El proceso de toma de decisiones

Paper 1

Needs Analysis for Graduate School Technical English Course Design and Materials Development

Suwako Uehara*, Alexandra Terashima**, Jie Shi* *The University of Electro-Communications (UEC Tokyo), Japan

**The University of Tokyo, Japan

The National University of Electro-Communications is one of a few graduate schools in Japan that offer a compulsory Graduate School Technical English (GTE) program. The program initiated in 2010 is undergoing a new era for curriculum development. The goal of the program is to give students English skills useful for an academic career in research including presentations, reading, discussion and writing. The GTE course offered by the Department of Electrical Engineering and Optical and Nano-Materials Development is taught by both English department faculty and science faculty. The former focuses on presentation and writing while the latter, content-specific reading and discussion skills. During the Spring semester of 2019, two needs surveys have been administered to the students in the current Graduate Technical English program: a pre-course survey and an interim course survey. The surveys aim to find out in-coming students’ learning needs and

expectations of the course and the various aspects of the current departmental curriculum meets the needs of the students as well as to make curricular improvements for the next academic year. This presentation summarizes the salient points of the results of the two surveys, discusses the implications of student responses, and makes recommendations for improvements to the curriculum in line with the student feedback. The specific recommendations for course design, especially materials development and pedagogical revision, are aimed to better fulfil the intended ESP-oriented academic learning goals and strengthen the collaboration between the English and science faculty.

Keywords: ESP, EAP, Needs Analysis, Curriculum Development, Materials Development

Bios of the presenters:

Suwako Uehara is an Associate Professor at the University of Electro-Communications teaching

graduate and undergraduate students in English for academic purposes and ESP. She is currently a special editor for the OnCUE Special Conference Issue and is a member of the Writers’ Peer Support

Group of JALT. Her research interests include 21st_{-century education, ESP, motivation, autonomous}

learning, creativity, and the use of technology in the EFL classroom.

Alexandra Terashima completed her Ph.D. in Genetics at Harvard University. She became

interested in scientific writing and science communication while in graduate school. After work as a postdoc at the University of Tokyo, she worked at RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan, as an in- house editor helping scientists develop and publish research articles. Currently, she teaches academic writing and speaking as a lecturer at the ALESS program at the University of Tokyo and also teaches for the GTE course at UEC Tokyo.

Jie Shi is a professor of English at the National University of Electro-Communications (UEC),

Tokyo, Japan, has been a practitioner and researcher in ESP/EAP Curriculum Development, Sociolinguistics, and Cognitive Education in EFL/ESL for over three decades. She leads and teaches the university-wide undergraduate and graduate ESP programs at UEC Tokyo and an EAP presentation program for the Graduate School of Science (Physics) of Tokyo Institute of Technology. She is currently the Vice-President of ESP Asia and an advisor for ESP China.

Paper 2

Instructional Design and Implementation of Academic Writing Tasks for Undergraduate Students of Science and Engineering

Yan Yu

The National University of Electro-Communications (UEC Tokyo), Japan

Academic writing is an essential part of various genres of science and engineering English. Various writing tasks are assigned to the students taking the compulsory courses of Basic Technical English (BTE) in the spring semester and Intermediate Technical English (ITE) in the fall semester of the Undergraduate Technical English (UTE) program at UEC Tokyo. In this presentation, the scaffolding pedagogical approaches adopted especially for the basic and intermediate students of the two courses are introduced detailing the in-class activities designed to assist students in the process of completing the designated academic writing tasks. In the BTE course, students are required to complete two writing assignments, a summary and a PPT file. In the ITE course, students are required to write a research paper abstract and an academic poster as the two main writing assignments. In order to conduct the writing assignments in the ITE course, students are asked to find published online scientific resources and research articles written by their own department professors whose research labs students desire to enter in the following year. In both semesters, teacher instruction on IMRAD-based reading strategies and writing skills is given in class prior to students’ individual and peer practice for better understanding of the targeted strategies and skills. Teacher feedback at various stages also reinforces students’ understanding and completion of the required tasks. The results of such a scaffolding instructional process have produced positive achievements of the learning and teaching objectives of the two courses.

Keywords: EAP, Instructional Design, Scaffolding, Academic Writing, Research Article and

Abstract

Bio of the presenter:

Yan Yu has been teaching in EFL in PRC and Japan for more than 20 years. Her recent interests in

research include autonomous learning, learner-centered approach, ESP for science and engineering, and genre-based approach. She has been teaching at the UTE program for over eight years.

