Here's our presentation slides...
Tuesday, 24 November 2015
Training Process
Employee Training Process
Source: http://www.commlabindia.com/resources/presentation/employee-training-process.php
Videos of Language Training Organizations
Saturday, 3 October 2015
English for Lawyers
Our group chose Legal English (English use by solicitors) for the class MOOC project.
Readings and References.
1. The London School of English
2. Inns of Court (British Legal Association)
3. Solicitor _ British lawyer
4. Teaching English for Academic Legal Purposes
5. Article
Readings and References.
1. The London School of English
2. Inns of Court (British Legal Association)
3. Solicitor _ British lawyer
4. Teaching English for Academic Legal Purposes
5. Article
Sunday, 27 September 2015
Case studies of Language Training
GUIDELINES FOR WRITING A CASE STUDY ANALYSIS
A case study analysis requires you to investigate a business problem, examine the alternative solutions, and propose the most effective solution using supporting evidence.
Preparing the Case
Before you begin writing, follow these guidelines to help you prepare and understand the case study:
- Read and examine the case thoroughly
- Take notes, highlight relevant facts, underline key problems.
- Focus your analysis
- Identify two to five key problems
- Why do they exist?
- How do they impact the organization?
- Who is responsible for them?
- Uncover possible solutions
- Review course readings, discussions, outside research, your experience.
- Select the best solution
- Consider strong supporting evidence, pros, and cons: is this solution realistic?
Drafting the Case
Once you have gathered the necessary information, a draft of your analysis should include these sections:
- Introduction
- Identify the key problems and issues in the case study.
- Formulate and include a thesis statement, summarizing the outcome of your analysis in 1–2 sentences.
- Background
- Set the scene: background information, relevant facts, and the most important issues.
- Demonstrate that you have researched the problems in this case study.
- Alternatives
- Outline possible alternatives (not necessarily all of them)
- Explain why alternatives were rejected
- Constraints/reasons
- Why are alternatives not possible at this time?
- Proposed Solution
- Provide one specific and realistic solution
- Explain why this solution was chosen
- Support this solution with solid evidence
- Concepts from class (text readings, discussions, lectures)
- Outside research
- Personal experience (anecdotes)
- Recommendations
- Determine and discuss specific strategies for accomplishing the proposed solution.
- If applicable, recommend further action to resolve some of the issues
- What should be done and who should do it?
Finalizing the Case
After you have composed the first draft of your case study analysis, read through it to check for any gaps or inconsistencies in content or structure: Is your thesis statement clear and direct? Have you provided solid evidence? Is any component from the analysis missing?
When you make the necessary revisions, proofread and edit your analysis before submitting the final draft.
Source: Ashford writing
Videos of Case Study
How to Analyze a Case Study
Hands-on Guide: How to Analyze a Case Study
Essentials of Management Information Systems Sixth Edition provides a number of case studies for you to analyze. Included in these cases are questions to help you understand and analyze the case. You may, however, be assigned other case studies that do not have questions. This Hands-on Guide presents a structured framework to help you analyze such cases as well as the case studies in this text. Knowing how to analyze a case will help you attack virtually any business problem.A case study helps students learn by immersing them in a real-world business scenario where they can act as problem-solvers and decision-makers. The case presents facts about a particular organization. Students are asked to analyze the case by focusing on the most important facts and using this information to determine the opportunities and problems facing that organization. Students are then asked to identify alternative courses of action to deal with the problems they identify.
A case study analysis must not merely summarize the case. It should identify key issues and problems, outline and assess alternative courses of action, and draw appropriate conclusions. The case study analysis can be broken down into the following steps:
- Identify the most important facts surrounding the case.
- Identify the key issue or issues.
- Specify alternative courses of action.
- Evaluate each course of action.
- Recommend the best course of action.
- Identify the most important facts surrounding the case.
Read the case several times to become familiar with the information it contains. Pay attention to the information in any accompanying exhibits, tables, or figures. Many case scenarios, as in real life, present a great deal of detailed information. Some of these facts are more relevant than others for problem identification. One can assume the facts and figures in the case are true, but statements, judgments, or decisions made by individuals should be questioned. Underline and then list the most important facts and figures that would help you define the central problem or issue. If key facts and numbers are not available, you can make assumptions, but these assumptions should be reasonable given the situation. The "correctness" of your conclusions may depend on the assumptions you make. - Identify the key issue or issues.
Use the facts provided by the case to identify the key issue or issues facing the company you are studying. Many cases present multiple issues or problems. Identify the most important and separate them from more trivial issues. State the major problem or challenge facing the company. You should be able to describe the problem or challenge in one or two sentences. You should be able to explain how this problem affects the strategy or performance of the organization.
