Makalah ESP oleh mahasiswa Universitas Muhammadiyah Gresik Semester 6 pagi Greoup 3 pagi

ESP PAPERS


LECTURER: AMRIN BATUBARA, M.A.


By group C morning class:
1. Dewi Aisyah (06.431.008)
2. Ridwab Priyanto (06.431.030)
3. Ahmad Akmal Rifqi (06.431.034)
4. Feni Hidayati (06.431.013)
5. Irma Dianita Sari (06.431.004)
6. Tri Handayani (06.431.037)
7. Indah Agustinah (06.431.024)
8. Eikzatus Syabachah (06.431.038)
9. Eva Rahayu (06.431.006)
10. Ria Rohmawati (06.431.014)
11. Iswatin Khasanah (06.431.010.)
12. Farida Fatmawati (06.431.046)
13. Nur Rahma Bayti (05.431.027)

Program Strata 1 (S1)
English Department
University of Muhammadiyah
April, 2009



Paper one

Fundamental Variables

The aim of this chapter is to set out the kind of basic information that should be available in the initial stages of course planning. This information relates both to the learner and to the context in which the teaching and learning take place. The relationship between these will be explored in more detail in analysis of learners’ needs, along with an examination of whether learner ‘need’ should (or can) take precedence over practical, situational ‘constraints’. Before doing this, however, we must enumerate and classify the key factors involved.

1. The Boundaries of information collection

Discuss of ‘variable’, i.e. of the multiplicity of factors influencing teaching and learning, is very common in educational planning, and useful lists of these factors may readily be found. It will be helpful to contextualize our own framework by making reference to one such list, draw up by Strevens (1979), which is both wide – ranging and representative.

Strevens’s paper is concerned with the teaching of English to non-native speakers of the language (ESL and EFL). He takes as his starting point the argument that the teacher needs to be highly adaptable as awareness of the breadth and complexity of pedagogical situations increases. He then categories the variables involved in course construction as follows.

a. Variable which are community-controlled

Including:
Cultural restrictions, for example on materials and teaching styles.
Organizational and physical limits and possibilities, for example class size, furniture, time factors, viabilities of book and equipment. (Some administrative variable, such as Ministry of Education control over finance and syllabus, could be added here.)
Teacher training standards.
Sociolinguistic attitudes and expectations, for example positive or negative attitudes to English, and the relationship with achievement.
Educational framework of TEFL, for example the age at which English learning begins and the role of English in the role of English in the educational system.

b. Variable which are teacher-controlled

Including:
Syllabus design, for example approaches, selection and organization of content, relationship to learner needs, view of language and learning.
Methodology, i.e. instructional techniques, for example balance of skills taught and organization of class.
Material evaluation and production.

c. Learner variable

Including: Reasons for Learning
Attitudes.
Expectation.
Age.
Proficiency.
Educational level.

It can readily be seen that Strevens is dealing here with all the steps in course construction, from initial information about resources and learner characteristics, through syllabus and materials design, to the management of classroom.

In this chapter it will be useful to make a distinction between variable types. We shall concern ourselves with initial or ‘advance’ factors, in other words, with those which should usually be available before pedagogical decisions (syllabus, materials, and methodology) need to be made. Mackay (1978b), in a short discussion of the phases of ESP curriculum development, makes a parallel distinction between the basic information – gathering phases and the production phases (as well as including an evaluation and revision phase). This initial information is of particular importance in the world of ESP.

An objection could be made, of course, that this two-way distinction is too simplistic. Although most situational factors, and indeed many of the characteristics of learners, are amenable to collection in advance, it can be argued that some variables are significant at a number of different stages, and so cannot neatly be packaged into either the ‘advance’ phase or the ‘production’ phase. For example, we may be given the information that a group of students falls into a particular age range: this will also affect the choice and sequencing of learning items. We may also be given timing requirement in advance which will have significance for the amount of material that can be covered. To pursue this further would go beyond the scope of this chapter, but it will be useful to bear it in mind later when course development is reviewed.

