The 2nd International Symposium
on Innovative Teaching and Research in ESP
国立大学法人電気通信大学 UEC Tokyo 2015
IGTEE
JACET ESP KANTO
PS2-11 - A synthesized text mapping technique for teaching rhetorical organization and basic technical language structures
Michael Sharpe (Kochi University of Technology)
A large corpus of research on text mapping techniques has been conducted in L1 contexts, providing strong evidence that mapping can be effective in improving reading comprehension abilities, particularly among low-proficiency readers. This research-based evidence has in turn encouraged widespread adoption of mapping based approaches in L1 teaching, including for teaching the language of science. As yet, such approaches have neither been widely investigated nor adopted in L2 teaching contexts. This presentation describes an approach to text visualization developed by the author as a means of developing undergraduate EFL learner’s understanding of the rhetorical organization and technical language structures in expository text. This approach assimilates key aspects of Concept Mapping (Novak) and Information Structure Maps (Hunter) with research findings. The presentation also reports on the results of an empirical study that investigated the efficacy of this approach with 1st year engineering students at Kochi University of Technology.
Poster Abstracts
(Click on the poster title to download the poster)
PS1-11 - Acquiring genre awareness through move analysis on science research papers
Masako Terui (Kinki University)
In the era of globalization, Japanese university students, especially in science and engineering, are facing growing needs for the acquisition of English skills. However, they have little time to learn English because they have to devote themselves to conducting research, experiments in particular, in their field. This gap between the needs and the reality can be achieved by ESP. Through an ESP approach, Japanese science and engineering majors try to improve analyze language features of a genre text, research papers in this case, using concepts and linguistic tools from work in ESP. In this poster, the move analysis of research papers, the abstract and the introduction section in particular, is focused to show how third-year students in science and engineering can acquire an awareness of the moves in a genre text is illustrated with specific examples.
PS2-04 - An online approach to Extensive Reading (ER) in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) curriculum
Travis J. Cote (Tamagawa University)
Brett Milliner (Tamagawa University)
Smartphones, tablets, and touch screen laptops are powerful tools capable of accommodating hundreds of specific, complex operations and applications to anyone, seemingly anywhere in the world. For English language learners and those who teach them, smartphones and mobile devices have the potential to recast the reading experience for 21st century students and invigorate an emerging area of research. This poster will introduce an ongoing pilot test of Xreading® (<www.xreading.com>), an online graded reader library and learning management system (LMS) devoted specifically to the management and implementation of extensive reading. Students in a tertiary-level, English for Academic Purposes (EAP) curriculum at a private university in Tokyo are participating in this study. Half the participants are enrolled in the College of Tourism and Hospitality Management and all students are using their personal mobile device to access and read graded readers from a cloud-based library. This poster will report on student perceptions and progress after interacting with this platform for one semester (15 weeks) in regards to changes in individual reading speeds, overall volume of reading and correlations between this data and TOEIC® test scores.
PS1-15 - Multiple Intelligences of Japanese nursing students on ESP courses - A Comparative study
Darlene Yamauchi (Niigata University of Health and Welfare)
Learning success in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses should meet learners’ specific language learning needs (Long, 2005,Lyster, 2007). To achieve this, it is advantageous to examine individual needs, learning styles and strategies (Oxford, 2006). Research by Gardner (1993) advocates each person possesses different types Multiple Intelligences (MI) such as: linguistic or musical intelligences. Although linguistic intelligence is most closely associated with language learning, recent research recognizes other intelligences not typically associated with language learning may be significant for the development of more appropriate, student-centered teaching techniques in ESP classrooms particularly in contexts where Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) methods are applied (Yamauchi in press).
This study compares the application of MI principles in first year university ESP courses for nursing students in two separate universities: one a high-ranking public university and the other a lower ranking private university in terms of entrance level requirements. Results from a self-designed Multiple Intelligences (MI) Inventory indicated that in both samples rankings were identical with intelligences such as interpersonal and bodily–kinesthetic, generally not directly linked to language acquisition found more prevalent than the standard linguistic intelligence with both groups. Additionally Linguistic and logical mathematical intelligences most closely linked to IQ were shown to be least prevalent in both samples. In addition to validating previous research highlighting the benefits of implementing MI principles for ESP instruction, these results demonstrated students in both samples possessed similar MI levels which will aid future curriculum development for ESP nursing courses at all levels.
PS2-15 - Reciprocal Peer-Teaching for Japanese Students of Science and Technology
Yan Yu (University of Electro-Communications)
Jie Shi (University of Electro-Communications)
Peer-teaching has long been considered to be one of the effective methods of education regardless of subjects or disciplines world-wise. Peer-teaching typically includes the techniques of peer-instruction, group-teaching, peer-tutoring, etc., in a class. In the recent years, this method is receiving more attention in EFL contexts as a means to improve students’ motivation, critical thinking and presentation skills at universities in Japan. Based on some of the common practices of peer-teaching, such as peer-instruction, peer-tutoring, peer-sharing, and peer-evaluation, the researchers of this study designed a group-based peer-instruction model to enhance cooperative learning, discussion and presentation skills using English in an EST (English for Science and Technology) course, “Technical English”, at the University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo. This model involves several stages: orientation of peer-teaching project to students, group assignment, learning the assigned materials, training and practicing, teaching/presenting in class, and peer and teacher evaluation of the project. The implementation of this model was carried out in the Spring semester of 2014. The students’ feedback and the teacher’s comments were collected using a peer-feedback form and were then collated by the researchers. The analysis of the outcome shows positive effects on students’ learning and teaching/presenting the assigned materials. The main weakness of this project is the lack of time for rehearsing and teacher intervention prior to the teaching/presentation. In future, this model will be developed to include a student-generated test for the assigned materials.