You will need to explain why the problem occurred. Does the problem or challenge facing the company comes from a changing environment, new opportunities, a declining market share, or inefficient internal or external business processes? In the case of information systems-related problems, you need to pay special attention to the role of technology as well as the behavior of the organization and its management.
Information system problems in the business world typically present a combination of management, technology, and organizational issues. When identifying the key issue or problem, ask what kind of problem it is: Is it a management problem, a technology problem, an organizational problem, or a combination of these? What management, organizational, and technology factors contributed to the problem?
- To determine if a problem stems from management factors, consider whether managers are exerting appropriate leadership over the organization and monitoring organizational performance. Consider also the nature of management decision-making: Do managers have sufficient information for performing this role, or do they fail to take advantage of the information that is available?
- To determine if a problem stems from technology factors, examine any issues arising from the organization's information technology infrastructure: its hardware, software, networks and telecommunications infrastructure, and the management of data in databases or traditional files. Consider also whether the appropriate management and organizational assets are in place to use this technology effectively.
- To determine the role of organizational factors, examine any issues arising from the organization's structure, culture, business processes, work groups, divisions among interest groups, relationships with other organizations, as well as the impact of changes in the organization's external environment-changes in government regulations, economic conditions, or the actions of competitors, customers, and suppliers.
You will have to decide which of these factors—or combination of factors—is most important in explaining why the problem occurred.
- To determine if a problem stems from management factors, consider whether managers are exerting appropriate leadership over the organization and monitoring organizational performance. Consider also the nature of management decision-making: Do managers have sufficient information for performing this role, or do they fail to take advantage of the information that is available?
- Specify alternative courses of action.
List the courses of action the company can take to solve its problem or meet the challenge it faces. For information system-related problems, do these alternatives require a new information system or the modification of an existing system? Are new technologies, business processes, organizational structures, or management behavior required? What changes to organizational processes would be required by each alternative? What management policy would be required to implement each alternative?
Remember, there is a difference between what an organization "should do" and what that organization actually "can do". Some solutions are too expensive or operationally difficult to implement, and you should avoid solutions that are beyond the organization's resources. Identify the constraints that will limit the solutions available. Is each alternative executable given these constraints? - Evaluate each course of action.
Evaluate each alternative using the facts and issues you identified earlier, given the conditions and information available. Identify the costs and benefits of each alternative. Ask yourself "what would be the likely outcome of this course of action? State the risks as well as the rewards associated with each course of action. Is your recommendation feasible from a technical, operational, and financial standpoint? Be sure to state any assumptions on which you have based your decision. - Recommend the best course of action.
State your choice for the best course of action and provide a detailed explanation of why you made this selection. You may also want to provide an explanation of why other alternatives were not selected. Your final recommendation should flow logically from the rest of your case analysis and should clearly specify what assumptions were used to shape your conclusion. There is often no single "right" answer, and each option is likely to have risks as well as rewards.
Updated on 3/10/2015
Reading list
- Language Case Studies
- Language Training Case Study
- Power point- Case Study
- http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/images/180304-cambridge-english-case-studies.pdf
- http://www.cactuslanguagetraining.com/our-clients/case-studies/case-study-multi-lingual-training-alliance/
Updated on 4/10/2015
We've read and did a summary of three articles related to ESP which MIGHT be useful for us.
1
Title: Defining English for Specific Purposes and the Role of
the ESP Practitioner
The definition of ‘English
for Specific Purposes’ (ESP) is defined clearly in the journal by Dudley-Evans
in the plenary speech of the first Japan Conference on English for Specific
Purposes in terms of absolute and variable characteristics. A comparison
between the ‘General English’ teacher and the ESP Practitioner is also made.
This journal basically focuses on ESP approaches, movement and practitioners
specifically in Japan. In the first section which is the growth of ESP, it
talks about how people interests towards ESP in Japan increased and who was the
one responsible for the action and in what year. Second, the approach of ESP.
In this part, the author talks about how people’s perspective of ESP change
from negative to positive. Third, the ESP Practitioners. In this section, the
author talks about how Dudley-Evans, the main speaker at the Japan conference
on ESP describes the true ESP teacher or ESP Practitioners. In order to read
and to be able to understand this journal, it will require probably up to
thirty minutes of your time and this journal also requires readers to have good
understanding of English.
As for the findings, the
author concludes that the movement and growth of ESP in Japan is a bit slow but
definite growth. Because of the slow movement, people misinterpreted the
meaning of ESP as simply being the teaching of English for any purpose that
could be specified. People also do not aware of the differences between the ESP
and the ‘General English’ approach. Descriptions of the true ESP teacher or ESP
practitioner should also be made clear.
The main focus that can
be pointed out from the journal is people attitude or perspective about ESP
because many people tend to misunderstood English for Specific Purposes (ESP)
as similar to General English. Therefore, a conference on ESP was held in Japan
and the main speaker of the conference, Tony Dudley-Evans is very aware of the
current confusion among the ESP community, and had given an extended definition
of ESP to clarify the meaning of ESP in his one hour speech.