Three important qualifying remarks need to be made here. The first, which is fairly obvious from what has been said, is that our ‘advance’ variables are at a pre-language stage; the nature of linguistic data is a dependent decision, closely bound up with the production phase. It is increasingly unusual within ESP to find the analysis of a corpus of language the starting point for programmed planning, as we shall see in our discussion of approaches to ESP course design. The second is a convenience: the issue of learner ‘needs’ is such a complex one that it will be treated as if it were a single item for the moment and considered in more detail in the another chapter. Lastly, it is sometimes objected that the teacher has little if any control over the kind of factors that we are dealing with here. In ESP particular, this is becoming less the case, as we shall see in the ESP teacher chapter. Teachers are often in varying degrees administrators and decision-makes, not passive recipients of information, methods and materials, and even in those educational environments where there is a high degree of Imposed syllabus specification; the teacher’s active understanding of the multiple factors which affect the classroom should clearly be fostered. If the ‘typical’ ESP student is less of a captive audience than ‘traditional’ learner, then a more polymath teacher is also implied. The general point is well made by Strevens (1979): ‘Our profession become daily ... more complex, subtle, sophisticated. We as teacher must learn to adapt, chameleon like, to an ever greater array of variables, so that we can offer to our students not a single technique which may or may not be effective, but the best possible choice of teaching for the particular variables that operate in our own students’ individual circumstances.’ (p.11)

2. Selected case studies

It is time now to take a small but reasonably representative number of ESP teaching frameworks and enumerate some of the more significant ‘advance’ variables involved. Sometimes, of course, the information is given straight away, but on other occasions needs to be sought out: we are concerned with what is both explicit and implicit.

First of all, imagine yourself in this situation:

a) You have taught English for many years in the same university in Asia: you are a national of that country, and have the same mother-tongue as your students. You are required by the authorities to mount a new style course in ‘study skills’ for postgraduate students from a number of different disciplines.

Here is quick check-list of the advance information you would ideally like to have in order to plane the course more efficiently. It is not unlike a jigsaw puzzle: the more you know, the more clearly you are able to contextualize aims and objectives.

Check-list
Number of participants.
Number of weeks/months.
Number of hours per week.
Students’ culture and educational background(s).
Institution’s (or sponsor’s financial stipulations.
Student’s proficiency/ies in English.
Context of English course (for example whether prior or parallel to specialized study).
Institution’s resource (for example, people, equipment).
Age of learners.
Any given course requirements.
Any reasonable hypothesis based on past experience (for example, motivation likely).

In the interests of a standardized view point, bear this random check-list in mind as you envisage yourself in the following types of ESP employment. Ask yourself whether the check-list is potentially valid, and what is left out.

b) You are employed to teach EFL in the Language Center of a British university. You are approached by the Education Section of a foreign embassy in London and are requested to mount an English Language course for a small group of practicing scientists and technologist.

c) You teach in a private language school, and have been asked to take responsibility for a new course in ‘Business English’ being set up by the school.

d) You take up a new post as English Instructor in a Technological Institute, having previously worked in a traditional English department in the same country. You will be required to produce appropriate materials, and to liaise with similar institutes on a regular basis.

e) You have been appointed by the British Council to administer the setting up of a general ESP course in South East Asia that would be appropriate to a number of institutions of higher education. You will be based in one center, but will need to travel quite a lot.

f) A Japanese firm wants to send one of its top executives for intensive language tuition. You are Co-Director of Studies in a language school which has facilities for offering specialized courses for groups, as well as tuition on a one to one basis.

We have now covered enough to be able to make a basic observation before trying to categories some of the factors mentioned. The observation is simply this: if we go back to our check-list, and apply it to the rather disparate situations are effected by specific conditions only. Furthermore, it is arguable that most items are relevant across the whole spectrum.

3. Categories of Basic Data

The informal check-list proposed for some typical ESP teaching frameworks contains useful questions but was not really ordered in any principled way. We must now move one stage further, and attempt to group the information in some tidier and more useable forma. Later in this chapter we shall examine a second parameter pattern of responsibility-in relation to types of variable.

a. Data classification

A number of different procedure are possible for categorizing the initial information to be collected. The procedure chosen will depend on given priorities, the time available and the degree of familiarity with certain types of problems and teaching situations. For example, a simple but workable set of questions may give you all the information you need. However, there may be the time, interest and expertise on hand to devise a complex procedural ‘model’, a set of systematic and explicit rules to be worked through step by step, with some theoretical validity. The diversity of approaches is evident from the increasing number of reports in the literature of ESP, and some small flavour of this range is given later. However, to begin with, here is a convenient two-way division:

