Agnieszka Suchomelová-Połomska
Masaryk University Language Centre, Faculty of Arts Division
The key issues appearing in strategic plans of many universities all over the world these days are employability and internationalization. Hence, also in the language learning area there have been many attempts to find out what needs to be done to facilitate the education process on a worldwide scale and how to best prepare a university student to become a successful candidate on the job market, both home and abroad. Various studies have been carried out in academic and professional environments to find out what students' needs and the requirements of certain professional groups are, as far as language use is concerned. Those analyses, however, give different results, depending on the group surveyed, which makes it impossible to draw one conclusion as to what constitutes ideal language teaching and learning on tertiary level. The difficulty to arrive at a uniform answer is emphasized by Hyland (2006: 73), who explains that "needs is actually an umbrella term that embraces many aspects, incorporating learners' goals and backgrounds, their language proficiencies, […] and the situations they will need to communicate in." Also, throughout one's teaching career, the taught language level or/and its communication purpose might change. Hence we, language teachers, need to embrace this panta rhei philosophy and adopt approaches and methodologies allowing for manoeuvring between LAP and LSP, as the need be.
One of the ways of achieving the aforementioned result might be through broadly specified topics (interdisciplinarity) which allow for using materials across various disciplines. The other method could be shifting the focus on functional language and soft skills (transferable skills), which then could be applied to different contexts (hence different disciplines) and so give students autonomy in the way of tackling tasks and assignments. The benefits of employing those elements in a language classroom are high adaptability of teaching materials and turning students into co-authors of the learning content, which helps develop their responsibility for the learning process. Thus, the teacher can apply his or her methodological expertise in "organizing the teaching material by situations which students will need to operate in" (Harmer, 2001: 298) through specifying "the situation, the likely participants, and communicative goals." (ibid). The intention of this paper is to show how such approaches were employed in different types of English classes at B1 and B2 levels, at the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University.
Tato prezentace se zaměřuje na téma získání udržitelné kariéry učitele cizích jazyků. Budou představeny přístupy a metodiky, které umožňují snadný přechod z jednoho výukového prostředí do druhého a činí toto prostředí relevantní a zajímavé pro studenty. Dále proběhne sdílení zkušeností s dosažením tohoto cíle skrz využití interdisciplinarity, projektově orientované výuky, funkčního jazyka a přenosných dovedností. Také budou představeny příklady využití stejných materiálů a obdobných přístupů během různých typů hodin angličtiny, a to jak pro akademické, tak i specializované účely, vyučovaných na Fakultě přírodovědecké a Fakultě filozofické Masarykovy univerzity v Brně. Zmíněné hodiny byly učené na úrovních B1 a B2.
References:
- Hyland, K. (2006): English for Academic Purposes; London: Routledge
- Harmer, J. (2001): The Practice of English Language Teaching; Longman
Agnieszka Suchomelová-Połomska is a lecturer at the Masaryk University Language Centre. She has taught English for Academic Purposes and various types of English for Specific Purposes, namely for Sports Managers, Business English and, for most of the time, English for Science (specialized courses for chemists, biologists and physicists). She also has experience with teacher training (Trinity TESOL courses). At present her research is focused on syllabus design, project-based learning and simulations and roleplaying in a language classroom. She received her MA degree in Teaching English as a Foreign Language from London Metropolitan University in 2003.