ELT-19

English for Academic Study

with Special Reference to
Science and Technology:
Problems and Perspectives

Milestones in ELT
Milestones in ELT
The British Council was established in 1934 and one of our main aims
has always been to promote a wider knowledge of the English language.
Over the years we have issued many important publications that have
set the agenda for ELT professionals, often in partnership with other
organisations and institutions.
As part of our 75th anniversary celebrations, we re-launched a selection
of these publications online, and more have now been added in connection
with our 80th anniversary. Many of the messages and ideas are just as
relevant today as they were when first published. We believe they are
also useful historical sources through which colleagues can see how
our profession has developed over the years.

English for Academic Study with Special Reference to Science and

Technology: Problems and Perspectives
This seminal 1975 publication offers contrasting viewpoints on the
then-emerging field of English for academic purposes, with a specific
focus on science and technology. Henry Widdowson, in the introductory
chapter, considers how to bring the communicative approach to English
for science and technology (EST) by offering a practical middle way
between pedagogic and linguistic perspectives. In an influential second
chapter, Keith Jones and Peter Roe advocate the development of ‘a
model of needs and means’ in EST, in order to make urgently needed
progress in the design of syllabuses, materials, examinations and teacher
training programmes. The third chapter, by JR Ewer, takes the ‘almost
total lack’ of trained EST teachers as its starting point, and examines
challenges for the would-be EST specialist. The premise of the final
chapter, by Candlin, Kirkwood and Moore, is that EST learners should
be taught the language forms they need to decode and communicate
complex levels of scientific meaning in their professional lives.
English for Academic Study
with special reference to Science and Technology

Problems and Perspectives

An ETIC Occasional Paper

The British Council

English Teaching Information CentreApril 1975
© 1975 English-Teaching Information Centre

Published by

The British Council

English-Teaching Information Centre
10 Spring Gardens London SW1A 2BN
Contents

1Preface1 — 2

2EST in Theory and PracticeH G Widdowson 1-13

3Designing English for Science and Technology (EST)

ProgrammesKeith Jones and Peter Roe 1 — 45

4Teaching English for Science and Technology: the specialised

training of teachers and programme organisersJ R Ewer 1 — 11

5 Developing Study Skills in English

Christopher N Candlin, J Michael Kirkwood and Helen M Moore 1 — 30
Preface

A major, if not the crucial, issue in education is the accessibility of knowledge.

This is what underlines curriculum planning, syllabus statement, teacher education

and the provision of resources. It is only recently that the role of language as

the medium for expounding and exploring the knowledge that is fed into educa'tion

systems has been given the attention it deserves. Language together with diagrams

and mathematics makes up the sign systems that display the content of subject

disciplines in texts and allow the student to explore that content. Clearly the

efficiency of any learning operation will depend on the mastery of both the sign

systems that are used and the content they convey and the degree to which they

are integrated in learning programmes. It is to this basic educational need against

the background of the information explosion on one hand and the expansion of

education systems on the other that this collection of papers addresses itself.

The papers are concerned with the role that English is being called upon to play

in the education of scientists and technologists at sixth-form and university levels

for overseas students both as their main study language and as an additional study

language.

The collection is thus a contribution to the growing field of English for Specific

Purposes Before comment on it is made, it may be as well to establish some

terminological distinctions. ETIC makes a distinction between English for Academic

Purposes (EAP) and English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) as the two main branches

of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). EAP is concerned with those communication

skills in English which are required for study purposes in formal education systems.

It is curriculum-oriented, and in areas such as Anglophone Africa where English is

the main study language it involves primary and secondary as well as tertiary levels,

The key area within EAP is perhaps English for Science and Technology (EST). EOP

is concerned with the precise demands that specific occupations (in commerce,

medicine, technology, etc) place upon communicative ability in English. It is

activity-oriented and more narrowly focussed than EAP, although its range may vary

from a technician consulting an instruction manual or a waiter in a tourist hotel

to a doctor in casualty or the conduct of a large business. The major overlap

between EAP and EOP lies in those educational areas (eg technical colleges) which

are highly vocational.

What we have not attempted to do in commissioning and contributing to this collec

tion is to attempt to state-of-the-art survey. The main aim of these papers is to

do some very necessary ground-clearing in terms both of the educational problems

involved and of the theoretical and organisational perspectives that seem useful,

promising and, in some cases, essential. Contributors were asked to provide

position papers rather than consensus statements. The hope was that a collection
of different perspectives would stimulate those actively engaged in the field and

provide a useful map of problems for those about to be involved. It will be some

time before ESP hardens into any kind of orthodoxy, and it seems as well to

recognise some of the differing interpretations that currently exist.

Henry Widdowson's paper 'EST in Theory and Practice' opens the collection of papers

with the argument that while research can overcomplicate the issues involved,

practice that is not informed by the need to look at language functionally can

oversimplify the problems. Widdowson together with an Edinburgh colleague, J P B

Allen, is currently editing and contributing to an important set of materials for

EST under the title English in Focus (OUP), and it is from the perspectives of

material preparation as well as theoretical exploration of the relation between

language and pedagogic science and technology that he presents this argument.

The joint paper by the editors of this collection, Jones and Roe, tries to place

the problems in designing EST programmes within a broad context of educational

development. Both educational policy and institutional practice are considered

and a crude procedural model involving an interpretation of needs, ends and means

is advanced. The basic thesis is that the problems are not linguistic but

curriculum problems and require not only an understanding of how knowledge is

mapped by rhetoric into grammar, an understanding that can only evolve from

operational research, but a concerted attack on the problem by curriculum as well

as applied linguistics practitioners. The paper, much of it frankly speculative,

argues for urgent long-term undertakings as well as immediate action.

Jack Ewer's paper is a plea for the urgent recognition of teacher education in EST

as the key priority in the short and medium term. Traditional teacher-training

procedures are seen as inadequate for the special tasks facing EST teachers. The

difficulties facing the EFL/ESL teacher who turns to the teaching of EST are use

fully detailed in five categories - attitudinal, conceptual, linguistic, method

ological and organisational - and Ewer's experience in Chile, an experience dating

back to the 1950's, is then drawn on to point the way ahead.

The joint paper by Candlin, Moore and Kirkwood, drawing on their experience in

designing courses in study skills for overseas postgraduates coming to Britain,

examines the historical and theoretical background they see as relevant to the

problems of developing study skills in English. The bulk of the paper as to do

with Study Skills Analysis and Course Design and samples of materials they have

devised. It ends with a critical examination of their current efforts that focusses

on such problems as integrating a remedial grammar component and developing a closer

relationship between linguistic skills and thinking.

The papers thus range, widely over theory, practice and operational needs and should

prove of interest to those involved in EST policy and practice at a variety of levels.

ETIC April 1975'

EST in Theory and Practice
H G Widdowson
Over the past few years two developments have been apparent in the methodology of

English teaching. One of these has been an increased concern with the problems of

learners in further and higher education who need to know the language to pursue

their specialist studies, in particular in the fields of science and technology.

The second has been the recognition, provoked by recent work in sociolinguistics

and philosophy, that the ability to use the language as a means of communication

does not follow as a necessary consequence of learning the language as a formal

system but has to be developed by teaching in some way. One development has

extended from ELT to ESP/EST and the other has extended from linguistic structures

to communicative activities. The developments are not, of course, unconnected.

When English is taught in the context of general primary and secondary education

there is no immediate means of checking on the assumption that communicative

abilities will naturally emerge from a knowledge of the language system when the

need arises. Aims are defined internally by reference to examination requirements.

When aims are defined externally by reference to specific purposes, however, as

they are in ESP/EST, an immediate return on teaching investment is expected in the

form of effective communicative ability. A concern with ESP/EST necessarily entails

a concern with communicative competence.

I do not think that it will be seriously disputed that there is a need to devise

teaching programmes which will develop the communicative ability to handle scientific

and technical discourse in English. The question at issue is how we might set about

doing it and in this paper I want to explore this question and try to make clear in

my own mind what problems are involved. The exploration will be tentative because I

am uncertain of the ground and there are no reliable maps to guide us. I shall be

feeling my way.

I will begin with a general observation and then explore its implications in detail.

It seems to me that there are currently two ways of thinking about EST. One of

them would appear to take the view that we already have the means of devising EST

programmes and that our problems are essentially operational ones within the scope

of pedagogy involving the appropriate application of what we already know. On the

other hand there is an opposing school of thought which takes the view that we have

very little to apply, that we know little or nothing about the nature of scientific

and technical communication, and that the design of effective teaching programmes

depends on the findings of research which has yet to be undertaken. In this view,

the problems are essentially theoretical and come within the compass of linguistics

broadly defined. My own feeling is that the first school of thought over-simplifies

the situation' and that the second over-complicates it. In this paper I should like

to try to give substance to this feeling and thereby to work my way towards a

- 1 -
formulation of what I see to be the principal problems in EST. In doing so I shall

be trying to reconcile the operational and theoretical views, to mediate between

pedagogy and linguistics theory in a broad sense. This paper is intended therefore,

as an exercise in applied linguistics.

I think that those who take the operational view believe that scientific and

technical English can be characterised and taught as a register or group of related

registers defined in terms of formal linguistic properties. To devise an EST pro

gramme, therefore, one would proceed in the following way: conduct a statistical

survey on a sample of English of the kind one wishes to teach and establish the

relative frequency of occurrence of the lexical and syntactic units in it, then

devise language teaching materials which will give relative weighting to these

linguistic elements in accordance with their importance as measured by frequency.

This, of course, is one of the basic procedures employed for selection in structural

syllabuses of the.conventional kind. In this/view, EST simply involves the application

of an already existing approach to a more restricted sample of language data. •

Presentation as well as preparation procedures are also conceived in conventional

terms and in a good deal of existing EST material we find structural exercises and

comprehension questions which only differ from those in general ELT material by

being associated with language data which is scientific and technical in referential

content.

I have expressed elsewhere my doubts about the efficacy of the structural approach

in general and about its appropriateness for the teaching of science and technology

in particular . Perhaps I might briefly summarise my position here. A register

analysis, as generally understood and practised, takes samples of actual discourse

and breaks them down into their constituent linguistic elements. What,counts as a

linguistic element for the purpose of the analysis will be determined by the model •

of description being used and the largely ad hoc decision as to which elements are

likely to be easiest to recognize and count and which are likely to yield a signifi

cant characterisation of the sample. A taxonomic model, for example, will reveal no

deep structure elements; inter-sentential relations involving cross-reference might

be significant but difficult to recognise and count; certain forms (on, by, to for

example) would be easy to recognise and count but carry little information in

isolation from the syntactic environments which indicate their functional significance.

But quite apart from these design faults there is the more radical question of the

nature of the information that emerges from this kind of formal analysis. What we

get is a quantitative statement about the frequency and the types of those linguistic

elements which are specified in the model of analysis. Since the analysis isolates;

these from context it cannot indicate how they function in relation to each other in

the discourse as a whole. It may reveal the relative frequency of tokens of certain

clause types, for example, but it cannot indicate any variability in their communica

tive value; it may reveal a high incidence of passive verb forms but it cannot in

dicate the different kinds of statement which these forms are used to make. In brief

- 2 -
 a register analysis-which atomises discourse cinto linguistic elements characterises

a sample of language quantitatively as a manifestation of -the language system. What

.it does not do -.is to show how the language system is realised qualitatively in: •'

particular instances as communicative 'activity. It accountssfor samples of language

as instances of linguistic usage but not as instances of-communicative use.

It is of course precisely the manifestation of the language system as usage which

the structural approach as commonly practised in general ELT is primarily designed

to teach. Thus the operational view which sees the problem of EST as having to do

with the application of the findings of register analyses in effect does not

recognise the connection between the two developments which I mentioned in the

^introductory paragraph. The transition from ELT to EST does not correspond with a

t^ansition -^rom linguistic forms to communicative functions: the assumption is

still that once the usage characteristic of scientific and technical English is

learned then students will automatically know how the language is put to use in

those communicative activities which characterise science and technology as fields

of enquiry. I do not believe that this is so and it is for this reason that I think

that the school of thought that holds such a view over-simplifies the situation. I

do riot believe that a knowledge of how English is used in scientific and technical

communication can arise as a natural consequence from the learning of the sentence

patterns and vocabulary which are manifested most frequently in samples of communica

tion of this kind. We need to set up conditions which will lead students to make

the transition from usage to use.