PS1-12 - Receptive Vocabulary Size of Japanese University EST Students
Shinichi Hashimoto (University of Electro-Communications)
Yan Yu (University of Electro-Communications)
Robert Moreau (University of Electro-Communications)
Jie Shi (University of Electro-Communications)
This poster will present the results of the second part of a longitudinal study to assess the approximate vocabulary size of Japanese university students. The size of students’ receptive vocabulary for general English reading is assessed using the Vocabulary Size Test (VST) developed by Nation and Beglar (2007). The test is delivered in class with a 30-minute time limit both through the university’s e-learning system (WebClass UEC) and in a paper-based format. All the participants are university students majoring in science and engineering. A pilot study was conducted in the spring of 2014 with over 200 participants of a compulsory English for Specific Purposes (ESP) program for third-years. In this part of the study, scores from seven additional third-year EST (English for Science and Technology) classes (n=179 students) are compared with those from the previous pilot study. In addition, three classes from the first year (n=95 students) are included to expand the scope of the study. This cross-sectional data of VST informs program instructors on the academic readiness of students to perform the various curricular tasks of the EST program. As this longitudinal study on vocabulary progresses, the researchers hope to gain deeper understanding of how to gauge the size of field-specific vocabulary that students possess so that more effective methods of ESP instruction can be achieved. Future research will follow up on the development of academic lexical competencies of the freshman students of this study.
PS1-08 - Self-corrections of Genre-related Errors in Japanese-to-English Translation Drafts
Shoji Miyanaga (Kinki University)
Difficulties with Japanese-to-English translation faced by native-speaking Japanese translators can be roughly categorized into two: linguistic difficulties and difficulties that are related to the genre of the translation job. This means that J-E translators need to acquire skills to identify such genre-specific linguistic features, in addition to general English skills. When teaching translation, it is important to examine not only the students’ first drafts but also their final drafts, because the translation process also involves revision and editing. This study compared the first and final drafts of translator trainees to investigate which genre features the translator trainees can improve/correct in their final drafts. The participants were five adult learners who were enrolled, for different periods of time, in a J-E translation course at a language institution in Japan. The course used a genre-analysis-based approach derived from concepts in the field of English for Specific Purposes, and the translation assignment dealt with by the students was a press release of a pharmaceutical company. Among five genre features of the press releases investigated in the study, two features, ordering of the title and subtitle and the verb tense of the first sentence of the lead, were very likely to be self-corrected. The use of the third person to represent the company that released the press release was unlikely to be self-corrected. The results also suggested that students’ awareness of genre did not differ depending on the duration of enrollment in the translation course.
PS1-13 - Student-created marketing case studies: Looking through the lens of Cheng (2011)
Colin Skeates (Seisen University)
The problem with theory is if it is not informed by practice, it becomes of little practical use. On the other hand, if it is embedded in too much practice, it then becomes difficult to generalize to other contexts. One elegant solution is provided by Cheng (2011), who states five basic considerations that enable teachers and researchers to explore the relationship between ESP theory and classroom practice. The considerations are the social milieu of the classroom, learning objectives, the use of materials that serve as input and the use of task that serve as output, methodologies, and assessment.
In the this poster presentation I will first provide an argument for why Cheng’s five basic considerations are useful for describing how theory can inform practice and vice versa. Next, using each consideration, I will then explain one marketing course that was taught at an upper tier university in the Tokyo area. A central feature of the course is the creation of one group created marketing case study. These case studies serve not only as a means for students to study marketing through English, but also as a way to introduce general business practices, such as working in groups and participating in discussions, as well as to provide opportunity for learner autonomy. I will conclude with a call for more teachers and researchers to use Cheng’s framework as a means of generating greater discussion for what they do in their own context.
PS2-07 - The Analysis of the Spread of ESP by Diffusion Theory of Innovation
Eigo Matsunaga (University of Electro-Communications)
Jie Shi (University of Electro-Communications)
Innovation, a familiar notion used in various industries, generally refers to the “Things, ideas, practices that are perceived to be new to audiences to which they are introduced” (Rogers, 1995). New ideas or reforms that bring changes in higher education are sometimes also considered to be innovations of education. The development of ESP at Japanese universities in the recent years can be considered to be a new phenomenon that spreads new beliefs, practices and research in the area of EFL. However, this perception needs systematic analysis based on Innovation Theories. In this study, the presenters report the findings of the analysis of the development of ESP at Japanese universities as an innovation based on the Diffusion Theory of Innovation. Specific results of the investigation on the ESP courses or programs offered at multiple top universities in Japan and summaries of research articles on various branches of ESP (e.g. English for Science and Technology, English for Business, English for Medicine, and English for Law) published in representative research journals (e.g. JACET ESP SIG Annual Reports, JALT CUE Journals) from 2003 till 2013 are reported. These findings indicate that the development of ESP at Japanese universities contains strong innovativeness in terms of conception, spread patterns and practices that are identical with innovations in other areas.
