methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion) and style (i.e., use slides and/or a whiteboard) to typical presentations given in these environments.
Content Specificity: Lectures concern either research conducted by thespeaker or an introduction to a fundamental concept/theory in the speaker’sfield. This can been seen by the following examples of presentations recorded todate: Velocity Distribution of Complex Fluids in a Microchannel; Soil liquefaction:
Its effects and mitigation; and Does Mineral Geochemistry Have A Big Impact onTransport Behaviour in Rock Engineering Fields?
Length Appropriacy: Although roughly 10-minute lectures/presentations are
not representative of the typical length of a lecture or conference presentation,
it is hoped they are long enough to provide extended listening practice, without
overburdening and demotivating students.
99Barclay & Lange

Language Appropriacy: Although speakers are not asked to grade theirlanguage, and thus lexical and grammatical content may challenge learners ofintermediate proficiency, subtitles and transcripts are provided for each lecture toaid comprehension. Furthermore, the provision of translations and/or glossaries
is currently being explored.

Issues Faced

Although there have been numerous challenges along the way including
identifying and becoming proficient at using the hardware and software tools
necessary to create, edit, and distribute the lectures, the major issue faced to datehas been recruiting speakers. Even though the Learned Lecture Series has generally
received positive comments from both the faculty and graduate students whohave recorded lectures, and those who have used the site for listening practice,
the number of people that have actually contributed to the project is small. Thusfar, speakers have informally reported that the experience is both interesting andeducational; it is hoped that more graduate and faculty take the opportunity topresent in this low-stakes environment and make a positive contribution to boththeir presentation ability and other students’ listening proficiency.

Conclusion

While the Learned Lecture Series is currently in the early stages of development,
we would like to have a database of 15 to 20 lectures by the end of the 2015
calendar year. We are currently looking for speakers, and would be grateful if thereaders of this paper could kindly spread the word to anyone they think might beinterested in participating in this project.

References

Cobb, T. (n.d.). Web Vocabprofile. Retrieved from http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/[an adaptation of Heatley, Nation & Coxhead’s (2002) Range].
Heatley, A., Nation, I. S. P., & Coxhead, A. (2002). RANGE andFREQUENCY programs. Available at http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/
staff/paul-nation.aspx
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Learned Lectures, OnCUE Journal, 9(2), pages 97-101

Author biosSamuel Barclay is a lecturer at Nottingham Trent University. His research interests
include second language vocabulary acquisition and instruction, and curriculum
design. samuel.barclay@ntu.ac.uk
Roderick Lange is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Science andEngineering at Ehime University. Research interests include instructional design,
blended learning and motivation. rodlange@ge.ce.nihon-u.ac.jp
Received: November 16, 2014
Accepted: November 13, 2015

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