But if EST is to be concerned with the teaching of use where can we find descriptions

of use upon which teaching programmes can be based? The short answer is: nowhere.

At this point we come to the second school of thought. The view here might be

expressed as follows: EST must be centrally concerned with developing the ability

to process scientific and technical communication. This involves a recognition of

how the concepts and procedures of science and technology are expressed through com

municative acts which are related in an intricate way to form structured discourse

and how this complex structure of acts is realised through the particular medium of

English; In brief, the effective design of EST programmes is thought to depend on

descriptions of use based on a comprehensive model of discourse. Whereas the

operational view represents the task of teaching EST as straightforward and within,

the competence of the practising teacher, this view^represents it as enormously

complex: a matter for research in;an area of inter-disciplinary enquiry which,at

present is the scene of a: great deal of busy • activity in the formof tentative -, : ^

^exploration with;everybody staking claims but where- nothing is known with any :

certainty. A pioneer's-delight but a nightmare for anyone with a liking for law

and 'order, .••"• : •:•'..••;. ' '••::••;•••'••^• . ;• .'-•'• • ' ; • • •• ! • • ••. • •• . >:. > "••^•• .:: •••.^•.•,••<;•<: i

- 3 -
It might be edifying to consider briefly the kind of difficulties which have arisen

in this field of research. So long as the systematic (or in the dialects of most

linguists, scientific) study of language operates at a level of idealisation which

excludes variation and context, it is possible to specify the properties of a

language in terms of well-defined linguistic units. But once this idealisation is

relaxed to allow consideration of the fact that people use language to communicate

with each other in social settings, the ordered arrangement of this neat conceptual

universe begins to disintegrate. Philosophers in their speculative way talk about

speech acts and the linguists, naturally inclined to value speculation, feel com

pelled to take note of how sentences are used in the performance of such acts. In

consequence, certain basic distinctions lose their clarity. The classic dichotomies

upon which so much of modern linguistics depends: language/parole, competence/per

formance, sentence/utterance, semantics/pragmatics, are called into question. At

the same time, the linguistic order is being undermined from another quarter: those

scholars who adopt a sociological perspective on the study of language point to the

regularity of variation and its significance in accounting for social meaning., They

show how the systematic study of actual language data can reveal system, that by

widening the scope of linguistic enquiry one can establish regularity without having

to postulate homogeneity, that system can be dynamic and variable and does not have

to be static and well-defined.

It should not be supposed that the current uncertainty in linguistics betokens a

decline. Theoretical principles must, like everything else, be subject to change.

All systematic enquiry must be based on idealisation of one sort or another, and

idealisation of one sort provides the opportunity of developing insights which are

different from those which idealisation of another sort might allow. The fact that

linguistics is currently undergoing a reappraisal of its principles and a realignment

of its theoretical position whould not make us forget^the immensely important

advances which were made under the formalist, and more particularly, the transform-

.ational-generative regime. On the other hand it should make us aware of two points

which are of relevance to our discussion of EST.

The first relates to the operational school of thought which I spoke about earlier.

It is this: there is no model of linguistic description that has a patent on the

truth and so there is no model of linguistic description which should command

complete allegiance. The language teacher necessarily looks to the linguist for

guidance and it is obviously tempting to seek security in one view of language

rather than to range restlessly over several. But it seems to me that the second

alternative is the one that is to be preferred. The language teachershould be adept

at drawing insights from a wide spectrum of enquiry and to exploit them for his own

purposes in order to arrive at a synthesis based on pedagogic principles. Only if

_ 4 _
he has this flexibility will he be able to adjust to the kind of teaching needs

which EST, for:example, brings to light by taking new developments in linguistic

thinking into^account. As I have already suggested, the operational view is in

adequate because it adheres too closely to a particular model of description.

The second point that arises in connection with the current state of linguistics

relates to what I have called the theoretical view of EST. The problem here is

that those who espouse it are in a sense too much involved in recent developments.

Whereas the first view is not sufficiently informed by theory, the second is not

sufficiently informed by practice. Let us consider this view more closely. In

standard generative theory there is an assumption that the underlying cognitive

processes which inform language behaviour can be captured by a set of algebraic

rules: an equation is set up between linguistic description and.linguistic knowledge

and the term generative is used to refer both to the production of formal objects

in a grammar and the production of mental constructs which are represented as under

lying the utterance of pieces of language when the occasion;for, utterance arises.

This equation is now being questioned. Sociolin^uists in particular are saying that

a good deal of what a speaker knows about his language cannot be incorporated into

a generative grammar so that the linguistic description it presents cannot be

equated with linguistic knowledge. The question is, of course, what kind of

description can account for this knowledge?, Is there any way of saving the

equation? It is precisely this question which is exercising.linguists at the

moment and which lies behind their concern with illocutions, speech functions,

presuppositions, text grammars, discourse analysis and all the rest of it. It is

a crucial question for the development of linguistics but is it a crucial question

for the development of language teaching, and in particular for the development of

EST? The theoretical view believes that it is: that we cannot teach communicative

competence, the ability to handle English use in discourse, until we have a des-,

cription of it, that teachers cannot proceed to develop this knowledge in their

students until the linguists have described it for them. I myself believe that

this view is wrong and that it over-complicates the issue. Moreover, I think that

it shows just as mistaken a concept of the relationship between linguistics and

language teaching as does the operational view.

So far I have done a good deal of criticising, but I have now come, to the point

at which I must suggest an alternative way of looking;at these matters: one which

mediates between teaching and research and which brings developments in EST within

the scope of practical methodology. The theoretical view is basically that we ;

cannot effectively teach what we cannot explicitly describe and since we cannot

describe the way English is used in scientific and technical discourse, our attention

must be directed towards doing so as a preliminary to the design of EST programmes.

This leaves the language teacher with nothing to do but to stand and wait. But

- 5 -
 although we are:notiin a; position to describe discourse in a^systematic way, the

language user himself knows how to:Create;and understand discourse of different

kinds j. expressed^ in his own language. ;This-knowledge- has not been made explicit in'

exact descriptions of the kind the linguist would'find satisfactory but do we so

completely depend upon such a description for developing means of^guiding

students to an acquisition of this knowledge? I do not think so.

Let^us consider what a practical knowledge of EST might involve'. "I think that the

first'point that has to be made is that EST is at•one and the same time a variety

of English usage and the-particular^linguistic realisation of a mode of communicating

which is-neutral in-respect•to different languages. That is to say, EST does indeed

manifest the system of English in a certain way but the significance of this is that

it does so in the expression of concepts and procedures which characterise different

technologies and ^cientific disciplines, and which might be said to constitute their

basic communicative system. What I am suggesting^ then,": is that fields of enquiry in

the physical and 'applied' sciences, as these are generally understood, are defined by

their communicative systems/ which'exist as a kind of -cognitive deep structure in

dependently of individual realisations in different'languages. I think that this

communicative1deep structure frequently emerges on the surface as mathematical; ex

pressions, ^formulae, graphs, charters, "conventionalised diagrams and so on, which •

take the same form irrespective of the differences of the verbal context in which-

they occur. We can :define scientific discourse, then; as the verbal and non-verbal

realisation of the communicative system of science. Now this system has been •• <

'described-under the name of the philosophy of science, and any systematic description

of scientific discourse in-English must therefore take account of ^his philosophy,

which represents the basic principles of scientific enquiry. But does this mean that

the teacher must also "take account of it in his teaching of EST? .- iThis qiiestion

worries many English teachers: they feel that they cannot possibly•teach .EST because

they arenot scientists. It is a question, therefore, which we must consider carefully.

The philosophy or communicative system of a science defines that science as a dis

cipline. The science teacher's task is to develop teaching techniques and materials

which will guide his students to acquire a knowledge of this system. In other words,

the principles of the discipline are pedagogically processed to fashion a subject for

teaching.1 The teacher of EST is riot generally called upon to teach the English dis

course of science as a discipline but the English discourse of science as a subject as

this has been designed by the methodologists of science. It is not the English :.>.-..:•

teacher's task to design science teaching programmes. He might find it of interest to

investigate the philosophy of science as a discipline but what he needs to know

something about is ;the methodology of science as a subject. The reason for this isi.that

the closer the English teacher's methodology can be made to approximate to that of

- 6 -
science teaching, the more successful he will be in integrating the two* areas of

knowledge whose synthesis constitutes.-relevant English use. ; >I .shall return to this

point;presently.

Meanwhile, let us return to the question of what is involved in a practical knowledge

of EST. 'If'what has been said in the preceding paragraph is accepted it will be

evident that what students need to know is how English is used to realise the dis

course of that level of scientific instruction that they have arrived at. I have

already suggested that the communicative systems'.of different scientific disciplines

are independent of any particular linguistic realisation. Can we also say that the

methodology associated with different scientific subjects is similarly universal?

I think that perhaps we can. I think that it is likely that scientific textbooks

written in different languages express essentially the same methodology. Moreover,

as with the communicative system'of the discipline, I think that this methodology

is reflected in certain non-verbal devices of exposition which are common to all

textbooks., Now if this is so, then students will have already acquired some knowledge

of the communicative systems of science which appear, pedagogically processed, in

scientific subjects. How much they know will depend on the stage they have reached

in their studies, but they will know something'. This knowledge may hitherto have

been acquired only through their own language. The English teacher!s> task is not^

to develop this knowledge but to demonstrate how it is realised through the, medium of

a different language. How can ,this best be done.,: •••,•>

The operational view would presumably be that we teach the vocabulary and structures

which are manifested most commonly in English scientific discourse in general. The

theoretical view would be that we must first describe and then teach how the com

municative systems of the" disciplines in question are realised uniquely in English.

Underlying both points of view are two assumptions, both of which seem to me to be

mistaken. First, it is assumed that the learner has little or no previous knowledge

of how language is used in scientific communication. EST is represented as in some

sense a separate learning task. The second assumption is that what is to be learned

has to be explicitly taught, that knowledge is a kind of model that1 has to be con

structed in the learner's mind rather than a dynamic process which develops of itself.

Here EST is represented as in some sense a complete and well-defined learning task.

I think that both of these assumptions are wrong and misrepresent the kind of

knowledge which students of EST must acquire... :

Let us consider the case of a student who enters higher education to study a

scientific or technical subject, and who has to read textbooks in English. In his

secondary schooling he has, we will assume, acquired knowledge of two kinds." In

the first place, he will have some knowledge of English usage, conveyed to him by ;

means of a structural' syllabus of the familiar kind. Secondly,' he wiil^have learned

some science and in consequence he will have some knowledge of how his own language

- 7 -
is put to communicative use in scientific discourse of an instructional sort. This

learning of science will, of course, have drawn upon the student's more general

awareness of how his own language functions as communication. The situation is,

then, that,the student has some knowledge of English usage and some knowledge of

how his own language is put to use in scientific discourse. The task for the teacher

of EST is to relate these two kinds of knowledge, to convert usage into use by

reference to the student's already existing communicative competence in his own

language. EST is best considered not as a separate operation but as a development

from, or an alternative realisation of, what has already been learned of existing

knowledge. Its first objective is to change the student's concept of English from

that which represents it as a separate set of facts about words and sentence patterns

and grammatical rules to that which represents it as a means of communication similar

in nature to his own language. It is not easy to persuade a language learner to

see a foreign language in this light in the context of general education since so

many of the situations which are set up to give meaning to. the language are obviously

contrived for that sole purpose. In the context of EST, however, it is not dif

ficult to convince the student of the communicative reality of the language. What

the EST programme has to do is to show him how to cope with it.