PS1-14 - The Association between Levels of Metacognition and Language Learning in ESP Courses
Natthapon Wanna-ngam (Khon Kaen University Language Institute)
Metacognitive strategies occur in the processes of planning, monitoring and evaluating, all of which are vital to language learning. Data was generated for the present study by using samples from Khon Kaen University Language Institute (KKULI) to determine whether or not levels of metacognition affect language learning and what factors are involved in promoting metacognition. To accomplish this, certain factors were investigated to find their relationship to metacognition in response to the following research question: Are levels of metacognition related to the following factors; English proficiency, learning outcomes, educational backgrounds (types of schools/ classes), periods of time living abroad, and gender? The instrument used in the study was a Metacognitive Awareness Assessment Form (MAAF) adapted from Schraw & Dennison’s Metacognitive Awareness Inventory, or MAI (1994). The participants were 343 undergraduate students from the Faculty of Science, who had registered for the ESP course “English for Sciences” operated by KKULI in the academic year 2013. It was found that there were certain subcategories of metacognition significantly associated with English proficiency, learning outcomes, educational backgrounds, periods of time living abroad, and even gender. Regarding the factor of English proficiency, for instance, out of the 8 subcategories of metacognitive strategies, the skilled language learners showed a higher level of procedural knowledge, information management, and debugging device strategies than unskilled language learners. In other words, these 3 aspects of metacognition were essential to the development of language learning for the students in the ESP course. In short, to enhance language learning ability in ESP courses, language teachers should focus more on teaching metacognitive strategies explicitly, besides or along with cognitive development.
PS2-12 - The Effectiveness of Peer and Teacher Feedback on Student Conference Abstracts
Jie Shi (University of Electro-Communications)
John Francis Cross (University of Electro-Communications)
Making academic presentations in English has become one of the commonly required conditions for graduation from top-tier graduate schools of Japanese universities of science and technology. Hence, writing quality abstracts for application at academic conferences is essential for graduate students. However, it is a challenging and time-consuming competence for the majority graduate students to acquire. This study, as the 2nd part of a longitudinal research, looks into the common problems with conference abstracts written by graduate students at a Japanese university of science and engineering. It focuses on comparing feedback on abstract drafts made by peers with teacher feedback. The data set is taken from forty M1 (1st year Master’s) students of ICT majors who were asked to write two drafts of a conference abstract. The second draft was revised based on the feedback on the first draft provided by the teacher using a feedback form, and, for half the sample, based on peer feedback. The collated peer feedback indicates that the most difficult aspects to improve include grammar errors (e.g. subject-verb agreements and plurals), and insufficient highlighting of key moves. The comparison of peer and teacher feedback shows that peer feedback is less useful than teacher feedback and that students who are weak in writing are also weak in correcting peers’ abstracts. In addition, it is suggested that training of weak students is necessary to increase the effectiveness of peer feedback.
PS1-01 - Using Final Presentations in the ESP Classroom as a Confidence and English Boost
Lorna S. Asami (St. Margaret’s Junior College, Tokyo)
In the ESP classroom, there is often a mixture of varying levels of students’ English which poses a challenge for the instructor in making a course that fits each student’s level. In order to provide a practical but interesting course that would appeal to Early Childhood Education majors at St. Margaret’s Junior College, a final presentation is assigned that requires students to use English appropriate for day care and preschool teachers. In writing the story for their presentation, scaffolded instruction and ample time allows each student the opportunity to create a project that is one-of-a-kind and reusable. Students create an apron theater or paper prop theater using English that is ultimately accurate and complex and many students have reported feeling a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction with their work.
PS1-07 - Corpus Linguistics and Data-Driven Learning for ESP: The analysis of “Methods” sub-genre
Sébastien Louvigné (University of Electro-Communications)
Jie Shi (University of Electro-Communications)
This research is the third part of a longitudinal study on the analysis of the Research Article (RA) genre. RA is an important and challenging academic genre as it is comprised of multiple parts, e.g. the typical IMRAD (Introduction, Method, Result and Discussion). Each part contains one or more sub-genres. Hence, although essential for teaching, learning and applications, genre-based analysis of the RA is generally considered to be challenging for EFL users due to its complexity in nature. Without sufficient genre and linguistic knowledge of the RA, EST (English for Science and Technology) students and researchers are not able to employ the correct structure or organization and appropriate linguistic/language expressions for clear communication of their research. The purpose of this study is threefold: to determine the linguistic features of the common moves in the “Methods” section of RA using corpus analysis, to compare and analyze the linguistic features of the “Methods” with those of the “Abstract” section, the “Introduction” section and of the whole RA from the same data set. The data set of this longitudinal study is the collection of 543 research articles from the Journal of Optics (1997-2001). The main methods utilized in this research are mining for data collection and corpus-based analysis of genre-based linguistic features (e.g. lexicon list, n-gram) using the corpus concordancer, AntConc.
PS2-06 - Critical reflection on teaching of poster to Japanese technical university students
Uma Maheswari Rajagopalan (Toyo university / University of Electro-Communications)
Science and technology students require the specialized skill of writing an abstract, and a poster which is an expanded form of abstracts. This paper reports the issues involved in teaching of abstract and subsequently a poster in a technical English program of a Japanese university. Students belonged to 3rd year undergraduate students and were first taught to write an abstract through teaching of the required generic moves for an abstract of a research article (RA). Having understood the stages, students constructed abstracts on a laboratory experiment chosen by themselves. Students’ laboratory manual was used to construct the contents of the poster to form, Introduction, Methods, Results and Summary as a group. Poster preparation (layout, results) and presentation were done individually. Such an approach was found to empower the students with the required skills as also shown from the post survey. However, reflecting back on the practice of self, some difficulties were brought into light. The difficulties involved were from the lack of understanding and motivation of some students and also from the difficulty in a full understanding of the contents toward the development of the poster. Teaching a poster involves different genres making it difficult for the students. Choice of contents of the poster will determine how well the students can perform successfully from preparation to presentation. Though, difficulties can be partially attributed to motivation due to varied competency levels, issues related to mismatch in students’ interests and lack of such knowledge of the technical English teacher may play an important role.
