September 4th, 2012
esp
materials
development
task
Report
and Bibliography
Argüello Pitt, Matías
Tisera, Melisa
REPORT
The field of study which
our materials development task is based upon is Industrial Design for a reading
comprehension course for students in fourth and fifth year of their course of
studies, whose level of English is basic. Before searching for texts and designing
the activities, we did some research on the field. First, we looked up a
definition of “Industrial Design.” Among many that we found, a useful and
thorough one was the following, from Encyclopaedia
Britannica Online:
industrial design, the design of
mass-produced consumer products. Industrial designers, often trained as
architects or other visual arts professionals, are usually part of a
larger creative team. Their primary responsibility is to help produce
manufactured items that not only work well but please the eye and, therefore,
have a competitive advantage over similar products. The work of an industrial
designer often relates to or includes graphic design, such as advertising
and packaging, corporate imagery and branding, and interior
design (also called interior architecture or environmental design), the
arrangement of man-made spaces.
Perceiving the broad
focus of this field of study, we proceeded to investigate the course of study
for any student majoring in Industrial Design. We consulted the websites of different higher education institutions such as Facultad de Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Diseño
(Universidad Nacional de Córdoba), Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo
(Universidad de Buenos Aires), and Colegio
Universitario IES Siglo XXI.[1]
We also consulted some students in the study
program of UNC and a few industrial
designers. We observed that in fourth year students have to take the subject Legislación. This brought us back to the
definitions and characteristics of Industrial Design because we had ran into an
article about Industrial Design Rights, in which the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO) was named and given importance for the protection
of industrial designs. Because this organization accounts for all types of
industrial designs, we decided to further investigate it and after the research
we concluded that WIPO was very useful and interesting for students.
Now let us refer to
other steps in the text selection process. As for the approaches to ESP course
design, we worked within the framework of a skills-centered approach. As
Hutchinson and Waters (1987) state, the skills-centered course design has two
objectives, a general one by which “students will be able to catalogue books
written in English,” (69) and a specific one by which “students will be able to
extract the gist of a text by skimming through it and to extract relevant
information from the main parts of a book” (69). This approach helps students
develop and enhance some skills that can be further used and exploited after
the ESP course has ended. The text used as a basis of the tasks was designed
according to John and Davies' 1983 Text
As a Vehicle for Information approach
(henceforth "TAVI"), as characterized in Dudley Evans & St. Johns
(1998). To select an appropriate text, we searched for one that would be of
value in relation to students' needs and interests. "WIPO,"
"Intellectual Property," and "Industrial Design" indeed
comply with this requirement, as the contents of the text are directly
concerned with both the students' field of study and, more specifically, to one
of their subjects (Legislación) in
the last years of the program. The information presented in the texts is also
of importance to the students as future professionals who already work in the
field and have to deal with the legal aspects of their job such as Rights
Protection.
The TAVI framework also
suggests that the texts be authentic. Even though this is not the case (the
texts are elaborated, as explained
below), the texts were, nonetheless, extracted from an original source,[2]
not created from scratch, and not simplified
(in the sense used in Long [2007]). In addition, the focus – again in
accordance with the TAVI principles – is on "information and what is
known" rather than on "language and what is unknown" (Dudley
Evans et al, 97). In consonance with this, the tasks designed center on
applying techniques more than on language
exercises.
More specifically, the criteria
used for selecting texts according to TAVI are related to crucial features of
both carrier and real content. As for the carrier content in our texts, it is
novel and of interest and relevance to the students' study program and career
and the concepts presented are neither too easy nor too difficult. Regarding the
real content, on the other hand, the actual input to which students should be
exposed (as stated by the objectives of the materials development task) involves
the practice of the reading micro-skill "identification of main and
secondary ideas," the presence of verbs in the Present Simple tense for
their presentation and practice (only in terms of recognition, though), and two
connectors as passive grammatical/vocabulary items to be acquired. We chose to
focus on exemplification. The texts selected are significant and exploitable,
in terms of the aforementioned aspects; in addition to being accessible.
Overall, in conclusion, the texts chosen are in compliance with the TAVI
principles of text selection.