2
I have discussed elsewhere one way in which this might be done. It involves making

use of those non-verbal devices which are, as I have already suggested, the

universally conventionalised expression of the underlying communicative systems of

science. Now since these non-verbal modes of communicating represent- some of the

basic concepts and procedures of different scientific subjects, they can serve as

a point of reference for verbal realisations in the student's own language and in

English, What I am suggesting is a translation procedure but as a three-cornered

operation. Translation, as it is commonly conceived, converts one structure into

another which is thought to have the same meaning by virtue of the semantic equivalence

of its linguistic elements. The use of non-verbal devices enables us to relate three

ways of expressing the same basic concepts and procedures. In this way, the

student can be shown in general how English is used in the same way as his own

language and in particular how it is used in the performance of specific acts of

communication relating to the communicative system of science. Thus a knowledge of

EST can derive from what the student knows of science and the functioning of his

own language in association wih what he has learned of English usage. This three-

way translation procedure can be controlled for difficulty, as it must be of course

if it is to function effectively as a teaching device. ^

Exercises of this three-way translation type can prepare the way for exerc^ses in

which the support of the student's own language is withdrawn and the relationship to

be established is directly between non-verbal representations and English use. In

exercises of this information transfer type, we have two instances of English use

- 8 -
related to the same type of non-verbal device. In the case of three-way translation,

we have the following situations: ••

A '' ':

non-verbal device

LI useEnglish use
B ..C

When the non-verbal device is given with the instance of English use, (C—^ A)the

provision of the translation is essentially a comprehension task. When the non

verbal device is given with the instance of LI use (B—^ A)then the provision of the

translation is essentially a composition task. We might show this as follows:

comprehension:
CAB
English use :^ non-verbal device ^ (?)

composition
BAC
LI use ^ non-verbal device ^ (?)

In the case of information transfer exercises, there are two instances of use again

but both are in English, and we present two instances of non-verbal device of the

same type. For example, we might give a brief description of an experiment, a

mechanical device, a piece of equipment and so on. This would be the first instance

of use. We might then require the student to label a given diagram, or draw a

diagram of his own which represented the facts of the description. This would be

the first instance of a non-verbal device. The transfer here is essentially a

comprehension task. Next we present a second diagram which represents the same

kind of information (realises the same,type of concept or procedure) as the diagram

that the student has already completed and we now require him to derive a,description

from it which will be correspondingly similar to the original description, which,

of course, acts as a model for this second instance of use. The transfer from the

second instance of verbal device to the second instance of use is essentially a

composition task. We might represent the process of information transfer as follows:

Comprehension ^
AB
1st instance of use1st instance of
(eg description)non-verbal device
(eg diagram)

C ——————————————————D
2nd instance of2nd instance
non-verbal deviceof use

Composition^

-9 -
The dotted lines in this scheme show where control can-be applied. Itcan be .-.,-.

applied between A and B by varying the degree of difficulty of the task the student

has to undertake: he may be given a partially labelled diagram, or an unlabelled

diagram, or an incomplete diagram, or no diagram at all. Control can also be applied

between C and D in a similar way: the student might be given key words or phrases, or

be asked to assemble an assortment of sentences into a well-formed discourse, or be

given no help at all, except of course the possibility of referring to the first

instance of use as a model. The control between B and C has to do with the degree

of similarity that holds between the instances of non-verbal device, and this will

in turn determine the extent to which the first instance of use can be used as a

model for the second.

I should like to make two points about the procedures that have been outlined and

partially illustrated here. The first of them has to do with the comment I made

earlier about the desirability of the English teacher knowing something about the

methodolgy of science teaching. It is obviously central to the purpose of these

exercises in mediated translation and information transfer that the language

presented and produced should be instances of use and not instances of usage. The^

students must feel that they are involved in meaningful communicative activity and

not just doing a language exercise. This means that the problems' they have to solve

should as far as possible make appeal to the kind of cognitive processes which it

is the purpose of science teaching ^to develop. What this involves in general:is an

exploitation of science teaching methodology., The suggestions I have made give only
3
a hint of how this might be done , but I believe that the teacher of EST would be

best advised to seek:methodological guidance ^ot from the linguist or the philosopher

of science but from the science teacher. His best source of reference is likely to

be (at least in our present state of theoretical and descriptive uncertainty) textbooks

of science and the experience of his science teaching colleagues. In short, it seems

to me that if EST is to be concerned with the teaching of use, then it must be

conducted not as a separate operation but as an extension from science education.

My second point relates to the second assumption that I referred to earlier, and

here I move on to very uncertain ground with only my intuition to guide me. The

exercises I have suggested do not direct the students' attention to features of

language in any explicit way: they provide an opportunity for students to induce

meanings by reference to their own knowledge. The focus is on the communicative

function of use and not on the linguistic forms of usage. The underlying assumption

is that usage will come into focus, that is to say, will conform to norms of correct

ness, as a consequence of practice in appropriate use. This, of course, is the

reverse of the commonly held view that correctness should be of primary concern. But

- 10 -
I would like to take a more radical departure from established opinion. The

exercises concentrate on use but they do not do so in any very1 exact way^ the : ,

student is largely left to work things out for himself within the controlled

specification of the problem. Now there is a good deal of talk these days in

language teaching circles of the importance of teaching communicative competence

and.there is a gener.il assumption that this competence can and should be described

with the same degree of precision as linguistic competence is described in grammars

as a preliminary to really effective teaching. It is this assumption that informs

what I have called the theoretical approach to EST. Thus both the operational and

the theoretical views suppose that precise description is a prerequisite for

effective learning, that what is taught and learnt has to be specified in advance

as a set of structures or lexical items or communicative acts which are, as it

were, stored in the mind for use when required; that once these have been transferred

to the store the learning task is done and the rest is a matter of applying this

existing knowledge as the occasion arises. This view seems to me to be intuitively

wrong. It does not seem to me to explain the way in which language users create

discourse ex tempore, how they make sense of language use even when it does not

conform to norms of correct usage. It does not seem to me to explain how language

develops in the individual and changes in society. What we need, I think, to

account for these phenomens is a model of use which deals not in precise rules but

in more general strategies and which represents the communicative process not as a

matter of correlating what one perceives with already acquired schemes of knowledge
4'
but as an 'ongoing accomplishment' (the term is Garfinkel's ) whereby one realises

as much meaning from instances of use as seems necessary for one's purposes.

What I am suggesting is that descriptions of use in terms of precise rules may give

an inaccurate picture of how people use language, that accuracy cannot be achieved

by exactness because exactness is not a feature of normal communication. This does

not mean, of course, that it is not a valid research aim to devise means of des

cribing use, but I believe that these means will not satisfactorily be found in the

postulation of precise rules which will generate discourse structures in the same

sort of way as sentences are generated by a grammar. Most linguists think of discourse

analysis as an operation on existing data to discover patterns of form or function

which can be reduced to rule. I would suggest that we are likely to arrive at a

more convincing account of discourse by looking not at the finished object, a piece

of existing text, but at the process which creates and interprets it by a combination

of knowledge, imagination, reason, common sense and other attributes of the human

mind. I cannot help feeling, outrageous though the feeling might seem to be, that'

literary critics have come closer than linguists to an understanding of the com

municative function of language and the ways in which discourse is made . Their

approach to language acknowledges at least that meanings in discourse are to be

- 11 -
worked out by active interpretation and are not a simple function of correlation,

that this interpreting ability depends on more than just, a knowledge of pre-formulated

rules. ,..'•••, .: • .-.;•..:' ; • .. • . . . -: .- • : . .

The concept of precision has, of course, been carried over from linguistics to

language teaching. The teaching of the structural syllabus is generally carried

out in a systematic step-by-step fashion with the intention that each linguistic

unit should be thoroughly learned before proceeding with the next, and there is

a generous provision for repetition to ensure that it is. No allowance is made in

the actual teaching, however, for the relative communicative value of these units

as they occur in discourse, so that when it comes to reading comprehension, learners

attempt to be too precise, to focus their attention myopically on the meaning of

individual linguistic units. The practised reader, however, ranges selectively

over discourse and draws from it just such meaning as will satisfy his expectations

before he begins to read and the predictions which are set up as he reads. He

develops a changing cognitive map, as it were, and takes note of what is of

relevance to it and lets pass what is not, using his knowledge of the communicative

system of different universes of discourse as a general prompt but not as a script.

Many native speakers would fail miserably on comprehension tests of the conventional

kind (unless they were given advance warning) because such tests require a close

scrutiny of detail which the reader would not normally submit to what he reads, and

which would, indeed, interfere with his normal reading process. Comprehension tests

are often designed in such a way as to prevent rather than to develop an effective

reading ability. They focus too much on detail; they are too precise.

These very tentative observations lead me to conclude that the description of

discourse and the interpretative strategies of language users, (whether they are

applying these strategies in production or reception) should not be distinct. The

task for theory and description is to devise a model of interpretation which will

capture its dynamic and extempore character and show how the static knowledge of

rules is converted into communicative activity. I have no idea what a model of this

kind would look like, but among current explorations into language use I suspect it

would bear a closer resemblance to the work of ethnomethodologists and literary

critics than to that of the linguists.

Meanwhile, the language teacher does not have to wait for such a model to be devised.

He can treat the kind of speculations I have presented here as initial hypotheses

and develop teaching materials to test them for pedagogic potential. With regard

to EST in particular he can devise exercises of the kind I have suggested which

draw on the student's ability to interpret his own language as use and encourage

him to apply the same process to English.

As time goes by, academic research will no doubt yield more insights about language

use in discourse in general and about English use in particular. But the devotees

- 12 -
of disciplines do not have a monopoly on research: it can also be done by

practising teachers drawing their inspiration from ideas already in circulation.

The development of EST depends on a reconciliation between the operational and

theoretical views as I have descri^ed them, on a recognition that theory and

practice in language teaching are aspects of the same single if complex activity.

H G Widdowson
Department of Linguistics
University of Edinburgh

n, for example:

'The teaching of English through Science' in Dakin, J. Tiffen, B, and

Widdowson, H G: Language in Education, OUP 1968.

'The teaching of rhetoric to students of Science and Technology1 in

Perren, G (ed): Science and Technology in a second language (CILT Reports and

Papers 7 1971).

'The teaching of English as communication' in English Language Teaching

"2H_ 1 (1972).

For more illustration of the approach which is described in this paper, see:

'An approach to the teaching of scientific English discourse' in RELC Journal

Vol 5^ 1 (1974).

The series English in Focus published by OUP explores a number of ways in

which Science teaching methodology can be exploited in EST.

Garfinkel was the prime mover in the development of ethnomethodology, an

approach to the description of discourse which stresses the importance of

the creative activity of the participant. The most accessible demonstration

of the ethnomethodologist's approach is to be found in: Turner, R (ed) :

Ethnomethodology (Penguin Books 1974).

I think that the approaches to discourse description of ethnomethodologists

and literary critics have a good deal in common. Both stress the elusiveness

of exact meanings, the creative aspect of interpretation, the importance of

involvement.

- 13 -
Designing-English for Science and Technology (EST) Programmes
in academic settings for overseas students: problems and perspectives

Keith Jones d- Pete^- Roe

PLAN OF PAPERPAGE REFERENCE

0.Overview1

0.1 Purpose of Paper1

0.2 Perspective of Paper1

0.3 Argume^t of Paper1-3

0.4 Summary3

1.The Problem of Understanding NEEDS4

1.1Domains of Action or Curriculum Settings4-7

1.2Agency Roles7

1.3Learning Needs in S & T7-9

1.4A Systems Perspective9

1.5A Crude Model of Objective Academic Knowledge10

2.The Problem of Deciding on ENDS11

2.1The Macdonald-Ross Perspective11

2.2Implications for EST12-13

2.3The Need for a Usable Linguistics13-14

2.4An Information Processing Model of the Encoding

and Decoding of Academic Knowledge in Texts14-15 •

3.The Problem of Designing and Implementing MEANS16

3.1A Crude Procedural Model for Design and

Implementation16

3.2The Problem of Specifying Enabling Objectives16-20

3.3An ES,TX Reading Programme Design: Assumptions20-22

3.4An EST Reading Programme Design: Strategies and

Tactics22-26

4.Conclusions

4.1The value of models

4.2The need for a richer theory of learning & language

Appendices

- la -
DESIGNING ENGLISH FOR'SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY (EST) PROGRAMMES ^ IN ACADEMIC
SETTINGS FOR OVERSEAS;STUDENTS: PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

OVERVIEW

PURPOSE To provide a position paper that attempts'

1.to raise problems to do with the needs that EST programmes

are designed to serve

2.to raise problems to do with the ends (the needs that are

selected as goals to be arrived at by an EST programme) and the

means that might be practised in order to satisfy the ends of a

programme

3.to look at these problems as crucial variables and to offer

crude models for handling them

4.to suggest what conceptual and organisational perspectives

are necessary to develop better models for programme design and

evaluation

PERSPECTIVE The perspective adopted in this paper owes much to Popper1 but

can perhaps be best summarised by the following quotation from

W T Bane's Operational Research, Models and Government (1968,

HMSO)2

"For any real-life situation there is no end to the complexity

that can be built into its model. To some degree or other

everything interacts with everything else, but the art of

building a model is to include only those variables or

dependencies which have a significant effect on the variables

of interest. If this is not done the work of model-building

expands into ever-increasing complexity and a steadily re

treating completion date. A model is necessarily a simplifica

tion for a set of purposes,,. It is used for experiment other

than experimenting on the real system, and the objective is to

apply the results in reality."