PS1-10 - Developing a New Corpus Concordancer as a Learning Tool for EST Students
Shoichi Tsuchida (University of Electro-Communications)
Jie Shi (University of Electro-Communications)
One of the related areas of research to ESP is corpus linguistics that processes and analyzes texts with the help of corpus tools. By using different functions of corpus tools, different corpora or sets of data can be created to answer pre-set research questions. Corpus tools are essentially tools for linguistic research or for the people who are interested in treating texts for linguistic analysis such as lexical features, instead of being educational or learning tools for ESP practitioners and students. Hence, EFL learners or users who must handle high level academic written or spoken communication in English independently or with little professional assistance tend not to choose a corpus tool as their first choice to solve language or linguistic problems. This is also because EFL learners are unfamiliar with the concept of corpus linguistics or with corpus tools and because many corpus tools seem too linguistically oriented. This research demonstrates the process of developing a new concordancer that is not only an analytical tool but also a learning tool especially for EFL learners to understand professional and genre-based English. Specific stages of the development of the new concordancer will be reported, i.e. the choice of a computer language, selection of functions, interface design, programming, database preparation, user-friendliness features, testing, and piloting. In addition, the result of a survey to find out the preferences of concordancer functions of graduate students at a Japanese university of science and engineering will be presented.
PS2-05 - Do your students really use English to solve their group tasks?
Kazumi Kato (Tokai University)
This poster presentation will introduce a teaching method of how to help Japanese students talk among themselves in unrehearsed English to accomplish their group tasks in presentation classes. This is an attempt to solve the problem that quite often students heavily rely on their native language in the process of solving tasks and only use English in their final product.
To solve this problem, the presenter recorded and produced authentic video materials showing how native-English-speaking (NES) students use English as an action language in task activities. This video was shown in the presenter’s class and compared with the Japanese students’ recording of their own group discussion using iPads. These activities made students notice of their weak points and found better expressions and strategies of task-solving language by themselves.
Such group discussion lessons were conducted in 3 different university classes in Japan with positive results. I will present the authentic video materials, methodology and students’ reflections, focusing on how to build upon students’ illocutionary and sociolinguistic competence. This lesson plan and method will be applicable to any group task activities in high school and universities as teaching English through English. Also the task I used in this research is useful in ESP courses such as presentation or interview practice in class.
PS1-09 - English for Accountancy in Postgraduate Academic Support Courses
Evelyn Naoumi (Meiji University)
This poster describes the postgraduate academic support courses developed in Japan for students with varying degrees of English proficiency in a professional accounting graduate school in Japan. Exposure to accounting in international contexts was considered an important part of student professional development. Consequently, one of the most challenging content specific courses for the students was a “sheltered” course in international financial accounting at an overseas university, taught in English by a content specialist with no language teaching background. An important part of this course was the analysis and presentation of case studies in financial accounting, which were new to the students. This poster identifies three challenging areas for academic support course development for such English medium discipline specific content courses and how these courses drew on ESP research to meet these challenges. The first strand of the poster introduces the challenge of low frequency academic and discipline specific vocabulary and shows how research into corpus linguistics and materials development can begin to address this problem. The second strand applies genre analysis to the analysis of discipline specific case study analysis and presentation. The final strand draws on student comments to identify their perceptions of challenging areas, a necessary element in needs analysis. The poster concludes with lessons learned from this type of course development and their implications for course developers in similar contexts.
PS1-05 - English Projects to Bridge University and Community needs
Kazumi Kato (Tokai University)
Wendy M. Gough (Tokai University)
In 2013 the Active Local Tokai Ambassadors (ATLAS) English group was formed at Tokai University’s School of Marine Sciences and Technology. The aim of the group is for students improve their English language, critical thinking, and social skills by finding practical, authentic opportunities to use English and creating connections with the local community. The ATLAS students researched the local area to introduce sights to visiting researchers then devised a project to research and provide assistance with the English needs of the community in the area surrounding the campus. The students were given a Challenge Center Grant from the university to create an English language map of the Miho no Matsubara area of the Mt. Fuji World Heritage Site. The map project led to opportunities to collaborate with the city office as volunteer interpreters for luxury liner passengers coming to Shimizu and plans to expand the community outreach project in the 2015 school year. As English becomes necessary in a wider variety of contexts in Japan, ESP courses focusing on community outreach projects will be useful for students to develop problem solving, language, and other valuable communication skills. These skills will give students a wider perspective of the world, which may be applicable in their future working situations. In this presentation we will introduce the development of community outreach projects in ESP classes and discuss the ATLAS students’ reactions to their experiences using English in practical situations.