CONTEXT and LEARNER

The items on the check-list can be separated under these headings. With a number of others added for a more complete profile:

CONTEXT
LEARNER

‘Fixed’ (e.g. government) requirements
Time available hours per week, weeks/months
Institutional resources

For example space, technical, hardware, secretarial
The teacher availability, training, mother-tongue
Financial resources
Group size
‘Given’ course requirements
Setting native speaker, EFL/ESL overseas
Proficiency in English
Cultural background
Educational background
Age
Sex
Present post/status
Academic level
Mother-tongue
Needs
Aptitude
Motivation *
Attitudes

* This, of course, means making predictions rather than collecting ‘facts’. The feasibility of doing this will depend on the teacher’s experience with certain types of learners and prior knowledge of the teaching situation.

(Note As far as the learner is concerned, there are several useful lists of individual differences, for example Altman (1980), in the context of individualizing foreign language instruction; S.McDonough (1981), in a psychological context; and Wilkins (1972), in a directly pedagogical context.)

It must again be stressed that no claim is being made in this chapter that one set of ‘facts’ should be collected before another. Having said this, however, it is held here that there is a productive relation both between and within categories, and they are not to be seen as necessarily in the discussion of the analysis of needs in the next chapter

Two of the simple ESP situations examined under the headings suggested above could yield the following profiles.

Situation (a)

Context
‘Fixed’ requirements none except as detailed below.
Time available there hours per week over two semesters.
Institutional resources two classroom; cassette recorders; no language laboratories.
Teachers trained; non native speakers.
Financial resources limited.
Group size 500.
‘Given’ course requirements study skills.
Setting EFL (e.g.Asia).
Learner
Proficiency varied.
Cultural background homogeneous
Educational background academic.
Age 21-30
Sex both
Present position postgraduate students.
Aptitude varied.
Motivation initially low. Mainly because further language study has up until
Attitudes predominantly negative. now been felt to be irrelevant

Situation (b)

Context
‘Fixed’ requirements as detailed below.
Time available twenty-five hours per week for four weeks.
Institutional resources full range of radio and visual facilities.
Teachers trained; native speakers.
Financial resources fairly limited.
Group size ten to fourteen.
‘Given’ course requirements spoken English to have special emphasis.
Setting native speakers environment.

Learner
Proficiency varied.
Cultural background China.
Educational background university graduate.
Age 30-45
Sex male.
Present position engineers.
Aptitude probably varied.
Motivation probably high (because the opportunity for overseas study is very limited).
Attitudes largely unknown.

What we have, then, in terms of data required, are variations in emphasis, where the relative significance of factors might vary according to context. What we do not seem to have are totally different information and questions.

Here is an example of a more complex approach to the question of data collection. The approach in question is set out in An Analytic Approach to Language Program Design (Bechman and Strick, 1981)and show the issue of variable in ESP course design can be developed, given time and inclination. The purpose of the paper is to point up directions for research, and to construct a theoretical model, in the authors’ words, ‘by which the language program designer can directly related learning objectives to resource need in a way which will enable him to determine what objectives are reasonable, given certain resources, or what resources are required by a given objectiveset.’(p.46)

We are presented with a set of ‘operating’ procedures for mapping variable onto each other. For example, resources factors are grouped under the three main headings of Physical (P), Human (H), and Cost (C), and are then incorporated into an initial equation which defines the ‘Implement ability Function’: I=P+H+C. This is simply to say that a range of variables under these broad headings must be taken into account when deciding what kind of program can realistically be run. Each of the main factors is then further specified, for example ‘Physical factors’ include Space (S), Materials (M1), Method (M2), Equipment (E), Laboratory (L), and Time (T), and are hen yet again further divided into onto-factors. For instance, ‘Space’ includes classroom space and study space; ‘Equipment’ clearly implies audio-visual aids, furniture, office equipment and so on ‘Human factors are likewise broken down and refined, and consist, among factors, or teachers, learners, and administrators.