On a different note, to
select the texts motivation was taken into account, as well, since "In
deciding what to do, an ESP teacher [must] balance needs and motivational
factors" (Dudley Evans et al, 98). From our own experience, we find that motivation
is very highly linked to engagement and achievement; hence its importance. One
aspect that makes a text and its related tasks motivating is its relevance to
the students' lives and, though they may appear contradictory, the text's
novelty and familiarity: novelty, because it arouses curiosity and invites the
reader to engage in it; familiarity, because it contributes to clearly
establishing the relevance to students' lives and because it aids
comprehensibility (which leads to a sense of satisfaction). The text selected
is, we believe, quite relevant to (prospective) Industrial Designers, familiar
to them (because it touches upon their area of study and profession) and at the
same time "novel", since WIPO, for example, is something probably not
that known by them at this stage.
Finally,
we should mention that we not only analyzed the material, but also evaluated
it.[3]
We believe the two processes are inextricably linked when dealing with
materials development, and we carried both somewhat unconsciously. During the
analysis stage, we learned that the texts included complex vocabulary, various
structures, and cases of subordination, as well as detailed information as to
specific aspects of the topics (WIPO, Intellectual Property, etc). When
evaluating it – that is, when seeing whether the texts were suitable for our
goals and prospective students – we decided that they were too difficult and
had to be modified. We chose, then, to elaborate
them.
The texts were elaborated from original texts retrieved
from www.wipo.int. The authentic (or
"genuine") versions of the texts would have been highly inappropriate
for the students' level of English (beginners). Simplified versions would have
been quite understandable for the students, but this kind of texts "result
in stilted-basal-reader-type input (...) lacking in implicitness,
open-endedness, and inter-textuality, among other features of natural
discourse" (Long, 2007: 9). This type of text hinders the learning
process, since it does not provide exposure to that which students will
actually face in real life. For these reasons, we decided to design elaborated
texts, which are midway between genuine and simplified ones.[4]
With that view in mind, our texts incorporate redundancy (in the form of
repetitions, paraphrase and synonyms), regularity (achieved through parallel
structures and use of general word order Subject + Verb + Object / Adverbials /
Complements), and explicit/transparent logical relations between the different
parts of the text.
For
example, in the following sentences (which in the text are in sequence),
regularity has been achieved through parallel structures and the use of general
word order:
The
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is a United Nations agency à Subject + Verb + Complement
It concentrates on the use of intellectual
property (...) to stimulate innovation and creativity. à Subject + Verb + Object Adverbial
It promotes the protection of intellectual
property through cooperation among states and in collaboration with other
international organizations. à Subject + Verb + Object + Adverbial
Tasks
The
reading tasks included in our task sheet are designed for the purposes of,
according to Grabe and Stoller (2002), “reading to search,” (13) which involves
skimming the text for general understanding and guessing where the important
information is in the text. Besides, the purpose of “reading to learn” (13) was
also taken into consideration as students are supposed to identify and remember
main and secondary ideas in the texts and to recognise the “rhetorical frames” (13)
in which information is organized in the texts. Moreover, students are required
to establish links between the text and their prior knowledge of the subject.
Regarding the models of reading proposed by Grabe and Stoller, our texts are
suitable for the interactive model, which involves bottom-up and top-down
models so that students can “take useful ideas from a bottom-up perspective and
combine them with key ideas from a top-down view” (33). In this way, word
recognition and background knowledge converge so as to understand the texts.
We decided to include in
our task sheet pre-, during-/while- and post-reading tasks, as advocated by
Grabe and Stoller. Our pre-reading task consists in
predicting the possible content on the text by reacting to three symbols and
drawing on the students’ background knowledge of the world. The end of this is
to both facilitate comprehension of the text (by setting the readers' mind within
a particular realm of knowledge) and to arouse interest.