ARGUMENT Programmes are trial solutions

3 whose margins of error will vary

. according to

- 1 -
1.the delicacy;with which the domain (or problem-situation) in

which they are to operate is modelled: this is the problem of

understanding and representing NEEDS

2.the scope of the response in terms of what needs are selected

as goals for the programme to aim at: this is the policy problem of

deciding on ENDS

3.the nature of the conceptual and organisational resources

available for designing a strategy: this is the practice problem

of deciding on an experimental set of MEANS

4.the degree to which flexibility is built into the execution

of the programme so that the interpretation of needs, the selection

of ends, and the experimental means can all be adjusted by feedback:

this is the problem of error elimination and redesign, the problem

of OPERATIONAL RESEARCH.

The purpose of operational research is to prevent the multiplication

of errors. To prevent the multiplication of errors, designs must

be based on explicit models. These allow public debate, as well as

programme experiment, to suggest sources of errors. It is on

representations of reality that most experiments should be carried

out. It is this that justifies model building. Educational aid

needs its wind-tunnel experiments. Crashing prototypes is an ex

pensive business and doesn't give the clientmuch confidence.

Satisfactory models, though do not exist owing to the compartmental-

isation of academic research and the low priority accorded in the

past to theoretical discussion at a models' level by ELT practitioners.

It is the problems that are important rather than academic pre

occupations with the boundaries of a discipline. Accordingly, a

new synthesis of perspectives is needed to clarify needs, ends and

means.

The central conceptual perspective needed is a theory oi rhetoric

that mediates between objective academic knowledge and the sign

systems of language, diagram and mathematics. The central concern of

EST is the ACCESSIBILITY of KNOWLEDGE. We thus need a rhetoric that

reveals how knowledge is mapped into the print and sound systems of

English.

- 2 -
 The central organisational perspective is that EST needs to be put

on a proper operational research basis. This involves the location

of appropriate expertise and the provision of adequate funds for

1.conducting think-tank seminars and workshops on models for

representing needs, ends, means and the operations of which they

are components

2.disseminating the output of 1

3.organising formal conferences to deal with specific problems

(relating to specific field projects and involving practitioners

and clients) from a variety of theoretical and practical perspec

tives.

It is only in this context that our modelled understanding of the

complexities of conducting language learning services for overseas

students, whether in their country of origin, Britain or a third

country, begins to have predictive value. And it is only then

that programmed trial solutions to EST problems can be offered with

the confidence of a tried technology. Given the growth in demand

for EST programmes, of which the petrodollar countries' massive

interest in paid education services in this area is only the latest

manifestation, the need for such a technology by English-using

countries is urgent.

SUMMARY In short, the paper is concerned with the variables of the acronym

MNEMO: models of needs, ends, means and operations. As no agreed

models exist in many cases, the paper, especially from 2.4 onwards,

is speculative and offered purely as a basis for discussion.

- 3 -
1. THE. PROBLEM OF UNDERSTANDING NEEDS^

It is the purpose of this paper to-raise problems with regard to EST at

sixth form or university level and to do so within the context of a concern for

the need for operational research. To quote Bane:. "operational research, by its

very nature, is concerned with the solution of practical problems. Such problems

are complex in that they arise from the interaction of many factors: they are

practical in that they require an answer which if not pressing cannot be put on

one side indefinitely and the solution left ,to work itself out." For those

concerned with EST the first grouping of sets of factors or variables has to

do with the domain of action, the: particular bi- or multi-lingual society that

needs to use English for academic education.

1.1 Domains of action or curriculum settings

The scope of this paper, precludes, all but the most cursory inspection

of this key variable. At its simplest this consists of three variables

pursuing the question, of the.accessibility of knowledge. This is a function

x'

THE ROLE OF THE KNOWLEDGE

ENGLISH REQUIRED

ORGANIZATIONAL
INTENTION
y^ Interaction

DIAGRAM 1

of educational policy and practice: the policy level presupposes, very often,

that variables x, y, z are known and under professional control. But though

English may be assigned a role as main or additional study language and

defined by reference to other study languages, if any, and the subject or

subject-combinations that students study may have a well-structured set of

cognitive and behavioural goals, and the organisational intention of the

institution may allow space and resources for the intersection of these

variables, English for Science and Technology, English as a service subject,

that intersection is often not fruitful. Language and subject content have

rarely married to produce offspring^that carry the concerns of both. EST

is still more a hope than a fact. It is not properly established because

we have no agreed model, never mind any agreed set of procedures. This does

- 4 -
not mean that useful work is not being done, on the contrary, but that

useful work is far from a set of optimal procedures and will remain so

until the variables that have to be accommodated in any action plan have

been located and agreed on. The demand for services is thus in danger of

out-stripping the understanding of the problem and, therefore, the action

needed to reduce the problem to manageable levels.:

The first diagnosis to agree on is a categorisation of curriculum

settings in terms of what role English plays. A crude sketch of such a

categorisation is shown below in a system network:

~ SEM English as a main

S.L. begins in the

- EM school system
English as a main
study language
L- UEM EM begins at
CURRICULUM university level
SETTING
- EA English as an "~ EEA Main study language
additional _ is European
study language
_ EOA Other main study
DIAGRAM 2 language

Presumably, it is possible to quantify this model of settings applying such

measures as amount of curriculum time so that the distinction between main

and additional study language can be precisely related on a continuum of

ratios between English use and other language use. This, in retrospect,

seems a worthwhile minor research undertaking.4 But, given the ability to

apply this distinction precisely, there still looms the range of bi- or

multi-lingual combinations that various societies employ. Thus an SEM

setting as in Nigeria might imply a multilingual setting in which Arabic,

Hausa, Kanuri and French might also feature in the semiotic universe of

the learner, to name but one of many possible linguistic worlds.' What is

needed is thus an agreed model that combines simplicity and power so that

any particular country can be assigned a setting characterisation that

relates it to other settings so that successful programmes in one setting

or failures in another can have meaning for the;whole enterprise.

The second diagnosis to agree on is a model for handling the major

variables in the y box in Diagram One - the knowledge required. This implies

the need for a.theory of academic knowledge. The perspective adopted in this

paper is that of Popper's theory of objective knowledge. Popper talks of

epistemology without a knowing.subject : his arguments begin with the

following thesis: . . .. • .:.:..-••• ' •. • . •

- 5 -
 "Traditional epistemology has studied knowledge or thought in a

subjective sense - in the sense of the ordinary usage of the words

'I know' or 'I am thinking' ....(but)SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE (his

emphasis) simply is not knowledge in the sense of the words 'I know'.

While knowledge in the sense of 'I know' belongs to what I call the

'second world1, the world of SUBJECTS, scientific knowledge belongs

to the third world, to the world of objective theories, objective

problems and objective arguments,

and continue with:

"Knowledge in this objective sense is totally independent of anybody's

claim to know; it is also independent of anybody's belief, or dis

position to assent; or to assert, or to act. Knowledge in the

objective sense is KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT A KNOWER: it is KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT

A KNOWING SUBJECT.
Without going all the way with Popper, one can adopt his assertion that

knowledge exists in an objective form and that these objective forms include

texts. Given this, one can begin to model the y box in Diagram One:

OBJECTIVE (Tasks(Texts))
KNOWLEDGE
THE KNOWLEDGE
REQUIRED

SUBJECTIVE (Tasks(Teacher Texts))

KNOWLEDGE

= operations performed
DIAGRAM 3 on knowledge networks

The point of this crude model is that it indicates that learning tasks in

any given S ^ T subject area have to operate on-, in an organised academic

setting, two major sources of knowledge display: the written texts selected

from commercial publishers' lists by those in control of course planning

whether ministries, universities or sixth form teachers and the spoken

'texts' produced by tutors in formal settings whose input and feedback they

largely control. We are thus led to.modify Popper's assertion: objective

knowledge in the form of texts exists in the sense of a set of marketed

options but which set of options is chosen depends on the individuals in

'power' in a particular cultural setting. One may, or may not, assert that

the values of science and technology should be universal: but particular

societies with particular planning conceptions may choose differently from

the ostensibly universal network of knowledge display. How these particular

choices are rendered objective is usually through a syllabus statement and

- 6 -
it is to these, but with the perspectives that Diagram Three is intended to

reveal, that the EST programme planner has obviously to turn.

The third diagnosis to agree on is the concept of organisational

intention isolated in Diagram One in box z. This, again, is a teeming

complex of variables: take as a problem situation the following:

a UEM setting (University using English as its main study language)

may be staffed by a mix of local and agency staff in both its Science

and Technology and its English Language departments and there must be

a variety of cultural as well as individual interpretations as to

how to relate the learning goals of subjects with the language needed

to explore and express them. Given that, for example, the practice

was total compartmentalisation with the Language Department concen

trating on drilling conversational English and the S & T Departments

requiring fast, efficient and conceptually complex reading skills in

English, how would an EST innovator best proceed? How should he

understand needs? Would the existing syllabus statement be of much

help? Should he accept the Beebee Model7 and fit into the existing

stage of educational thinking on this issue?

The questions can obviously multiply and one is tempted to declaim that it

may not only be necessary to understand a syllabus statement of needs but

also to change them and so open the Pandora's Box of curriculum development

variables.

1.2Agency roles

The role of agencies in supplying English speaking aid personnel is

obviously a major variable in S & T education, English education, and whatever

interaction there is between them. Their current view of what EST involves

has clearly an impact potential that varies according to their alloted sphere

of influence, their training and their current preoccupations. Exploring

this issue however cannot be attempted in this paper but it needs stressing

that it is only from a position of professional involvement that one can

really come to grips with the problem of needs.

1.3Learning needs in S & T

Although the particular curriculum setting and the particular job

description of an EST practitioner exercise powerful constraints on the

design of any EST programme, it is possible to model certain universal

— 7 —
learning needs (that English will need to serve) if one adopts a curriculum

perspective on the types of academic knowledge available in any idealised

Q
educational community. Hirst talks of seven forms of knowledge -

philosophy, history, religion, mathematics, physical sciences, human sciences,

literature, fine arts - that each possess

1.3.1distinctive central concepts

1.3.2particular modes of justifying what is true

1.3.3particular techniques and skills for exploring experience

(algorithms and heuristics)

In addition to these forms of knowledge, Hirst sees combinations of forms

resulting in FIELDS of knowledge such as medicine, engineering, geography

and education. Clearly^ understanding learning needs involves some familiar

isation with these concepts, justifications and exploratory techniques into

which the student is being initiated either primarily or secondarily through

English.'

9
A related curriculum perspective is that of Musgrave , who, following

Kuhn's analysis of the knowledge stores of the physical sciences, arrives

at the conclusion that all academic forms and fields of study can be seen as

social SYSTEMS:

"a discipline is a social system with its own norms and values,

its own styles of thought, its own gatekeepers who watch over the

purity of the discipline"

What gives a discipline its unity (though not uniformity - there will be

differing visions of the unity by different sets, often schools, of

practitioners) is its regulation of properties 1.3.1, 1.3.2 and 1.3.3 by

the editors of learned journals, prestigious practitioners, heads of

university departments, and other gatekeepers. These gatekeepers, of course,

are open to social pressure both through public opinion and the provision of

finance and this may involve ideological constraints as well as research

priorities. But knowledge is a notoriously difficult enterprise to control

and all knowledge systems while remaining systems are likely to remain open

systems, though how open is another point.