After factors have been identified, they are then weighted in relation to each other, using sets of questions. The following comment is made on weighting: ‘This process will necessarily be subjective, but should reflect the judgment of both designer and the client as they in collaborate in assessing and resource and weighting will also reflect a particular program perspective, whether in be that of the ‘ideal’ program, the desired program, or the minimum acceptable program. Whatever perspective is adopted, either explicitly, is should be followed in weighting every factor.’(Bachman and Strick, in Mackay and Palmer, 1981 p.52) So, for example, the Physical factors might appear as follows in a given situation.
P= 5S+8M1+10M2+1E+3L+8T
Which is an algebraic way of saying that Method is most important for the particular program in question, followed by Time and Materials, then Space then Laboratories, then Equipment, in that order.

The authors claim that the model can be used both to plan new programmers and to re-design existing ones with a great deal of precision, and they conclude with a case study based on the development of a course in ESL at a Middle-Eastern technological university.

There is no space here to go into the model in more detail. The important point is that is has the potential to be applied across a whole range of situations.

b. Patterns of responsibility

Before we try to summaries some of the trends discernible in ESP as far as initial factors are concerned, we must look at the issue of responsibility for decision-making, and reflect a little on how it relates to these to these factors. In a context as diverse and international as that of ESP, there can be no definite rules whereby one person or institution cab be said to be responsible for a fixed set of factors. Just as there are shifting patterns of emphasis in our list of variables when applied to concrete situations, so we are bound to find a parallel diversification in charting ‘who’ is answerable for ‘what’. However, it is possible to find a pattern.

If we glance back at the sample ESP situations earlier in this chapter and ask ourselves ‘Who takes the decisions?’, we come up with list like the following:

1. Learner
2. Course Designer/(often) Teacher
3. Sponsoring BodiesGovernment of Government Agency
4. Business Organization
5. Intermediary (between Institution and Sponsor)
6. Teaching Institution

The kinds of influence that the decision-makers are called upon to exert vary from one stage of course design to the next. The Strevens tabulation is the example, indicates teacher influence as operating first at the stage of syllabus and materials design. In the context of initial variable, insofar as they are not completely fixed, it is possible to show that every decision-maker potentially has some say, depending on the specific situation under consideration.

One example will suffice to illustrate this point. Situation (c) in the list of different type of ESP hypothesized a typical course required of a language school. The column on the left in the following diagram shows decision-makers, the column on the right some of the context-related variables, and the arrows indicate possible patterns of influence:

Learner
Financial resources
Designer/Teacher
Time availability
Sponsoring Body
Teacher training possibilities
Intermediary
Space availability
Institution
Resource availability

Auxiliary help

Even in contexts where the classroom teacher’s influence is only marginal at this stage, (s) he is much more likely to understand his/her own role fully if it is realized that such patterns are operating.

A similar cross-referencing between decision-makers and decision areas has been carried out by Jones and Mountford (1979). They make the following point, which quoting here, concerning ‘the complexity of the interaction between decision makers in decision areas. It asserts that each decision area is an arena in which all participants can bid for control. Bids can of course be negative: students can change programs through apathy or indiscipline, clients through ignoring requests for resources.’ (p.136)

4. Summary of Major trends

This should not be seen as an attempt to force great diversity into streamlined statements with neat labels: no one writer can have such a global overview. However, it is possible to distinguish certain configurations of variable in ESP programmes which for quite practical and contextual-indeed international-reasons, tend to occur more frequently than others.

It will be convenient to use the two broad groupings already adopted: Learners and Contexts. The third group, Patterns of Responsibility, has been dealt with sufficiently. The obvious but important observation to be made is that Learners and Contexts are independent, and certain types of learner are much more likely to be found in certain types of setting.

a. Learners

The question of ways in which learners ‘typically’ react to or process the contents of teaching programmers is one which can only be considered after we have discussed methodology and materials. We must remember that we are concerned here with selected advance variables, as listed on pages 2 & 3, not yet with ‘needs’.

The majority of learners who are studying English purely for its own sake but in order to use it for a special purpose are adults, from ‘young adult’ onwards, since it is only by that age that they have developed a specialize or job/preference.