PS2-09 - ESP Course Zones Based on Specificity of Purpose
Tomonori Ono (International Christian University)
Robinson (1991) first attempted to classify the different sub-divisions of ESP through the usage of a tree diagram. However, the rigid framework of tree diagrams failed to illustrate the overlap of purpose within ESP, as well as account for issues of fluidity regarding the transfer of language skills between different courses. A more open interpretation was proposed by Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998) who described ESP in terms of a visual continuum divided into five language positions depending on skills taught within the course. Yet, while accounting for fluidity issues within the continuum, the continuum failed to illustrate the overall purpose of ESP courses or address some of the controversies surrounding ESP with regards to how much content should be introduced as opposed to language instruction (Hutchinson & Waters, 1980; 1987). It is proposed that a more identifiable classification system for ESP researchers and educators be adopted which divides ESP course zones into language learning zones depending on its specificity of purpose. In this respect, the ESP course zones based on specificity of purpose (Ono, in press) attempts to provide a clear illustration of how learners’ language skills are built upon and transferred with respect to content.
PS2-14 - ESP for Creative Fields: Responding to Growing Needs in Japan
Noriko Watanabe (Kyoto University)
Atsuko Misaki (Kinki University)
Judy Noguchi (Mukogawa Women’s University)
This presentation sheds light on the use of English language in genres relevant to the creative fields from the standpoint of ESP (English for specific purposes). ESP research in the creative fields including visual arts, traditional crafts and handicrafts has been limited in contrast to the research being carried out extensively in science, law, and business fields. As a result, the English language curriculum in creative fields in the EFL environment of Japan has not sufficiently responded to the specific needs of the creative community. However, rapidly growing waves of globalization and digitalization, coupled with the shrinking domestic market and the rigid employment system, require creative people to communicate across national borders and boundaries, to participate in creative communities, and to seek potential clients around the world. This presentation focuses on these growing needs in the creative fields in Japan. Based on our observations in Kyoto and Osaka, it describes the general needs in the creative fields as well as specific needs of manga majors at a university. In so doing, it will situate their needs in changing contexts; manga and anime are becoming a global, transculture from a subculture in Japan, and some craftworks, which have been hitherto confined practices in the private space, are increasingly becoming visible in the public space. The presentation proposes teaching and learning materials and practices based on essential genres and concludes by pointing out the challenges faced and directions to be taken amidst the growing needs for English in the creative community.
PS2-13 - ESP for Dietetic/Food Science Major Students: Curriculum Development based on Needs Analysis
Akiko Tsuda (Nakamura Gakuen University)
As many workplaces in Japan are gradually globalizing, the number of long-term foreign residents who speak English has increased. Nevertheless, English language support for their diet has not been seriously considered. In addition, food education at schools has historically been emphasized in Japanese society, and The Food Education Basic Law came into force in 2005. Dieticians and registered nutritionists should have a leading role in food education for residents in Japan, regardless of the residents’ first languages; therefore, ESP for Dietetic/Food Science Major Students should be developed to meet actual needs of stake-holders. Based on a national survey targeting colleges with registered training facilities for dieticians, participant observations at an international convention for dieticians, and semi-structured interviews with five Japanese dieticians at colleges in Japan and three faculty members who teach dietetic students at a graduate school in the UK, this presentation will show the current conditions of ESP programs, including curriculum, syllabi, lesson plans, and materials for Dietetic/Food Science Major Students in Japanese college settings, common problems EFL teachers and faculty members have been facing, and possible solutions.
PS1-03 - Four-minute presentations
Daniel Beck (Toyo Gakuen University / Waseda University)
Sylvan Payne (Hitotsubashi University)
Being able to give a cogent and compelling presentation has become an essential requirement in more and more specialized fields. From engineering and science to law or business, preparing students for the real world includes helping them acquire basic presentation skills. Being required to do it in English adds to the challenge. But how do we manage large classes of language students with limited time? This presentation advocates starting small with strict time limits. Four-minute presentations challenge students to focus on timing, pacing, and message, while encouraging them to practice, practice, practice. The time limit also transforms final presentation classes into fast-paced events, enabling large numbers of students to present in a relatively short time frame. The presenters will show the step-by-step process of teaching skills, choosing topics, preparing scripts and slideshows, monitoring practice, assessing performance, and managing presentation events.
PS2-02 - Healing English: Novel Materials Introducing Medical & Lay Terminology and Wellness Theory
Shari Joy Berman (Hirosaki University)
More than original, intensive medical course material, Healing English constitutes a holistic introduction to areas of interest to today’s healers. While presenting common medical vocabulary, Healing English also familiarizes students with lay language to help future practitioners understand English-speaking patients. Each lesson includes a wide range of brief and slightly more complex conversations and expands into reading and vocabulary study to be done outside of class. Expansion on relevant themes is conducted via the university’s Moodle site. The unique readings and discussion topics stimulate the imagination and offer a broad range of information about modern medicine, as well as supplements, homeopathy, Eastern medicine, Ayurveda, new inventions, etc. Students are also provided with a number of resources to continue studying on their own outside of class. The material was initially piloted in the Hirosaki University International Exchange Center (now International Education Center) English Lounge Medical Terminology course that began in May 2012 and is now being used in the Medical English course in the University’s Faculty of Medicine. Along this journey Healing English has served Japanese and non-Japanese medical students, nursing students, science and technology majors, post-doctorate biology researchers, as well as Japanese and non-Japanese internists and surgeons. Through this poster session, the presenter seeks dialogue with other English instructors working with learners in medical-related fields. Although Healing English is still being perfected, the presenter authored If You Send It They Will Reply: English E-mail for Doctors, Natsume Shuppan 7/14 and has a medical conversation book forthcoming from Natusme in 2015.
PS2-03 - Incorporating information structure in the EAP curriculum
John Blake (Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
Explaining the difference between particular syntactic choices, such as sentences (1) and (2) can be problematic.
(1) The concepts in the examples of computational functions are two.