Perhaps systems thinking provides the best perspective for the crude

kind of theory of knowledge the EST practitioner requires if he is to have

some conceptual framework in which to understand the learning goals of

academic disciplines. Science can be said to study systems by building

i - 8 -
models to account for the data relationships that those systems seem to

exhibit under certain conditions of study and the central place of systems

thinking in technology can hardly be gainsaid.

12 Appendix Two reproduces
13
two well-known classifications of systems to indicate the power and range

of their perspective on knowledge and justify the reliance on it in this

paper.

1.4 A systems perspective

Given this systems perspective we can characterise learning goals in

S & T education in terms of models and data. Something like the following

ascending hierarchy of curriculum values from subject study to discipline

initiation and contribution would seem to be operative:

1.4.1the ability to process data relationships within a given

framework or model without any sophisticated knowledge of the nature

of models.

1.4.2the ability to assess rival frameworks ormodels.

1.4.3the ability to use models to sort furtherdata.

1.4.4the ability to redesign models to accountfor awkward data.

1.4.5the ability to design original models forresearch purposes.

But this is useful only at the most-macro level of specification. What the

EST practitioner needs is a specification that makes contact with text.

14
Four features are characteristic of systems. They have structure,

a distinctive set of properties, perform operations and undergo changes of

state or transformations. These can be shown diagrammatically as:

STRUCTURE

OPERATIONS SYSTEM ^ TRANSFORMATIONS

PROPERTIES

Key

= order

DIAGRAM 4: System Features = growth/change

- 9 -
It is to the study of these features that S & T address themselves. They

tend to do so with the following conceptual procedures:

ANALYSIS

DESCRIPTION SYNTHESIS EXPLANATION

ATTRIBUTION

Key
= order

DIAGRAM 5: Conceptual Procedures —^ = growth

Thus, applying the Popper perspective of objective knowledge, it can

be argued that S & T have built up by consensus effort a series of data

banks on mechanical, physical, biological and social systems. We can thus

as in Diagram 6, set out a crude theory of objective academic knowledge as

a general framework or model for interpreting the particular learning goals

of particular S & T subjects and disciplines. (See Appendix 1 for diagram 6).

1.5 A crude model of objective academic knowledge

The model shown below in Diagram 6 is taken up later in the paper,

expanded and some of its categories exemplified with regard to an actual

text. At this stage of the paper it is only intended to have suggestive

value. Recent work in EST in Iran at Tabriz uses similar modelling of needs

as a basis for its programme design. (A brief discussion of this work can

be found in ELT Documents 74/4).

- 10 -
2. THE PROBLEM OF DECIDING ON ENDS

EST is an educational enterprise and must be viewed from a general educational

perspective and not as a narrowly applied linguistics problem. Perhaps the most

useful context in which to place it is the problem of the defineability of ends

and means. These have been most usefully explored in a lengthy paper by
15
Macdonald-Ross on behavioural objectives.

2.1 THE MACDONALD-ROSS PERSPECTIVE

Any rational planning and design procedure has to come to terms with

the fact that most human problems do not have nice and tidy ends and means.

They tend to be ill-defined and so any ends/means approach to problem-

solving imports its own set of problems into the planning. Were ends and

means to be well-defined the problem would become one of merely pressing

the right procedure button. A useful model of this problem is offered by

16
Macdonald-Ross, based upon an idea by Lewis, that shows how an ill-defined

problem can be converted into soluble form via either of two routes, as

shown in Diagram 7 (modified and recast from 16).

Route A

X
Ill-Defined
i
Well-Defined

Ends Means

Weil-Defined Ill-Defined

Route B

DIAGRAM 7

The Ends/Means Approach to Problem Solving

- 11 -
To quote Macdonald-Ross: 17 "Route A, the conceptual route, clarifies ends

before means are selected. This puts emphasis upon definition of objectives

and:on a prescriptive^ feedforward mode of planning. Many recent kinds of

rational decision making procedures use this route: for example, systems

analysis....management by objectives, etc.... But despite the publicity

given to these new methods most problems get solved by Route B, the expedient

route, which uses the information about means to restrict the goals that are

aimed for. Route B is closer to the form of traditional evolution, for it

stresses feedback, successive adjustment, cycling procedures of design. It

is the standard mode for the political animal and has been called piecemeal

social engineering (Popper 1945, 1957)

18 ...often temporal constraints force

planners along this route in practice even though they may express preference

for Route A in theory."

Clearly, given a team approach to programme planning, an optimum

design
i procedure would involve both. Macdonald-Ross
Mac<
19 characterises open

university programme planning procedures;

"A though in THEORY objectives come first and everything else after

wards, in PRACTICE all parts of the system can be mutually adjusted until

a satisfactory "Fit" is found. This means that the design!procedure is

really cyclical, with various activities carried on in parallel, and many

feedback loops in action. Not only does the finished product get tested

and revised, but it is widely conceded that even the objectives themselves

should be subject to revision in the light of experience. It can on

occasion be dangerous to fix objectives too early."

2.2 IMPLICATIONS FOR EST

Given that

1.the AIM of an EST programme (the direction in which resources

are to be deployed to solve a specific set of communication problems)

should be informed by an attempt to use both the conceptual and expedi

ent routes characterised above, and

2.the GOALS of an EST programme (the particular communicative

tasks that have to be achieved in English by the S &. .T student) should

be realistically derived from both S & T learning ends and language

learning means for achieving them

- 12 -
the policy an EST programme formulates, the aims and goals, requires as

conditions for formulation, as a prior input, a modelling of needs and a

modelling of means. Given at least some crude modelling of needs and means

then EST policy can begin to appraise the four key variables in EST planning:

syllabus design and evaluation; materials design and. evaluation; examination

design and evaluation; and a teacher education programme that is process

oriented and concerns itself with an inventive heuristics as well as recom

mended algorithms. Without such a modelling the scope and delicacy of

response are likely to be-narrowed and blunted. Operational research in

this area is crucial but bound to be crude as it involves in essence a

model of academic knowledge, a model of how meanings crucial to the:

attainment of academic knowledge are organised in texts, and mapping pro

cedures for relating knowledge to signs and signs to knowledge. Thus what
. __
we need is the perspective of a usable linguistics that offers a theory
21 •
of language that is also a theory of mind.

2.3 THE NEED FOR A USABLE LINGUISTICS

22
Schank and Wilks in The Goals of Linguistic Theory Revisited point

the way towards such a usable linguistics. Much of the current work in

the transformational generative paradigm is useless to an EST practitioner.

Writing structural diagrams for sentences clearly has its fascination but

EST is concerned with meaning and text and meaning doesn't grow on trees
23

and isn't confined to sentences. Schank & Wilks,. who operate within the

artificial intelligence paradigm not as primarily machine designers but as

explorers of the currently most powerful analogy for modelling mind and
24
language use, claim that• <

"Linguistic theory should be concerned with both analysis and

generation. Any really adequate theory should provide a base component

that is capable of not only analysing and generating but also con

necting with a memory that could output to the generative procedure

and operate on the output of the analytic one'1..

2526
Recent work by Winograd^ and by Schank and others suggest that systemic

theory and certain derivations from case grammar respectively are the most

useful ports of call for the explorer of performance models. But their

work while helpful and heartening lacks a well-worked out discourse dimen

sion and given .that the EST student reader operating on expository texts

is primarily concerned with the way,a,writer's rhetorical strategy maps

information from conceptual addresses into syntactic settings over the

- 13 -
course of paragraphs and chapters it .is clear that we need a" still richer

model, a discourse based linguistics rather than one based on "illustrative

sentence fragments."
27 A crude attempt at this was made in an earlier
28
paper that attempted to apply the model for spoken discourse evolved by

Sinclair, Coulthard, et al29 to the study of written texts within an EST

setting. The crucial problem that emerged in this paper was the need for

a model that would enable one to judge how communicative purpose was dis

charged by rhetorical strategy in the service of a rhetorical plan (what's

the writer trying to do and how is he going about it?) so that the student's

inference from the semiotic data to the communicative intent as well as

content could be placed on a sound pedagogic footing in an EST programme.

In the section that follows a perspective on this problem is attempted.

This attempt is more a map of problem variables that need locating and

inter-relating than a claim to have done so. It is ideally what EST needs

a usable linguistics to do.

2.4 AN INFORMATION PROCESSING MODEL FOR THE ENCODING AND DECODING OF

ACADEMIC TEXTS

Diagram 8 attempts to map the variables of pedagogic interest whose

interplay accounts for the efficient reception and production of text in

a formal education EST context. The map of mind variables owes much to

Sparkes and seems to parallel work in computer constructed education such

31
as Evans and both the derivation of text and mind variables was influenced

by a paper on an axiomatics approach to structuring content by Stelzer &,

32
Kingsley. It is worth in this context quoting the abstract from Evans'

The Structure of Instructional Knowledge: an operational model

"This paper presents a two-fold operational partition of structures

involved in characterising instructional knowledge. The first

structure contains semantic information relating to the areas of

information stored. This information is stored in a net together

with certain minimal operators defined on the net. A metric is

imposed on the relatedness or degree of associativeness of terms.

The idea of relatedness is used to resolve ambiguity, direct proper

retrieval of content, and permit congnitive updating. In combination

with this net is a net of material, taking the form of modules of

information. Structure modules store the pointers to the other

substructures or to content modules while content modules store

'hard' information about the subgoal associated with the name of

the content module, as well'as link such material to possibly other

structure modules..."

- 14 -
The point about this model is that it offers a representation of the inter

play between key variables in any EST communication setting that involves

texts. This is claimed for spoken as well as written texts, (although the

model was conceived initially as an attempt to extract and structure key

features of the reading process), their production and reception. (With

adaption of the Exposition variable along ethno-methodological lines to

account for the dialectic of conversation it might also be useful in con

sidering seminar conversation but it is most oriented to lecture compre

hension and reading required texts). It is thus a model of conceptual,

rhetorical and semiotic needs. A policy for EST programming would thus

involve an assessment of these need-variables, a ranking of them in orders

of cruciality and student attainment and the choice of which needs shoul

become the goals that the programme aims at. It is thus time to consider

the problem of designing and implementing means.

- 15 -
3. :THE PROBLEM OF DESIGNING AND IMPLEMENTING MEANS

At this stage it might be useful to consolidate and draw some of the per

spectives together in an attempt at a procedural model. It is taken as axio

matic that such a model should involve programme policy as well as programme

practice and that the former is a mapping from a set of needs, the domain of

study, to a set of ends, the domain of intention while the latter, programme

practice, is a mapping from the set of ends to a set of means, from a-domain

of intention to a domain of action. Diagram 9 is an attempt to capture the major

variables involved in any EST procedure. It needs emphasising tnat the entire

procedure is seen, here, from a Popper perspective: needs are seen as a set of

problems; ends as a choice, from that set, of problems to tackle; means as a

trial-solution with a built-in system for detecting and acting upon errors in

the trial-solution design and for revaluating the interpretation of needs that

led to the choice of ends, of goals. Needs, after all, are only someone's

diagnosis of what the critical soluble problems are in a complex changing situ

ation.

3.1A PROCEDURAL MODEL FOR DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

The model in Diagram 9 is crude because it is idealised in various

respects. It presupposes not only such intangibles as goodwill and flexi

bility in what is likely to be a situation where the mix of inertia and

change in the education system may impose constraints but also the existence

of conceptual instruments - models for understanding conceptual and

linguistic variables that will guide the creation of assessment and teaching

instruments. It is thus more an attempt to prescribe the ideal than des

cribe the real and the value of such a map of the uncertain is largely to

raise problems that can either be explored or shown to be already solved.