As far as this job/preference is concerned, we can observe rather superficially that learners are likely to be either in some sense ‘in training’, or have completed their training to a professional level. The ‘in training’, or have completed their training to a professional level. The ‘in-training’ learners are found in both academic and job setting. The former may be undergraduate or postgraduate, with a distinct but by no means exclusive tendency to be studying in an area of science or technology or, to a somewhat lesser extent, in the social sciences. It is true to say that UK-based course for academics tend to deal rather less with undergraduates than do similar courses overseas. Learners overseas are frequently engaged in an aspect of technical training (for example, laboratory technicians, oil-ring personnel, industrial machine operators). Professional, or ‘post-training’, learners are very diverse in terms of the field in which they work, though typical groupings would include business/management personnel and medical practitioners of various kinds, as well as the kinds of technical job categories mentioned above. Thus, in term of the stages in course planning, we are intentionally at a relatively ‘surface’ level of observable data. Many published textbooks appear to equate ESP simply with a particular subject are and should be regarded with caution for this reason.

Cultural background is obviously related to the learner’s mother tongue and to his/her educational background, and is somewhat controversial, since it can all too readily lead to sweeping generalizations about educational expectations and patterns of learning. Nevertheless, as long as the observer proceeds with caution, it is clear that small-scale, sensitive studies can be carried out. The British Council publication Study modes and Academic Development of Overseas Students (1980), which contains papers given at a SELMOUS Conference in 1979, is a case in point. (SELMOUS is an organization of teachers of English to overseas students in higher education in Britain.)

It is difficult to discuss learners’ mother tongues out of context. Obviously, very large-scale statistical studies of learners’ native languages are an extremely difficult and speculative undertaking, particularly in an area as wide-ranging as ESP, and the value of such studies-were it indeed possible to carry them out-is therefore doubtful. We might reasonably suppose that a large number of learners will be drawn from so-called developing countries, where a rapid increasing in technological know-how is required. On a smaller scale, there have been a number of ‘counts’, usually context-bound, which can help throw useful and more realistic light on limited areas. (One such study is reported by Jordan (1977), where the number of post graduates following English courses in selected British universities was plotted.)

Learner proficiency is an advance variable, but also has considerable impact later on, at the stage of design and implementation. It has been isolated here primarily because; along with ‘ESP’ subject area’. It tends to take pride of place with textbook writers when they state the level at which their material is pitched. It is true to say that most instruction is designed for the ‘typical learner’, with some knowledge of his/her subject and a loosely ‘intermediate’ proficiency in English gained most often through a traditional syllabus in a fairly standard educational setting. Particularly with the advent of more ‘communicative’-style materials, the advanced learner became the focus of attention, on the assumption that structural fluency would readily lend itslf to re-orientation of teaching content. At the other end of the scale, practitioners are beginning to look more closely at the implications for pedagogy with ‘the beginner’ as the datum level. Beyond these levels, of course is, is the very common situation in ESP of the mixed proficiency group, for example in study skills courses in Britain. Quite often, in countries where some form of English language teaching is a requirement and teaching operations are on a large scale, placement according to level is a possibility. However, in situations with learners of mixed proficiency and varying specializes, solutions are less easily found. We shall take up the whole question again much later, when discussing how typical ESP groups can be ‘structured’ in the classroom itself.

The final factor for consideration here is motivation. Strictly, of course, it is not a simple advance variable at all, but is included here because practitioners tend to assume that ESP is likely to go hand in hand with certain patterns of motivation, and there is obviously a danger that some such assumptions may be unwarranted. Note that we are here dealing with the early stage of ‘motivation to engage in a programme per se’. Comments on different types of material and modes of study, for example, will need to be made at later stages in this paper.

Teachers could be forgiven for supposing that ‘ESP learners’, i.e. those who require some aspect of English language knowledge or proficiency to further their jobs or careers, are positively oriented to their language programme and clear about their own aims in engaging in it. For a great number of learners this state of affairs must be true, though Sinclair’s (1981) comment that this kind of motivation ‘is more of a general prompter than something which carries the student forward day by day’ (p. 148) serves as a cautionary reminder. A more accurate picture is a spectrum, ranging from very high operational motivation (which could be motivation to learn English as such, or to improve job prospects via English) to acceptance, but with rather less enthusiasm; through to strong resistance to learning English at all. It is difficult to categories whole groups of learners in this way, but we might observe that some tertiary level students, who have come to Britain to study their own specialism, actively resents studying overseas object to English as an examination requirement. The manager on a ‘crash course’, on the other hand, may view every new learning step as immediately useful to him in his aim of opening up new markets.