While-reading
tasks aim at making students aware of how to recognize main from secondary
ideas, what they should understand when they read verbs in the Simple Present tense, and recognition of
connectors for exemplification. The instructions of the tasks aim at students'
purposeful and strategic reading (Cf. Grabe and Stoller, 191). As for the
closing task, we took into account the TAVI approach (Hutchinson and Waters,
1987) once more, and we designed the questions in a way that students can use
the information in the texts for “transfer, application or extension” (97). In
our case, by answering the questions students can reflect upon the importance
and usefulness of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
As for instructions, we decided to
use a more personal voice (the more informal second person in Spanish) after
reading Tomlinson's chapter on Materials Evaluation, in which he establishes
that "Materials which address the learner in an informal, personal voice
are more likely to facilitate learning than those which use a distant, formal
voice" (Beck et al and Tomlinson
in Tomlinson, 19). The choice for the plural over the singular finds
justification in the fact that students of this study program are used to
working together and sharing the same desks. A last factor in the choice of the
personal subject, was, simply, that the average student in the last years of
the program is about 23 years old, and therefore will not consider the way the
instructions address them to be a lack of respect (as could happen with adults
over 35 or who in more professional environments).
Appendix
Excerpt from the Curriculum in UNC.
►Asignaturas del
Cuarto Nivel
Diseño Industrial III / Legislación / Tecnología III / Teoría / Electiva.
Diseño Industrial III / Legislación / Tecnología III / Teoría / Electiva.
Excerpt
from the Curriculum in UBA.
|
|
promoción
|
|
cursado
|
|
hs. / sem
|
|
carga hs.
|
|
 |
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
D
|
|
C: 1 cuat.
|
|
8
|
|
120
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
D
|
|
C: 2 cuat.
|
|
8
|
|
120
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
E
|
|
C: 1 y 2 cuat.
|
|
4
|
|
60
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
D
|
|
C: 1 y 2 cuat.
|
|
4
|
|
60
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
E
|
|
C: 1 y 2 cuat.
|
|
4
|
|
60
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Excerpt from the Curriculum in Universidad
Empresarial Siglo XXI.
4to. AÑO
Séptimo Semestre
DISEÑO ASISTIDO POR COMPUTADORA V
DISEÑO INDUSTRIAL V
EMPRENDIMIENTOS UNIVERSITARIOS
PRÁCTICA PROFESIONAL DE DISEÑO INDUSTRIAL
TECNOLOGÍA Y SUS APLICACIONES IV
Octavo Semestre
GESTION EMPRESARIAL
GESTIÓN AMBIENTAL
LEGISLACIÓN
SEMINARIO FINAL DE DISEÑO INDUSTRIAL
TECNOLOGÍA Y SUS APLICACIONES V
Bibliography
DUDLEY-EVANS, T. And M. J. St John. "The
Role of Materials" In Developments
in English for Specific Purposes. UK :
Cambridge University
GRABE, W. and STOLLER, F. “Chapter
1. The Nature of Reading Abilities”. In Teaching
and Researching Reading UK
HUTCHINSON, T. and WATERS, A.
“Chapter 7. Approaches to Course Design” In English
for Specific Purposes. UK :
Cambridge University
TOMLINSON, Brian. "Chapter 1.
Materials Evaluation." In Developing
Materials for Language Teaching. Great Britain
Online Resources:
Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Industrial Design". Retrieved August 1st, 2012. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/286993/industrial-design
Website of FADU –
UBA. Retrieved August 4th, 2012. http://www.fadu.uba.ar/academica/mat_di_index.html?
Website of FAUDI – UNC. Retrieved August 4th, 2012. http://www.faudi.unc.edu.ar/diseno-industrial/plan-de-estudios
Website of Universidad Siglo XXI. Retrieved August 4th, 2012. http://www.21.edu.ar/carreras/licenciatura-en-diseno-industrial/plan-estudio.html
[2] To achieve a sense of the authenticity of the texts we framed them
within copies of sections of the website.
[3] The difference between "analysis" and
"evaluation" is explained in Tomlinson (2003: 16). The former refers
to what the materials are like: what
type of structures, vocabulary, genres, text types, formats, etc, present; the
latter focuses on how or whether the materials are suitable for
the students according to the objectives established.
[4] In addition, we believe that elaborated
texts are "challenging yet achievable", which, according to
Dudley-Evan & St John (1998) is necessary "to stimulate and motivate"
(172).
No comments:
Post a Comment