Let us then derive a problem from the model and indicate some of its facets:

a central problem is the problem of specifying enabling objectives for an

EST programme in the major study skill, reading. Diagram 8 offers certain

insights into this problem and will be drawn upon.

3.2THE PROBLEM OF SPECIFYING ENABLING OBJECTIVES

Objectives are sets of conditions that have to be fulfilled before a

goal can be achieved. If the goal is to read required S & T texts of a

particular length at a particular reading speed either to store as examinable

knowledge or to interpret for action then the student needs to be at a certain

- 16 -
state of performance ability that can be characterized by giving values

to:the X variables of K G where, K is knowledge,- G is grammar and

R the rhetorical mapping. Diagram 8 attempts to locate and gloss what

the constituent variables, the components of that performance state would

be. From this can be derived a set of assumptions about the conditions

for reading success.

1.Textual substance is a set of variables that includes not only

the separate elements of spelling conventions, mathematical formulae

and diagram display conventions but also their complicated interplay

in e.g. engineering texts. Perceptual efficiency with regard to

this interplay cannot be ignored: certain non-Western European students

appear to find certain diagrammic conventions difficult to process,

34
for example. Perceptual efficiency is thus a condition for reading

success that needs testing to see if training is required.

2.Semiotic encoding is a very complex set of variables. The meanings

a diagram encodes (as opposed to the difficulty of perceiving a two

dimensional representation as a three dimensional structure) are holistic

and the value of trees for structure analysis and of directed graphs
35,
for showing dynamic relations play crucial communicative roles in

scientific and technological texts. Fast and efficient understanding

of 'iconic' realisations is clearly a condition for reading success.

(In addition it is a teaching resource for understanding expository

prose) The same is clearly true for mathematical formalisations: the

use of set notation and mapping procedures as teaching resources for

students of some mathematical sophistication have to be considered as

well as the conditions necessary for comprehending the interplay of

formulae and the prose descriptions of the variables they contain.

Finally, the way that print has linearised what is not a temporal

succession of narrative events whose 'and then' ... 'and then' structure

is not all that badly served by being played out in successive lines

of print but a highly complex set of dependencies that have to be

fractured by the very nature of prose (which is why diagrams and

mathematical expressions are so essential in S & T) into discrete

sentences. The ability to construct conceptual wholes from syntactic

fragments is such an important condition of reading success that the

understanding of syntactic settings has to be tested for and trained if

found defective. It should always be borne in mind, however, that diagrams

and maths sharply increase the redundancy ratio in a text and therefore

decrease the degree to which conceptual inference has to rely on

^ . . ,.-• 37 . .., ., . ,. . ......... . . ,
syntactic cues.' '••:•••••'••••.- ' :

- 17 -
 3. But it is at the rhetorical strategy level that the crucial

linguistic load is "located. An artificial intelligence perspective

is useful here. To quote Lindsay

38 inMiis description of SAD >""

"the major characteristic of comprehension was taken to be the

ability to draw inferences from the inputs supplied...The system

did not focus on "the meaning of a sentence" as the key to

comprehension. The problem was that of growing and modifying an

information structure represented in consumer memory, and of

extracting information from this structure. The structure was

called a map, which together with annexing and retrieval processes

comprised a model of the domain of discourse."

This is clearly a perspective we have to adopt in attempting to explain

how meanings are organised in texts. It is the rhetorical coherence, as

Widdowson notes,
39 together with textual cohesion that are the keys to

comprehension. Grammatical form is a serial realisation of these. The

choices are in the rhetoric: the grammar is a reflex of these. Rhetoric

maps information items from conceptual addresses - theories and evidence -

through conceptual procedures into serial syntactic settings. It does so

hierarchically through choices from an exposition system and as it does so

it controls the flow of information through importing presuppositions,

glossing and defining new terms and recycling both given and new inform

ation through repetition, anaphora, paraphrase and ellipsis - a set of

means for achieving or suggesting equivalence. 40

The scope of this paper is such that there is a little room for

exemplification and justification of the categories employed in this part

of the paper but Diagram 10 attempts a suggestive overview of the realization

of information in~texts through the twin rhetorical strategies of information

management and exposition based on the principles that

1.the creation and decoding of a text involve the growth and

modification of an information structure that is best seen in network

terms

2.the accordingly dynamic nature of text decoding implies that the

instruments for analysis must capture this dynamism

3.therefore conceptual addresses need to be seen as networks of

information capable of growth and modification through transformations

4.therefore lexical addresses in the sense of items of meaning

potential must also be capable of growth and modification with

metaphor playing an analogous role to transformations

- 18 -
 5.therefore the conceptual procedures that guide rhetorical exposition

must also be capable of growth and modification with explanation playing

an analogous role to transformation of content and metaphorical extension

of the range of signs

6.therefore the combinatorial power of syntax must likewise be capable

of growth and modification above the propositional rank and here taxis

(parataxis, hypotaxis and adjunction) fulfills this role

7.the user of knowledge and sign systems (the expositor with varying

command over the knowledge, the semiotics and the rhetoric that maps one

into the other) must also be allowed for in the model so that his more or

less conscious commentary on content, his assumptions about what items

can be assumed and which need glossing and defining, his particular

rhetorical plan and the way he structures it into stages, moves and acts

of communicative intent, and his 'playing' with the set of options that

convential syntax allows can all be accounted for and, in an educational

context, judged.

An attempt to apply these principles and categories is given very tentatively in

Diagram 11 using the text shown on page 23 (but excluding the rightmost

sentences.

We can conclude this cursory inspection of the problem of specifying

enabling objectives with the observation that the degree of delicacy with

which they can be specified depends on the delicacy of our modelling of the

organization of meanings in text and of the decoding strategies of the mind. 41

There is a cause for concern at the present state of the art in this respect
42
and what Kress and Hodges argue in relation to literary studies can be applied

entirely to the studies of scientific and technological texts: we need a usable

linguistics that is also a theory of the mind. Widdowson's43 strictures on the

use of an outmoded structuralism are assumed here as being self-evident truths.

To specify as enabling objectives structural items based on frequency

of tokens as in the Chile tradition

44 in EST is seen as a very usable and

necessary procedure particularly in EEA settings (where English is an additional

study language in a West European main study language setting and where English

rhetorical strategy is reasonably accessible)

45 but it is not seen as a

sufficient procedure. Frequency counts emerge from text crushing procedures and

what gets crushed in the counting, as Widdowson argues

46 is the communicative

function that items play, the dynamic throughput of a text, the functional

meaning of discourse. An earlier paper

47 argues in more detail the crucial role

that discourse analysis is required to play in the specification of enabling

objectives and space does not allow the recapturing of the argument here: but

the need for operational research in this area is clearly urgent. The

- 19 -
conceptual resources available for designing EST programmes are currently

insufficient.

But given this lament what can we currently do? The sections that follow

attempt a design for an EST reading programme for sixth formers and undergrad

uates aimed particularly at SEM and UEM settings such as obtain in Africa and

S.E. Asia.

3.3 AN EST READING PROGRAMME DESIGN: ASSUMPTIONS

The design that follows is grounded in the following negative assumptions

derived from the information processing model suggested in Diagram 8:

1.A given corpus of knowledge may not be as systematic as the model

implies: the discipline's data-bank may be in disarray (cf linguistics

and sociology) because the theory banks of rival schools of practitioners

may not sufficiently overlap for much common ground to exist and what is

regarded as data may be in dispute as well as notions and principles.

2.The text writer (or lecturer within whose structuring of study

reading is likely to take place) may not be skilful at converting theory

and evidence into text. His rhetoric may be at fault in either or both

of information management and exposition.

3.Even if the text writer is skilled, language, by no means the best

sign system for S & T reasoning, may be an inadequate vehicle for the data

concerned and insufficient or unskillful use of diagrammatic representation

may compound the problem.

4.Thus reading difficulty may reside, to a varying degree, in the

•.48
fuzziness of the text rather than in the reader

5.The student's perceptual efficiency may be insufficient for handling

one or more or the interplay of diagrams, maths and prose in a text.

6.The student's conceptual processor may not have achieved the threshold

level that a particular reading input demands through a deficiency in one

or both or the interplay of pattern recognition and problem solving.

7.The input may be too rich in new information to be held in the short

term memory and matched up to the student's existing knowledge store.

8.The student's formally learnt cognitive strategies may not be easily

- 20 -
retrievable, may have been stored as verbal constructs rather than a

set of operations, may have been stored in mistaken order or with

mistaken associations or may be lower-level strategies than the ones

a text assumes.

9.The degree of motivation a student brings to a task may be insuff

icient.

10.The student may process the data in a text without realizing its

intent,^^ or appreciating its applicability.

11.The student's conceptual processor may have to operate with input

that is linguistically opaque owing to rhetorical or grammatical defic

iencies . He may fail to recognize syntactic settings for the predicate,

argument, modality or propositional option systems^O which can be viewed

as grammatical sources of difficulty or he may fail to synthesize the way

in which the systems of taxis (systems with much great combinatorial

power because of lesser conventional restraints than in the domain of the

proposition) are used for regulating the rhetorical strategy of expos

ition in stages (First we shall discuss .... e.g.) moves (X but Y where

X and Y are propositions e.g.) and acts (X, Y) . (By taxis we are

referring to the systems of adjunction, 52 coordination and subordination.)

There is thus an important distinction to be made between grammar, whose

mastery may depend more on pattern recognition procedures that are common

to mankind and not a function of that intelligence IQ tests claim to

measure, and rhetoric, whose mastery may depend more on pattern synthesis

procedures which is what IQ tests presumably measure and which are

learnable skills heavily dependent on academic education. More formally

the distinction can be formulated as follows (to focus on rhetoric in the

exposition sense):' , •

1. Grammar is the domain of the propositional bracketing of modality,

predicates and arguments: or P(M(P(A))) to use bracketing conventions

to propose a logical structure that may underly the conflated struc

tures of surface-syntax.5^

2- Rhetoric is the domain of taxis where propositions are themselves

subjected to bracketing. Bracketing is perhaps not the clearest way

of representing fundamental relationships in this domain as dependency

rules have yet to be worked out for rhetoric perhaps because of the

latitude that writers allow themselves and because texts are often

explorations by the author rather than planned presentations. (Clearly

however, prescriptive dependency rules for authors of S & T texts

- 21 -
 would be highly valuable and handbooks on report writing etc might

well be a useful source of insights.) It is all too easy for

rhetorical strategy to generate an assymetrical ordering that

meanders and does not connect back to its point of origin suffic

iently, precisely because rhetoric lacks the templates of grammar

to the extent that writers often fail to deploy taxis signals to

overtly mark the course of their exposition.

It also needs noting that while sentence structure, as linguists anal-

ysing "illustrative fragments"

54 frequently show, can be viewed as a

static structure
55, rhetoric, unlike grammar perhaps, very definitely

needs viewing in terms of dynamics. Each proposition that is employed

in rhetoric alters the meaning of what previous propositional interplay

has created as well as creating expectancies about future propositional

deployment. As Sinclair has argued, discourse processing is a pros

pective and retrospective business. And this is clearly true for both

writer and reader as well as speaker and listener.

It is with such potential sources of reading failure in mind that a programme

has to be designed. Other more detailed inferences about potential sources of

reading failure can be derived from Diagram 8 but are beyond the scope of this

paper.

3.4 AN EST READING PROGRAMME DESIGN: STRATEGY AND TACTICS

A strategy has to spiral if feedback on reality (how an individual

student is actually progressing) is to correct and realign the planned learning

57
path through a set of learning resources. Tactics have to be analogues of the

learning procedures that EST is attempting to shape and assist. An EST design,

therefore, has to be a spiralling succession of tactics that allows different

individual rates and routes. Diagram 12 attempts to exemplify such a strategy

CO
in a reading comprehension module. This module is conceived as represent

ative of the first stage of a three-stage set of materials for comprehension

practice that would need to be supplemented by a sourcebook of explanations

and exercises to do with rhetorical strategy and semiatic encoding. Space

precludes much commentary on the module but it is intended to be reasonably

self-standing. Three points need clarifying:

1. it is axiomatic in this module design not to present the student

with the very source of his problems (i.e. particular reading passages

from required texts) without careful preparation. For this reason the

first three twists of the learning spiral begin with specific learning

aids that attempt to equip the student with the means to tackle texts.