With all these ‘learner variables’, we can as yet only see the tip of the iceberg, and the intention of this chapter has been to do no more than that. We shall later be able to pick them up again at different stages in programme planning, and where relevant, show what effect they have.

b. Context

Here again, it is necessary to be selective. We could, of course, simply divide contexts into ‘wealthy’, ‘intermediate’ and ‘poor’, and list typical combinations of factors for each. However, a few separate variables will be taken in sequence. It will, anyway, be obvious to most readers where the relevant variables fit on the wealth to poverty scale!

c. Setting

Setting here refers to the institutional environments in which language learning is to take place, whether in an English-speaking environment or overseas where English is a second or foreign language. Such environments might be broken down as follows:

1. Specific language learning environment
Academic-based language centers
Language schools
Language training centers
2. Separate but ‘on site’
Some academic courses
Firm with language provision
3. Integral on-site learning

It should immediately be obvious that different types of learner enumerated under the heading of ‘Present post/status’ are likely to be found in certain types of setting. Academic training is largely self-evident. Language training for highly specific jobs might well be found in the actual work environment, with the trainee both language and trade ‘on site’.

d. Time

It is a little strange to find time treated both explicitly and implicitly as a common denominator in ESP programmes by a number of writer. Although it can hardly be given the status of a major defining feature, there is a grain of truth in the contention that it-or, more precisely, its relative scarcity-may have some significance.

The predominant view of ‘time’, as a major variable in ESP contexts is bound up with the nation of short, intensive course, where time is at a premium, and where programmes must optimally be tailored to fit into a limited number of months or weeks. We might think, for instance of the busy executive who hopes to attain a set of well-defined linguistic skills in a short space of time; or of the beginning postgraduate who can only spare the four to eight weeks of an intensive pre-sessional course before embarking on his chosen scheme of study; or of the newly-arrived non-native speaker factory worker whose firm is prepared to allow a short initial period of language training. The list is endless, and organization of the language item, job or study skills topic and settings, and all the paraphernalia of course design, will have to be adjusted to suit the time factor.

We must also glace at ‘time’ from a slightly perspective. It is often the case that learners have only limited time to spare, that they can spare it over a longer period, i.e. they are available to attend some kind of instruction over a period of a year, maybe even longer, but attendance is limited to, say, two four hours a week. In many countries, this is frequently the situation in universities and colleges, where there is sometimes a graded language requirement for most years of study. We are, incidentally, ignoring for present purpose the type of course which is both intensive and of relatively long duration, because although decisions as to course structure and methodology will have to be equally principled, time is not a major restrictive factor.

Institutional and financial resources
Let us take the separate but related questions of budgetary provision and institutional resources together. On the whole this is not the kind of information that is difficult to come by in advance, even if teachers are unable to have much influence. Most pactitioners, for example, have some familiarity at least by hearsay of the kind of ‘prestige’ programme (for example the British Council’s programme at the King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah or some in company language training) where a full range of resources is available: audio equipment, video recorders, closed circuit television and so on. At the other and of the scale it is not difficult to imagine cases where there are not enough resources to meet even modest demand. A rather harassing pedagogical situation occurred when some kind of group work was felt to be methodologically appropriate and teacher and learners were in the right place at the right time. However, the crucial role descriptions did not turn up because the photocopier broke down as a result of a power cut. The group’s makeshift arrangements came to nothing because the classroom was plunged into total darkness. This ridiculous (but true) incident is not trivial, because such variables have far-reaching pedagogical implications. Most teachers work somewhere in the middle of the scale, with adequate resources which work most of the time, and are unlikely to be called upon to operate at the extremes of their ingenuity.

Enough general points have been made about ‘contexts’. One other ‘resource’, the teacher, has chapter “The ESP teacher” to itself.

5. Relationship between variables

The intention of this chapter has simply been to engage, in an operation at the surface, to attempt to set up a taxonomy which might be useful for checking off the presence or absence of certain factors such questions as the weighting of variable and their possible ordering in a hierarchy of importance went into further detail.