(2) There are two concepts in the examples of computational functions.
Native English speakers tend to declare that one form “sounds more natural” and provide no further explanation. Low frequency word combinations are likely to be identified as unnatural. These so-called unnatural or marked expressions, however, may be grammatically correct according to pedagogic grammars. Unlike native speakers, learners frequently do not have sufficient exposure to English to acquire the ability to differentiate between unmarked or marked forms. Therefore, an understanding of underlying syntactic principles of information structure is necessary to help learners more accurately assess markedness.
This presentation shows how three principles of information structure, namely information flow (given and new), information focus (theme and rheme) and end weight can be incorporated into an academic writing course.
Examples drawn from learner and reference corpora are used to highlight the use and misuse of these principles by examining structures, such as fronting, passive voice, inversion, discontinuous noun phrases, the postponement of direct objects and the position of adverbials. A selection of tried-and-tested activities will be shared.
PS1-02 - Learned Lectures: listening material by content specialists for science and engineering majors
Samuel Barclay (Ehime University)
Roderick Lange (Ehime University)
Providing engineering/science students with English listening material that is relevant to their major is necessary if they are to be prepared for their future in industry or academia. However, for teachers without a background in engineering, it can be challenging to supply such input. Moreover, there are currently few resources freely available which provide a large amount of content-specific, level-appropriate listening texts for engineers/scientists. This poster introduces an online self-access database of English language lectures called Learned Lectures in Science & Engineering (www.learnedlectures.com) which has been created to fill this gap. The website contains transcribed, subtitled lectures in English by content specialists of various nationalities. Although the project is still in its infancy, the ultimate goal is to provide relevant, domain-specific materials so that engineering/science students can gain experience listening to authentic presentations that are similar to a university lecture or conference presentation. This poster justifies the necessity of the website and discusses both decisions made, and issues faced, during its development. It also introduces the viewpoints of some students and teachers who have used the content. Finally, it outlines plans for the future growth of the website and makes a call for collaborators.
PS1-06 - Lost in Translation? Found in ESP! : Medical English Making Strides in Okinawa
Caroline C. Latham (Meio University)
This poster presentation focuses on the ongoing work of the presenter in creating and coordinating the first medical English education program to be established in a hospital in Okinawa. The Okinawa Prefecture government has a long-range plan to make the prefecture a center for medical tourism. In order to realize this dream, the doctors, nurses, medical technicians and other hospital staff members need to develop at least basic English communicative skills.
April 1st, 2014 marked the beginning of the Medical English Education Program at the Okinawa Prefecture Northern Area Hospitals, based in Hokubu Hospital. The presenter will share class and individual tutorial activities in demonstrating how the program has been developing and changing since its inception, based on hospital personnel needs, time constraints, existing English communicative skill levels, etc.
Currently, several classes are being held weekly for the pediatricians, the E.R./A&E nursing staff and the hemodialysis nurses and technicians. In addition, several of the doctors have come for individual sessions to work on presentations for international conferences overseas as well as to work on revising research reports and case studies for submission to international medical journals. In the classes we do a variety of activities including role plays, case study reports (with and without power point) and activities to learn lay terminology for difficult medical terms.
Relevant handouts (プリーント) will be provided in the poster presentation.
PS1-04 - Visual metaphors as a cognitive scalpel: cutting through the language disguise
Lawrie Hunter (Kochi University of Technology)
This presentation makes a case for the adoption of principled information mapping (based on visual metaphors) as a lingua franca for the communication of complex information in ESP environments and in ESP instruction.
We laugh at people who pack their PowerPoint slides full of sentences; it doesn't suit the medium, we say. Yet we continue to communicate structured information (information is structured) as narrative, in continuous linear text, which visually reveals little or nothing about the structure of the information that it carries.
ESP work is a good matrix for examination of the alternatives to continuous text as a representation of structured information. Our ESP learner-clients typically need information immediately, hence the need for structural representations that support navigation. Visual encodings are most welcome in such workplace environments as the cockpit, the operating room, the tour bus.
This poster presents 2 visual metaphor based tools, currently implemented in the author's curricula, that provide a confidence-building bridge between the world of language (e.g. text) and the world of structured information: Information Structure Maps, which show symbolically the relations between atomic bits of information at the sentence level; and Cmaps (Novakian maps), which portray graphically the rich relations between concepts in a concept array. Successful ESP instructional applications of the two tools are demonstrated.
PS2-10 - Writing across the Curriculum: Specificity vs. Transferability
Sonia Sharmin (Tsukuba University / University of Electro-Communications)
Writing is an essential component of disciplinary knowledge, a practice that must be cultivated in every course as actively as any other discipline-based practice, whether an analytical approach, a research method, or a laboratory or computational technique. Academic institutions often experience a disconnect between language/writing instruction and content area instruction, with content experts claiming it is not their role to teach writing, and writing instructors suffering from the disadvantage of having limited content knowledge in a particular academic area. This disconnect can lead to student difficulty in generalizing or transferring their learning to content area courses and vice versa. In the case of teaching English in a non-English speaking country, this quandary is increased even more, as specialists in the disciplines sometimes suffer from poor general English skills. To understand this question, I have compared some course documents from four different disciplines and studied the type of writing that students are expected to produce. I have also tried to research how an English teacher and a subject specialist judge the mistakes in their students' writing. Although there is danger in overgeneralization, it is concluded that it is valuable for students to know that there are certain rhetorical moves which are familiar and accepted within particular discourse communities. As such, instructors need to have some subject-general knowledge to effectively teach that subject; at the minimum, an undergraduate degree of the broad category related to the wider discipline is necessary.