In
conclusion, it is compulsory for the community to understand of what ESP
actually represents if the ESP community hopes for it to grow. When ESP
community is able to accept the various roles that ESP practitioners need to
adopt, only then its success is ensure. ESP is still in its infancy level
particularly in Japan.
2
Title: Developing an ESP Presentation Course for Graduate Students of Science and Engineering
Author: Terry Fellner
Read the full article here.
The paper begins with a brief explanation and justification of English for Specific Purposes and then provides a cursory description of the students; their English level and their academic study area.
In addition, it describes the development of a presentation course for graduate students from the faculty of Science and Engineering at Saga University. The author suggests that using an Experiential Language Learning approach to develop effective scientific presentations skills in English is a practical method to use with students who have poor English skills.
Background information
- Saga University
- The course name: Advanced Study of Scientific English (ASSE)
- The graduate students who have taken and are taking the ASSE classes are mostly first year students from the faculty of Science and Engineering.
- The ASSE classes are held once a week, on Wednesdays’ in periods II and III, for ninety minutes and occur over the 15 weeks of the semester.
- The class size varies slightly from semester to semester with a maximum enrollment of sixteen students and a minimum of seven.
Goals and Objectives
- The over all goal of the faculty Science and Engineering for the ASSE courses offered by the CRDHE is to improve the students’ academic English skills.
- By the end of the course students will be able to develop and deliver an effective English presentation on their area of research.
Course design
- The course was conducted largely in the target language of English.
- Instructing the students solely or largely in Japanese would have circumvented the faculty’s overall goal since the course would have no longer been an English course, but merely a presentation course.
- Using English as the language of instruction did not mean that the course could be taught in a chalk and talk manner. Thus, the instructor design the course upon the principles of the Experiential Language Learning approach (ELL).
- ELL is an approach that adopts both a functional and interactional view of language where the activities are student-centered and the learning comes from using the language in meaningful ways (Fellner, 2003).
- In this instance, students would learn how to make scientific presentations by doing such presentations.
- A key element with the practice in the ELL approach used in the presentation course is student feedback. During this practice stage of skill demonstration, audience members are not allowed to be passive members, as they were required to provide feedback to the presenters on how well they did.
Course evaluation
- The efficacy of the course has been derived from two different sources. The first source comes from the results given by the class surveys carried out by Saga University to all students near the end of the semester.
- The second form of evaluation can be derived from the increase in student presentation scores from the first through to the final presentations. A progressive increase in average scores would indicate that students steadily improved their presentation skills during the duration of the class.
Conclusion
- This paper describes the development of an ESP presentation course for graduate students from the faculty of Science and Engineering. It describes how the course is being conducted in the target language of English despite the fact that most of the students have extremely low English abilities.
- The course effectively develops students’ presentation and English abilities through the ELL approach, where the learning of lesson targets is accomplished through the cyclical use of practice and teacher modeling.
- Results from student surveys indicate that students feel the course is worthwhile and they were able to learn important skills for their academic life and future professional careers.
3
Title: An Analysis of Engineering Students’ English Language Needs
Author: Eda Gozuyesil
Retrieved from sciencedirect here.
This research study investigated the academic English requirements of engineering departments at Nigde University (NU) in Turkey from the engineering students’ and academicians’ point of view.
Background
- Nigde University
- The focus is on the learner (Engineering students).
- The needs, goals and wishes of the learners have to be taken into account to make the students reach the intended language level.
- A needs analysis is the foremost step which leads to preparing a learner-centred curriculum within a learner-centred approach.
Objectives
- This study investigated which skill, among reading, writing, speaking and listening, has the highest priority for the engineering departments
- To determine the importance of specific language tasks and activities related to the skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking for the departments, teaching content area courses 30 percent in English.
Method
This paper used questionnaire and interview as the research instruments.
Findings
- The findings of the questionnaires and interviews indicated that academicians primarily pointed out “English reading and listening” as the most important skills for students’ academic achievement, students emphasized the importance of “speaking and listening”
- From the interview, most of the academicians and students pointed out the importance of student initiation in the activities and frequent participation in the lessons especially in listening and speaking lessons.
- The results of other interview items pointed out the need for encouraging the students to express their opinions in English and ask questions to the academicians.
Conclusion
- When the overall results are considered, the study shows that reading is reported to be the most important skill for content area courses.
2
Title: Developing an ESP Presentation Course for Graduate Students of Science and Engineering
Author: Terry Fellner
Read the full article here.
The paper begins with a brief explanation and justification of English for Specific Purposes and then provides a cursory description of the students; their English level and their academic study area.