However useful such an exercise is in practical terms, it could be objected that the taxonomy gives little more than a number of static reference points. This is a fair objection, particularly if teaching and learning are seen as an integrated and dynamic process. Such a point of view should give rise to two main types of inter-relation in course planning. On the one hand, it should operate on the ‘macro’ level of the whole programme. On the other hand, it should also operate on the ‘micro’ level of individual stages in course planning, and thus on the analysis of variables in this chapter. (The evaluation of teaching materials will be another example used). We have already stated or implied patterns of interaction between such variables as:

with time available

with institutional resources
Learners’ ages
with setting

with ‘given’ requirements

with numbers

with motivation

And so on. The permutations are infinite, and the balances are often delicate.

A curriculum specialist (Coombs, 1971), writing on education in relation to the notion of systems analysis, criticizes the view of education which deals with items like parts of a laundry list, and writes instead ‘An educational system, as a system, obviously differs greatly from the human body-or from a department store-in what it does, how it does it, and the reasons why. Yet in common with all other productive undertakings, it has a set of inputs, which are subject to a process, designed to attain certain outputs, which are organic whole. And if one is to assess the health of an educational system in order to improve its performance and to plan its future intelligently, the relationship between its critical components must be examined in a unified vision,’ (p.129)

Our initial variable will appear in different will appear in different contexts at different stages. The next chapter turns to the ‘ideal’ learner, and the analysis of his/her needs.


REFERENCES

Altman, H.B (1980) ‘ Foreign Language Teaching: focus on the learner’ In Altman and James (eds.) (q.v) pp. 1-16
Altman, H.B. and James, C.V. (eds.) (1980) Foreign Language Teaching: meeting individual needs Pergamon
Bachman, L.F. and Strick, G.J. (1981) ‘An analytic approach to language program design.’ In Mackay and Palmer (eds.) (q.v.) pp. 45-63
Coombs, P. (1971) ‘Systems analysis: a framework for diagnosis and strategy’ In Hooper, R. (ed.) The Curriculum: Context, Design and Development Oliver and Boyd, in association with the open University Press 1971
Jones, K. and Mountford, A. (1979) ‘Some dimensions in the design of service English programmes’ In Ziahosseiny and Mountford (eds.) (q.v.) pp. 132-175
Jordan, R.R. (1977) ‘Identification of Problem and needs: a student profile’ In Cowie and Heaton (eds.) (q.v.) pp.12-20
Jordan, R.R. (1980) Academic Writing Course Collins ELT.
Mackay, R. (1978b) ‘Practical curriculum development and evaluation in E.S.P./E.S.T.’ In English for Science and Technology Newletter. Oregon State University, November 1978
McDonough, S.H. (1981) Psychology in Foreign Language Teaching Allen and Unwin
McDonough, S.H. (1984) ESP in Perspective A Practical Guide (eds.) (q.v.) pp.14-28
Palmer, J.D. (1981) ‘Discourse Analysis’ In Mackay and Palmer (eds.) (q.v.) pp. 74-91
Sinclair’s, J.M. (1981) ‘Report of Working Party C: a comparison of the various methodologies and materials involved in the teaching of English as a Foreign Language, Modern Languages, and the mother tongue, and an examination of their relevance to each other’. In Davidson (eds.) (q.v.) pp. 142-158
Streves, P. (1979) ‘Differences in teaching for different circumstances, or the teacher as chameleon’ In Yorio, C.A., Perkins, K. and Schachter, J. On T.E.S.O.L.’79: The Learner in Focus Teacher of English to Speakers of other Language, Washington D.C. 1979, pp. 2-11
Study Modes and Academic Development of Overseas Students 1980
Wilkins, D.A. (1972) Linguistics in Language teaching Edward Arnold


Questions:

1. What are fundamental variables?
2. How many kinds of classifications of the key factors involved in fundamental variables?
Please mention!


Key Answers:

Fundamental Variables are:
¡ Set out the kind of basic information that should be available in the initial stages of course planning.
¡ This information relates both to the learner and to the context in which the teaching and learning take place.
¡ The relationship between these will be explored in more detail in analysis of learners’ needs, along with an examination of whether learner ‘need’ should (or can) take precedence over practical, situational ‘constraints’.

The classify the key factors involved of fundamental variables consist of 5 kind, there are:
1. The Boundaries of information collection
2. Selected case studies
3. Categories of Basic Data
4. Summary of Major trends
5. Relationship between variables