Paper 3

Student attitudes toward gamification as an approach to vocabulary learning

Shin’ichi Hashimoto Tokai University, Japan

Gamification in language study has been an approach to engage students with learning materials. The interactive nature of this approach is aligned with active learning techniques and improves communication between students. This preliminary study on using a vocabulary learning game called Quizlet Live is an attempt to understand students’ attitudes toward this kind of learning. The learning materials for the study are technical vocabulary from a textbook for engineering and science. The students in the study are enrolled in the third-year of an undergraduate curriculum at a national university of science and technology. The course is a mandatory course for all third-year students to prepare them for the fourth-year, in which they join labs to do research for their graduation thesis. The Quizlet Live game is only used two or three times during the semester for about 10 to 15 minutes each time. Therefore, this component of the course is very small, compared with the overall course objectives, but anecdotal evidence gathered through this study indicates that students highly enjoy the activity and find it a motivating way to study technical vocabulary.

Keywords: EAP, Vocabulary Learning, Gamification, Motivation, Pedagogy

Bio of the presenter:

Shin’ichi Hashimoto is a specially-appointed associate professor at Tokai University. He has been

involved with Japanese university English education for nearly twenty years in various capacities. His main research interests include ESP education, language learning technology, and collaborative learning.

Paper 4

Curricular Challenges in ESP Presentation Program for Graduate School Students of EST in Japan

Jie Shi

Tokyo Institute of Technology (TokyoTech) The University of Electro-Communications (UEC Tokyo)

Tokyo Institute of Technology (TokyoTech) in Japan is one of the first Japanese universities of science and technology implementing ESP courses in graduate schools. The Department of Physics of the Graduate School of Science of TokyoTech has offered departmental courses of English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) for its Master’s and Ph.D. students since 2003. The presenter

is the initial curriculum developer and the instructor for both academic English writing and presentation courses of this unique and long-term ESAP program. The focus of this presentation is given to the curriculum developmental process of the program in the past 15 years detailing the various stages of and challenges in needs analysis, materials development, syllabus development, pedagogical strategies, student dynamics in terms of English abilities, learning needs, gaps between student and teacher expectations of the course goals and learning achievemen ts,collaboration between science and English faculty, teaching materials, and administration-related issues. In particular, the rationale for the adoption of the varied approaches to the syllabus design for the Master and the Ph.D. courses, for the separation of the academic writing and academic presentation courses, and for the initiation of collaboration of ESP and EMI faculty members is reported. The strengths and weaknesses of the current curricula are analysed.

Keywords: EST (English for Science and Technology), Graduate School English Education,

Curriculum Development and Pedagogy, ESAP Presentation and Writing, ESP-EMI Collaboration

Bio of the presenter:

Jie Shi is a Professor of English at the National University of Electro-Communications (UEC),

Tokyo, Japan, has been a practitioner and researcher in ESP/EAP Curriculum Development, Sociolinguistics, and Cognitive Education in EFL/ESL for over three decades. She has developed and taught the EAP writng and presentation program for EST students majoring in Physics in both Master’s and Ph.D programs at the Graduate School of Science of Tokyo Institute of Technology (TokyoTech). She serves as the Chair of the ESP Kanto Chapter of the Japan Association of College English Teachers (JACET).

Paper 5

An analysis of the relationship between English proficiency and final scores in an international business EMI program: to what extent does English proficiency predict

performance in content classes?

Robert Gommerman Chuo University, Japan

In the last few years, several universities in Japan have opened departments with courses and entire programs instructed exclusively in English. As these programs become more popular, it is important to understand the extent to which English proficiency at the onset of studies can predict performance in content classes where instruction, course materials, and support are delivered entirely in English. Data from a newly created business department at a respected Japanese

university suggest that prior English ability could not predict performance in two core subjects (Introductory Economics and Introductory Business Management). Despite having low English proficiency scores, many students were able to achieve high grades in both subjects, while some students with high proficiency scores did not perform well. The data also show a failrly strong correlation (r = 0.64) between performance in Introductory Economics and Introductory Business Management, which adds support to the notion that English proficiency, while important, is not a predictor of performance. The metrics used for this analysis were students’ final numerical course scores ranging from 0 – 100 in the two subjects mentioned above, and results from a national privately administered English proficiency test (GTEC) which students took before the beginning of the first semester of the first year of studies. While this analysis is still in the exploratory phase, the findings so far could have significant implications for the viability of EMI programs in Japan, and criteria for admission to such programs.

Keywords: EMI, content-based teaching, English proficiency, language performance, Economics

and Business Management majors

Bio of the presenter:

Robert Gommerman has been working at universities in the Tokyo area for the last 13 years and

currently works as a Specially Appointed Assistant Professor at Chuo University’s newly created faculty of Global Management, a department that operates as an English Medium Instruction (EMI) program. Gommerman plays the central role in coordinating curriculum development and helping to design the program to be one based strongly on data science.