PS2-01 - Teacher and student perceptions of English usage in the engineering workplace
Samuel Barclay (Ehime University)
Roderick Lange (Ehime University)
Katsunori Fujioka (Ehime University)
Understanding English usage in the environments in which students are likely to work is an important prerequisite when developing an ESP course. Typically, this might involve an extensive needs analysis of both the professional and academic arenas into which learners matriculate. However, due to logistical and pragmatic reasons (e.g. time and access limitation) such a needs analysis is not always conducted. In such a situation, course content is often determined according to the tacit understanding of professional environments held by the course designers/teachers. Therefore, it is important that this tacit understanding be accurate otherwise learners may well be unprepared for the realities of post-university professional English usage. This poster reports the results of a needs questionnaire distributed to companies (n=136) who often employ graduates of an engineering faculty at a Japanese university. The same questionnaire, after slight adaptation, was administered to faculty (n=71) and student populations (n=1713) of that institution. The poster presents the descriptive statistics of the three parties, in addition to the results of comparative analyses. It argues there is a divergence between the realities of the workplace and the perception of workplace English usage held by both students and teachers. Furthermore, it delineates the differing priorities of the teacher and student populations. Finally, it discusses the implications of the results and suggests that, in order to ensure that a university ESP curriculum meets the needs of all parties, the tacit understanding of teacher and student populations should be calibrated with the realities of post-university English usage.
Poster Session 1 (13:00 - 14:00)
Poster Session 2 (16:00 - 17:00)
PS2-08 - An approach to developing writing skills in scientific English
Naoko Nakamura (Aoyama Gakuin University)
Students of science and technology have become aware of the importance to master technical and scientific English. They have need and desire to communicate using it. This presentation illustrates an approach to building writing skills of the students in their discourse. The approach is topic-based, first, using real or pictured science objects and phenomena. Watching and understanding the structures, operations, and mechanisms, students construct English sentences describing them. Through the writing process, they review and manipulate the basic grammatical patterns of scientific English sentences. They practice to logically and organically connect sentences, which will be the basis of their English ability. The approach then deals with more complicated topics specific to their disciplines. Their writings are individually corrected with positive comments by teacher. At some point during the course, students notice their own progress in writing and begin to enjoy it. Consequently, (1) they can each achieve a higher level in their writing skills without text-based lessons because the topics are fun and need and desire-oriented for them, and their focus shifts from studying English to describing their findings to others, which gives them motivation; and (2) their sentences can be clear and concise because they write in English from the start without translation from Japanese.
Forum on "English for Tourism"
Forums Abstracts
Presentation 1 - Promoting inbound tourism through English for guiding lessons
Reiko Fujita (Tokai University)
Since 2003, tourism has become one of the main pillars of Japan’s official growth strategy. The number of international tourists entering Japan has been increasing. In 2013, the number of visitors reached over 10 million. Following this milestone, the government established a new target of attracting 20 million visitors by 2020. However, there are many obstacles to overcome to realize this goal. According to a survey on international tourists in Japan, one major source of inconvenience was the language barrier (Japan Tourism Agency 2012). Lowering this barrier must be a priority if tourism is to be promoted in Japan. This language barrier is mainly due to Japanese people’s lack of communication skills in foreign languages, particularly in English. Therefore, English for Tourism education is now more important than ever. Moreover, it stands to reason that effective approaches to English instruction focusing on inbound tourism should be an important area of focus if such a barrier is to be lifted. The speaker will report on her practices in preparing students to guide foreign visitors. Through teaching in a practical "hands-on" manner, students quickly develop an awareness of the genre of English for guiding and show more interests in international tourists and desire to know more about Japanese culture. Toward the end of the course, students actually experience guiding foreign visitors. Such an activity is vital in order to develop more interest and confidence in students who will be key human resources in achieving the goal of making Japan a “tourism-oriented nation”.
Reiko Fujita is an Associate Professor at Tokai University. She is an English Program coordinator for the Faculty of Tourism. Her research interest is in the field of ESP, particularly English for tourism. She is an author of Travel English for tourism industry professionals by McMillan Language House.
Presentation 2 - Current situation and future challenges in sightseeing information websites in foreign languages
Kayoko H. Murakami (Shibaura Institute of Technology)
The number of international tourists to Japan has been increasing as the Japanese government is promoting the campaigns aiming to increase the number of inbound tourists. According to the questionnaire results by Japan Tourism Agency, many of those tourists found sightseeing information through the Internet because it is one of the major means to obtain travel information easily. It is obvious that making sightseeing information websites in multiple languages is essential in order to transmit the attraction of Japanese sightseeing spots overseas. However, the information sent out by local governments, tourism associations, or tourist facilities including hotels and ryokans is only in Japanese in many cases. In addition, the number of websites or the amount of information in a sightseeing website translated in English, Korean and Chinese are limited even though the number of Korean and Chinese tourists accounts for almost 60% of the total inbound tourists. Moreover, the contents translated in foreign languages are poor because the information in those websites is not fully translated from their original Japanese websites. To convey attractions of sightseeing spots to foreigners, the Japanese websites should be translated in other languages with enough information. In this study, the official websites administrated by the top 20 cities and towns with the number of tourist arrivals and foreign lodgers in Hokkaido were analyzed by comparing the number of foreign language site of each municipality. Moreover, research on how much of the information translated in foreign languages was conducted. In conclusion, the ways of development of language education of human resources in tourism industry dealing with sightseeing information websites in foreign languages were discussed.