- 22 -
 The conceptual diagram is an attempt to present the wood before the

trees: a diagram is a clozure in that it presents a finite set of

categories in a relationship map and is thus a more powerful and compact

device than prose and has the additional virtues of being a useful

mnenomic (and the role given to memory in SEM and UEM settings is a

crucially important one) and a useful device for note taking, or rather

formalizing the notes one has taken. Practice in conceptual diagram

production would be a feature of the sourcebook exercises.

2. Following on from 1 (and as has been argued in various points of the

paper) the nature of prose as a difficult means, even for native speakers

with considerable academic training, for capturing S & T reasoning pro

cesses (whether subdued as in an instructural text on, say, anatomy or

overt as in a discussion text that evokes theoretical principles) has to

be tackled. Conceptual diagrams are a conversion technique that diminish

in value as they grow more complex and they need complementing by such

format techniques (that display dependency and information management) as

61
the one below:

THE STRUCTURE OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM

The NS is the organ that controls the whole body.

It (NS) has two parts: the central NS and the peripheral NS.
The PNS is made up of nerves, some of which (Nr) you can easily feel in
your own Bd.
There is one (Nr) behind your elbow which you can roll against the
bone: this is the one you knock when you hit your funny bone.
The brain and spinal cord make up the CNS.
Their (Br & SC) importance is shown by the fact that they (Br & SC)
are the most protected part of the Bd, being enclosed inside the
bones of the skull and the vertebral column.

The Nr running to the CNS are called afferent Nr and those running from
it are called efferent Nr
The AN keep the CNS in touch with the world around the Bd and with
the Bd itself.• . .,
The EN enable the animal to respond to the Wd: they (EN) run to the
muscles and enable the An to move.
The CNS receives the messages from the Nr coded i^pulses, rather
like the morse Cd: and it (CNS) sends Ms out to the Mu in the same Cd.

The NS consists of Cells, like every other tissue of the Bd.

Here (NS), the main Cl is the NC or neuron; and like all other Cl, it is
made up of carbohydrate, protein, salts and fluid.
In the middle of every live Cl is the nucleus, within which (Nc) are
the chromosomes and gene^.
The Cl, itself, its Nc, and various other structures within the Cl are
surrounded by membranes.
The Nr consists of three parts, the CB, the dendrites and the axon.

- 23 -
The value claimed for this format-display learning aid< are mainly that

indentation indicates dependency relationships (the sentences could in

fact be decimalized but the numbering might well distract) and

acronymics not only capture the flow of information through a text but

can supplement grammatical anaphora through following each anaphoric

signal by a bracketted acronym of the item it- is deputizing for. This

form of format display might also be a useful practice tactic for students

and would thus feature as an exercise and explanation resource in the

kind of sourcebook that a reading comprehension course requires. Students

puzzling out how to indent a paragraph and following the playing out of

informative items in a text in order to substitute acronyms should gain

substantial insight (given the right length and conceptual accessibility

of the paragraph or part of paragraphs) into the art (or misapplication

of its principles perhaps!) of rhetoric. It might also be useful at first

to highlight the leftmost sentences by underlining.

3. A crucial importance is attached to cloze procedures but it is a

widely experimented-upon procedure that has already generated its first

62
annotated bibliography and it seems time for considerable experimentation

with it as both an assessment procedure and a learning device, the perfect

example of a tactic with its own inbuilt assessment procedure. The value

of the mechanical cloze test is that 4 species of items will vie for

inclusion:

1general knowledge<items: e.g. body or world in the text shown

in 2

2technical knowledge items: e.g. afferent and efferent in 2

3.rhetorical signals: e.g. t_, here, like (and second-mention/

acronym items) in 2 (i.e. interpropositional)

4.grammatical signals: e.g. J^, the, to (i.e. within propositions)

mistakes can thus be categorized (and appropriately acted upon) as

1general knowledge items: either GK deficiency or translation

problem

2technical knowledge items: S & T information problem (a trans

lation problem, perhaps,in an EA setting but unlikely to be in an

EM)

- 24 -
 3rhetorical signals: EST problem

4grammatical signals: EST problem

This is thus a useful sampling device for matching student to text

level in a programme, and for assessing technical conceptual complexity

as opposed to linguistic complexity in texts. It is, at once, a

readability measure helpful in the selection of texts for a programme,

a teaching device for bringing contextual information to bear on the

resolution of difficulties in comprehension and an assessment tactic that

can be built into modules and regulate the learning path of the individ

ual student. The chances of proper selection of texts for a programme

would be further enhanced if the device of clozentropy were to be used.

This would mean a population of readers assumed to be competent, perhaps

lecturers in the subject concerned or sixth form teachers, would attempt

the mechanical cloze procedure for a set of pre-selected passages so that

their failures could be computed for particular items on the basis of

which there would be a quantified basis for the progression of texts in

the leading programme.

But this last point reveals the selection problem as, however massive the

clozentropy procedure, requiring some principles for initial selection.

These can be

1purely pragmatic. S..& T departments could be asked to identify and

conceptually grade them. Given collaboration, this seems the best recomm

endation though if the programme is to serve a variety of disciplines

certain problems of collating advice would be required.

2through applying the schedule shown in Diagram 13 in Appendix Two.

- 25 -
and memorization of detail rather than to the promotion of divergent and con

4. CONCLUSIONS

1. The value of models:

Models, like poems, are clozures on experience. Neither can match reality,

only approximate it. Both are perhaps best judged more on what insight they

offer than on the exactness of the detail with which they are furnished, though,

clearly, the richer the detail that insight can carry, the better. But just as

most poems are unread, most models are unused. It would be counter-productive

to suggest or insist that teachers involved in day-to-day problems should see

their individual students as 'information processing systems'. The neatness

with which models order everyday reality is a neatness at one remove from every

day contact and the range of that remove varies in inverse proportion with the

degree to which special terminology is employed by the model-makers. It is

especially ironical that the-study of communication - how intention and inter

pretation can and do converge - bristles with what is so often impenetrable

jargon to the front-line communicators - the teachers. This though is only

partly a blame assignable to theorists: much of the problem can be attributable

to the inertia of education systems that allow pride of place to the provision

vergent, creative and critical ways of thinking, feeling and doing (Gradgrind is

alive and well and living in too many examination controllers). 64 Models are

reasoning games involving an understanding of the principles of order and change. 65

They should be used more and might be if their chief virtue was more clearly

stated: their main use is in the prevention of errors in planning rather than

in the creation of insights in practice. The good teacher is not the consciously

formulating one who sees abstractions instead of individuals at their desks: he

is much more likely to be skilled in creating and sustaining human contact,

nearer to the theatre than the study. But it is not only the everyday teacher

who designs syllabuses and creates materials: these require time away from the

classroom and it is precisely here that models are required.

2. The need for a richer theory of learning and language

Before anything else, EST practitioners are educators and have to be

eclectic about the perspectives they adopt in trying to assist and shape the

learning process towards socially agreed goals. They therefore need commonsense

guidelines so that the latest fashion in theory can be cut down to size. Ideally,

of course, they should be able to shape research towards their ends: linguistics,

eg has been far too formal in its research and has only just had the courage to

- 26 -
tackle meaning on as broad a front as Firth suggested in the 193O's. We are

just moving out of an era in which poverty-stricken models of behaviourism and

structuralism reduced language teaching, to the banalities of parroting sentence

patterns into machines •• in the vague hope that some internalisation of syntax

would take place and appropriately inform the communicative strategies of the

learner in real-life, real-time settings. What we need is a richer theory of

learning. There is much to be gained from work in artificial intelligence but

like all paradigms it is founded on an analogy that only has partial validity:

the mind is not to be captured by any easy gloss like 'biocomputer' however much

illumination it may give. What we need is what the practitioners of gestalt

68
psychology claim: to revert to their terminology, gestalt psychologists .assume

that -

2.1experience is an interaction between a person and his environmental

field, the environmental field being interpreted as socio-cultural, animal

and physical

2.2"all contact is creative adjustment of the organism and environment....

psychology is the study of creative adjustments.. Its theme is the ever-

renewed transition between novelty and routine, resulting in assimilation

and growth..."

2.3"the assimilating of novelty...is never merely a rearrangement...

but a configuration containing new material from the environment, and

therefore different from what could be remembered (or guessed at), just

as the work of an artist becomes unpredictably new to him as he handles

the material medium".

2.4"the self is precisely the integrator; it is the synthetic unity,

as Kant said. It is the artist of life. It is only a small factor in

the total organism/environment interaction, but it plays the crucial role

of finding and making the meanings".

The degree to which such a characterisation of experience and growth commands

respect by narrow practitioners in the social sciences is in a sense irrelevant:

we need to place our models of learning in a context of values at least as rich

as those that gestalt psychology operates with. And just as the poverty of

behaviourist psychology needs banishing so does the emaciated view of language

as an object, of a set of all and only grammatical sentences. The model of

language organisation advocated in this paper - that of rhetoric mapping knowledge

into grammar - attempts this. But, clearly, major collaborative work within the

- 27 -
context of operational research is needed if the next decade of language

learning policy and practice is not to be maimed by inadequate modelling of

the variables involved. This is a long-term view of EST requirements but we

have in the general field of ELT muddled through with only short-term per

spectives for far too long.

Keith Jones & Peter Roe

ETIC

February 1975

- 28 -
NOTES AND REFERENCES•

1See Sir Karl"Popper (passim): Objective Knowledge, OUP, 1972.

2Thanks are owed to Tim Johns for drawing attention to W T Bane's

Operational Research, Models and Government, HMSO 1968.

3Op.cit.; see 1, p.114

4ETIC is undertaking research in this area.

5Op.cit.

6See especially pp.106-152. A book of logarithms is an example of

knowledge without a knowing subject. The knowledge is there on
display, but no one, not even the author, carries it all around
in his head..

7C Beeby: The Quality of Education in Developing Countries, Harvard

University Press, USA, 1966.

8P H Hirst: 'Liberal Education and the Nature of Knowledge' in

Philosophical Analysis and Education (ed.Archambault; Routledge
1965). Cited in Musgrave; see infra.

9P W Musgrave: Knowledge, Curriculum and Change, Angus & Robertson 1973.

10T S Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolution, Chicago 1962.

11Cf. R Harre: Introduction to the Logic of the Sciences, Macmillan 1960;

and Systems Thinking Penguin Modern Management Readings, Penguin 1969.

12The first unit in the Open University Foundation course on Technology

is entitled Systems.

13Taken from 12.

14Cf.ll.

15M MacDonald-Ross: 'Behavioural Objectives: A Critical Review1 in

Instructional Science 2:1(1973).

16Attributed in i5.

17Op.cit. 15

18Sir Karl Popper: The Poverty of Historicism, Routledge &. Kegan Paul
1957; The Open Society and Its Enemies, Routledge & Kegan Paul 1945.

19Op.cit. 15.

20R Hodge and G Kress; 'Transformation, Models and Processes: Towards

a More Usable Linguistics' in Journal of Literary Semantics 3 (1974).
The article grew out of an attempt to relate literature and society
but has wider implications. It argues that linguistics has been
truncated from its experimental component; to, quote: 'It is as though
a science of baking conceived the aims of its theory as the discovery
of the structure of flour, and then regarding everything else concerned
with the making of bread as a matter of application of its theoretical
insights.'

- 29 -
21R Schank and Y Willis: The Goals of Linguistic Theory Revisited,
Lingua 1974. See also P Roe: An Argument in Favour of Greater
Priority Being Given to the Study of Performance Models (1970,
MS, ETIC) .• ~ " ~ • ~~ ~ : : ~~

220p.cit.21: A collection of very valuable papers edited by Schank

and Colby: Computer Models of Thought and Language Freeman and Co,
USA, 1973.

23Hoffman: 'Meaning Doesn't Grow on Trees' in Language Science I 26 (1973)

24Op. cit. 21.

25T Winograd: Understanding Natural Language, Edinburgh 1973.