In addition, it describes the development of a presentation course for graduate students from the faculty of Science and Engineering at Saga University. The author suggests that using an Experiential Language Learning approach to develop effective scientific presentations skills in English is a practical method to use with students who have poor English skills.
Background information
- Saga University
- The course name: Advanced Study of Scientific English (ASSE)
- The graduate students who have taken and are taking the ASSE classes are mostly first year students from the faculty of Science and Engineering.
- The ASSE classes are held once a week, on Wednesdays’ in periods II and III, for ninety minutes and occur over the 15 weeks of the semester.
- The class size varies slightly from semester to semester with a maximum enrollment of sixteen students and a minimum of seven.
Goals and Objectives
- The over all goal of the faculty Science and Engineering for the ASSE courses offered by the CRDHE is to improve the students’ academic English skills.
- By the end of the course students will be able to develop and deliver an effective English presentation on their area of research.
What
students are learning has a strong impact on their motivation to learn.
(Yamashiro &
Johnson, 1997)
Course design
- The course was conducted largely in the target language of English.
- Instructing the students solely or largely in Japanese would have circumvented the faculty’s overall goal since the course would have no longer been an English course, but merely a presentation course.
- Using English as the language of instruction did not mean that the course could be taught in a chalk and talk manner. Thus, the instructor design the course upon the principles of the Experiential Language Learning approach (ELL).
- ELL is an approach that adopts both a functional and interactional view of language where the activities are student-centered and the learning comes from using the language in meaningful ways (Fellner, 2003).
- In this instance, students would learn how to make scientific presentations by doing such presentations.
- A key element with the practice in the ELL approach used in the presentation course is student feedback. During this practice stage of skill demonstration, audience members are not allowed to be passive members, as they were required to provide feedback to the presenters on how well they did.
Course evaluation
- The efficacy of the course has been derived from two different sources. The first source comes from the results given by the class surveys carried out by Saga University to all students near the end of the semester.
- The second form of evaluation can be derived from the increase in student presentation scores from the first through to the final presentations. A progressive increase in average scores would indicate that students steadily improved their presentation skills during the duration of the class.
Conclusion
- This paper describes the development of an ESP presentation course for graduate students from the faculty of Science and Engineering. It describes how the course is being conducted in the target language of English despite the fact that most of the students have extremely low English abilities.
- The course effectively develops students’ presentation and English abilities through the ELL approach, where the learning of lesson targets is accomplished through the cyclical use of practice and teacher modeling.
- Results from student surveys indicate that students feel the course is worthwhile and they were able to learn important skills for their academic life and future professional careers.
3
Title: An Analysis of Engineering Students’ English Language Needs
Author: Eda Gozuyesil
Retrieved from sciencedirect here.
This research study investigated the academic English requirements of engineering departments at Nigde University (NU) in Turkey from the engineering students’ and academicians’ point of view.
Background
- Nigde University
- The focus is on the learner (Engineering students).
- The needs, goals and wishes of the learners have to be taken into account to make the students reach the intended language level.
- A needs analysis is the foremost step which leads to preparing a learner-centred curriculum within a learner-centred approach.
Objectives
- This study investigated which skill, among reading, writing, speaking and listening, has the highest priority for the engineering departments
- To determine the importance of specific language tasks and activities related to the skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking for the departments, teaching content area courses 30 percent in English.
Method
This paper used questionnaire and interview as the research instruments.
Findings
- The findings of the questionnaires and interviews indicated that academicians primarily pointed out “English reading and listening” as the most important skills for students’ academic achievement, students emphasized the importance of “speaking and listening”
- From the interview, most of the academicians and students pointed out the importance of student initiation in the activities and frequent participation in the lessons especially in listening and speaking lessons.
- The results of other interview items pointed out the need for encouraging the students to express their opinions in English and ask questions to the academicians.
Conclusion
- When the overall results are considered, the study shows that reading is reported to be the most important skill for content area courses.
Thursday, 17 September 2015
Differences of ESP & EGP
ESP (English for Specific Purposes)
- Focus on training.
- The learners are usually adults.
- Designed to meet specified needs of learners.
- It is intended to be used in specified disciplines.
- It may use different teaching method from the EGP.
EGP (English for General Purposes)
- Focus on education (school).
- The learners are usually students in primary/ secondary school.
- The four skills; Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking are stressed equally.
- The learners future is unpredictable, thus the course content is more difficult to select.
- The syllabus content must be high in surrender value due to the above point.
References:
English for Specific Purposes World Issue 1(17), Volume 7, 2008. ISSN 1682-3257. On the Relationship between ESP & EGP: A General Perspective. Mohammad Mohseni Far. Retrieved online here (available).
Professional Communication and Translation Studies, 3 (1-2) / 2010, Page 49-52. A General View on the Relationship between EGP and ESP. Alexandra-Valeria. Retrieved online here (available).
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