Kayoko H. Murakami received her M.A. in TESL from Saint Michael’s College, Vermont, U.S.A. and her Ph.D. in Synergetic Information Science from Hokkaido University. She is currently an associate professor of English at Shibaura Institute of Technology. Her research interests include Tourism Informatics and English Education. Her current research activities are on text mining through non-Japanese travel blogs.
Presentation 3 - Textbook Development for ETP: Hospitality English for Careers at Hotels
Chiharu Iwai (Osaka Prefecture University)
With the Visit Japan Project going on and the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at hand, there has been a greater need to provide quality service to international visitors by using English. This presentation is to introduce Hospitality English for Careers at Hotels, a textbook of English for Tourism Purposes (ETP). It is based on a thorough needs analysis at Japanese hotels by quantitative and qualitative research, which was supported by Grant-in-aid for Scientific Research. Inspired by the presenter’s experience as a professional service instructor at a hotel, the most distinctive feature of the textbook is its particular focus on providing quality service with hospitality rather than just learning basic English expressions. “Useful Tips for Providing Hotel Services” in each unit explains essential concepts and appropriate attitudes in attending to guests. The textbook highlights the most frequent service situations at the front desk, the bell service, the concierge desk, restaurants, and gift shops. The model in this textbook is a first-class hotel, whose staff is equipped with highly professional expertise as well as advanced English proficiency. Therefore, the target users of this English textbook are not only the students at universities and technical schools for tourism but also professionals in hospitality businesses such as hotels and restaurants, and so on. This presentation explains each section of the textbook including the sound files of the conversations between the guest and the hotel staff to share with the audience.
Chiharu Iwai, Professor at Osaka Prefecture University, received a Ph.D. from Osaka University. Her research interests include needs analysis in ESP, English for tourism, and professional provision of hospitality in English at Japanese hotels. Her recent book, Needs Analysis in ESP Education: Aiming for Developing Global Human Resources in Industry and Universities, was published in 2014.
Forum on "English for Science and Technology"
Presentation 1 - Acquiring genre awareness through move analyses on science research papers
Masako Terui (Kinki University)
In the era of globalization, Japanese university students, especially in science and engineering, are facing growing needs for the acquisition of English skills. However, they have little time to learn English because they have to devote themselves to conducting research in their field. This gap between the needs and the reality can be achieved by ESP. Through an ESP approach, science and engineering majors can improve analyze language features of genre texts using concepts and linguistic tools from work in ESP. In this talk, I will introduce my classes given in the sixth semester for third-year students in science and engineering. In class, the students are asked to analyze the moves in research papers as an example of the genre text. On AntConc with texts in the students’ self-created mini-corpus, they can discover the technical terms and common phrases used frequently in their own field. They are also asked to analyze the abstract of the articles in their corpus using the findings from AntConc and hint expressions in each sentence. I will show you with specific examples, focusing on the abstract in this talk, how the students can acquire an awareness of the genre text based on the move analyses.
Masako Terui is an Assistant Professor of the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Kinki University. She is the chair of the ESP Kansai chapter. Her research interests include English for engineers/science and computer-assisted language learning.
Presentation 2 - Bridging Curricular Variables of Undergraduate and Graduate EST Programs
SHI Jie (University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo)
EST (English for Science and Technology) is one of the main areas of ESP education at Japanese universities. According to the online investigation on the EST courses offered at Japanese universities up till 2013 by the presenter, the data shows that the absolute majority of EST courses are undergraduate ones. UEC Tokyo is one of the few that require graduate school students in their master’s program to take an EST course, “Graduate School Technical English”, in addition to the required “Undergraduate Technical English” that is required for the third-year students. This presentation reports the differences in curricular requirements of both courses and the difficulties in bridging the various aspects of the curricula, particularly genres and sub-genres, methods and pedagogy, teaching faculty, and evaluation of students’ achievement.
SHI Jie is a professor at the English Department of UEC Tokyo. Her recent research focuses on curriculum design, materials development, EAP/ESP, Corpus Linguistics, DDL, and innovation and change theories for education.
Presentation 3 - English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) at Japanese Universities of Science and Technology
Nobuo Hamano (University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo)
English, as a global language of science and technology, is advancing into higher education as a medium of instruction for science and engineering subjects at universities in various parts of the world. EMI is commonly considered to be one of the effective ways for universities or research institutes to recruit capable international students and researchers directly without having to require the students and researchers to go through a rather long process of learning the mother tongues of the non-English speaking countries. In some Japanese universities, however, EMI is also used for motivating EFL (English as Foreign Language) students to improve their English communication abilities. The presenter, who is a researcher and teacher of ICT (Information and Communication Technology), reports the current situation of the practices of EMI in Europe and Asia. He presents the advantages and potentials of EMI in different contexts with recommendation for successful implementation. In addition, he argues that the lack of the awareness of the possible pitfalls of EMI in some existing practices at Japanese universities could lead to undesirable education outcome.
Nobuo Hamano is currently a Specially-Appointed Professor at the UEC Tokyo. His current responsibility includes the coordination of international research collaborations besides teaching a graduate course in ICT area in English. He graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with Ms. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1974 and 1980 respectively, and worked at University of Detroit and the University of Michigan as lecturer and Assistant Research Scientist. He also worked for Hitachi, Ltd before joining UEC Tokyo in 2002.