26Op. cit. 22.

27M Coulthard: 'Discourse Analysis: A survey of the literature' in

Language Teaching and Linguistics Abstracts (1975 forthcoming)

28E K Jones: The Role of Discourse Analysis in Devising Undergraduate

Reading Programmes in EST (forthcoming), ETIC 1974.

29J Sinclair and M Coulthard: Towards an Analysis of Discourse, OUP 1975.

30J J Sparkes: 'Pattern Recognition and a Model of the Brain' in

International Journal of Man-Machine Studies 1 (1969)

31S Evans: 'The Structure of Instructional Knowledge: An Operational

Model' in Instructional Science 2 (1974)

32J Stelzer and E Kingsley: 'Axiomatics as a Paradigm for Structuring

Subject Matter' in Instructional Science 3 (1975)

33Ie as a component characterised by on going - encoding as opposed

to formal pre-planning. Thus conversation may be largely structured
as it goes along, as in accidental or cocktail-party conversation.
Plans may be frustrated and 'stages' in one's conversation might be
socially somewhat of a risk.

34See Helen Coppen: Visual Perception, Commonwealth Secretariat 1970.

35See R Gavare: Graph Description of Linguistic Structures. A Linguistic

Approach to the Theory of Graphs. Almqvist &. Wiksell, Stockholm, 1972.

36Particularly considering how set theory and mapping are introduced in

the new Mathematics in the first year of primary school in many
countries. It is worth considering to what extent Language and
Mathematics, the major semiotic systems used to transmit knowledge
content in the curriculum, could cross-fertilize in an EST context.

37The idea of syntactic cues is derived from Goodman: 'Reading as a

psycho-linguistic guessing game' in Language and Reading (ed Gunderson)
Centre for Applied Linguistics, USA, 1970.

38R K Lindsay: 'In Defence of Ad Hoc Systems' in Computer Models of

Thought and Language, op.cit. 22.

39H G Widdowson: 'An Applied Linguistic Approach to Discourse Analysis'.

PhD dissertation.

- 30 -
40See Diagram 14 for a suggested characterisation of the information
management system.

41The use of delicacy here is intended to evoke in use in systemi.cs

as practised by Michael Halliday.

42Op.cit.20.

43See the accompanying paper by Widdowson in his collection.

44See ELT Documents 74/4; also Ewer and Latorre: A Course in Basic
Scientific English (Longman 1969).

45The whole business of comparing rhetorics is an urgently needed

research undertaking. Presumably many of Whorf's insights would
be applicable,

46 Op . cit. 43.

47 Op .cit. 28.

48 A
A vivid
vivid demonstration
de of this was given by Ronald Wardhaugh in a
paper presented to the RELC 9th Regional Seminar in July 1974:
Reading technical prose.

49The importance of this point is owed to John Sinclair.

50The theory of Grammar aimed at here and elsewhere is some as yet

to be realised synthesis of systemics, case grammar and dependency
theory.

51For further discussion, see 28.

52Op. cit. 28.

53Ways in which options from different systems are fugally present or

conflated in surface syntax positions is demonstrated by Halliday
in 'Language Structure and Language Function' in New Horizons in
Linguistics, Penguin 1970

54Op. cit. 27.

55Cf.Hoffman, op.cit.23.

56Op.cit.29

57This observation is owed to Robin James.

58The development of this module design owes much to Janelle Cooper

and Chris Tfofi.

59Materials are being prepared for experimentation and publication.

60The art of memory has been sharply neglected in contemporary pedagogy

despite the inordinate demands placed oh the memorizing of notes and
model answers by many examination systems. Frances Yate's The Art of
Memory is a fascinating excursion into Renaissance pedagogy, and her
perspective together with that of the Gestalt psychologists emphasises
the importance of diagrammatic clozures for understanding and storing
in retrievable fashion.

- 31 -
61Taken from Nathan: The Nervous System, Penguin 1972.

62See The Cloze Procedure, Papua and New Guinea University of

Technology, Lae, 1973.

63See J Anderson: 'A Technique for measuring reading comprehension and

readability1 in ELT 25:2 (1971).

64'In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but FactsJ' -
Dickens: Hard Times Book 1, Chapter 1.

65See especially G "I Gibbs Scientific Concepts &, Gaming in Programmed

Learning & Educational Technology 11:1 (1974) for a systems approach
to teaching science to non-specialists that capitalizes on model-
building procedures. , , •

66Selected Papers of J R Firth (ed.Palmer) Longman 1968.

67This paradigm shift is commented on in more detail in the accompanying

papers by Widdowson and by Candlin, Moore and Kirkwood.

68Perls, Hetterline and Goodman: Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth

in the Human Personality, Penguin 1973.

- 32 -
Appendices

Appendix 1

Diagram 6 A Crude Model of Objective Academic Knowledge.

Diagram 8 An Information Processing Model of the Encoding

and Decoding of Academic Knowledge in Texts.

Diagram 9 Crude Procedural Model for Designing and

Implementing EST Programmes.

Diagram 10

Diagram 11 Mapping Content into Grammar.

Key to Code.

Diagram 12 Design for EST Reading Comprehension Module.

Diagram 13 Criteria for the Selection of EST Texts.

Diagram 14 Information Management Options

Appendix 2

Systems Classification
DIAGRAM 6:. A CRUDE MODEL OF OBJECTIVE ACADEMIC KNOWLEDGE

0 SYSTEMS SYNTHESIS

Mechanical through established**

Physical principles, basic
Biological principles, secondary
Social notions and primary
notions

STRUCTURES ANALYSIS

Holons* using'primary notions

Parts and basic principles
Sub-parts
Interfaces

2 PROPERTIES ATTRIBUTION

Functions of secondary notions

Measurables
Ascriptions
Characterisations

3 OPERATIONS DESCRIPTION

Processes using primary and

Phases secondary notions and
Participants basic principles
Circumstances

4 TRANSFORMATIONS EXPLANATION

'Final' state the establishment of

Causal mechanism new principles from
Consequences basic principles
Predictions

Wholes that at higher

levels function as parts

EVIDENCE SEEN AS CONCEPTUAL PROCEDURES

ADDRESSES IN A DISCIPLINE'S UNDERLYING EVIDENCE
DATE-BANK SYSTEMATISED BY A
DISCIPLINE

** The idea of principles and notions is taken from the paper

referred to in footnote 32.

- 34 -
 r r r

gEh
o o P o
M 55 H CQ
Ph i-i Q Oh CQ
rt w rT-| p^
w 8-^ CJ U oo
<
OJ ^! O Oh
. *1 0, M
lop| t,
|
h ithsm
|
OS DNiaooaa *>> •p bO
•rl out RES lit eve 'H Sig IES din nee
> TV0IXVW3HXVW
co ^^
•d
© •rl T3
©
CO c
g
o
bO
C
rH bo D •P Sh Si B ri 3 ©
OS c •P o •ri M iH rl
•ri o as o8 CS •d bO o ©
•ri r-l •p E -P •^ CO © rH © "H
bO bo owiaooaa •ri 01 © co •ri 3 OS Sh O 0]
•rl CS CtJ XI X| 08 Sh •ri
Sh non 0 © CQ CS •H H •rl
CO 0IND0I Ch CS >> Eh O © •rl •ri W •d Sh rl CQ bO
© rH o bO 01 0 XI hH © •P © O ri
rH CQ bO -P • •p •rirH 01 CO 0 O c CS a ^ •ri
OS OS M c C 0] bo CS © C as a w rl XI O
o CQ •ri © ^h © o o o Eh OS •P Sh © HH i-H •rl O
•rl 01 Sh ?J o rH U o o ca © O c Eh O U •H
B 01 •p ^3 iH rl G Q u c •rl p^ rH <H M CO •rl •J^
© © •d O 3 C •rl •P <H a 3 H ^_• co © 1 a o
o © © c © ca O •rl OS • CO 0 •P s d
o-c pro tur for uat as CO ome suqi are bly SOT ons sti arn iti o ©
^ u
© CS
w 1 bo
C
•P u ri
Si O
OS 3 S •rl •p o •p © ra •p t_3 i-i •ri •rl *H
•p
o
© co
iH
©
<H
co
©
©
•d
iH
OS
<H
O
©
rT1 rH
^
rH
•rl © •rl Sh
U ©
0]
o
B
3
CO
•rl
Fh •P U
M OS 3
©
rH a
o
^J
J o
(f* a
O
+^
© •ri as 3 OS Si O rl
O co
O •rl 0] u Sh © ^ o jY| ©
g
M
rH
©
•P
a
as -i-t
<H
o
o
01
C
•rl
©
©
rl
3 Oh rl
o
C
bO
iH as
ho
rH co
•P
OS
©
© O o a
© rH
rH c a ^ rul o
M
f-i
a
•rl ra B OS •rl E a XI ^^ o o 01 o Ph E-*
^ •P
O
c
•o
OS
W to
c
CS G
©
o
OS
•P
O
4— 1
8 •ri c
I •ri •d
©
•p
<H
r-t
a
3
Sh * o rxo •H
CS c •p O •p . CO © H
iH OS as CO u c © u Q (I)
ra 1 o o © E © © G as o 01 o © o tut
3 o CO u 3 0] C ^5 •rl •rl •rl 01 c to <H • C tJ
© o c
•P
O ©
X g CO
M
g o
•p B
•rl
o
a
o
•rl
Q
M
•ri
c CO
ri
•rl
-P
OS
©
o
•p
o
•d
© ^-^ 0]
to
•d ^!
o
•ri rH
•rl © •rl © G Sh •P bO c B as •P o o rH Eh
3 as M 0 . © u © ^h •P
•H
O
a
-P
5 O ra E a 0
©
©
c
^. OS G
•d as
a
o c
s o c3 -P CO
01 o
•rl © . o •P
e
Q cS
•rl
O g
0 u © o si C © o •p 3 01 as G ••
•p D o o Si <H rl CO CQ 8 c © O
u OS •p G 0 © CQ V G 01
bO X O o © •rl •p c O a o^ C O •ri rH bo
w
c
•rl
© U
a
M
Eh
r*
^
bo
c
•rl s •P © bo •rl 4^ ryi OS C 2 p
n •H ©
CO
CS O
^i CO
0]
©
Sh rH
CQ
M
•rl
-P
•rl 01
•ri
U
8c c
bfl
s •p
j^
OS
bO
c G
c •P
•rl OS
o
©
as
C
P O 3 •ri
Q •p •d
o ©
<p rH 'Si
o
•rl o3
•P
CQ
•rl O
Eh

s
©
0
0
u
•P
OS
©
3 as
—
•p
0 M
•P
a
©
[>,
as
Sh
Sh
<H
U
©
C
© •ri
•d
•ri O
rl
ry-| •rl
^J ri
_l •rl
*t! n
ri
•rl
a
ra
bo U
C •rl
as ^>
•C c
rl rH
© ©
-P Sh
rH Sh
-ri O
rH
r-l
o
0
©
CQ
©
©
co o
X
1© rH
•P O
Q C C
3

0 •rl
01 a- •p •P
•rl o •ri
OS •P rl © C
rH 0 •n bo
as 3 as X! o
Sh
© CO
•d ©
CQ rH OS rH OS •ri © bO Oh <H 0 "> <H 0 u CO o a o w •d E © O o

C Sh c C
© O 1 co o o 1 ©
01 •ri •A •ri Sh a rH
sNoixvznvaa 0 rH URES co •P +> © 0 •A •d
OS
as O a OS •d •P o
TVOIXV^aHXVW 0 iH CO rH •A 3 C co as
ac c -p as u rH 3 bo •A •d CO
to
•ri •ri o o Q a CS c n c 01 •ri
SNOIXVZITVaH •p •ri CS Si ra co •A OS rH
as TSbO C -p 01 © © CO •d as o XI
(0IXV a c la: •g
)V]^a) oinooi rH
©
•A
bO a
co
•ri
XI g co
•d
=3 rl
O
>, -ri
"H Sh -P •P
OS
^^ a T3
rl
OS ^l © bO
•p •A cu •A © o O OS 0 01
01 OS OS •P CO C C •p o G ©
o XI
© ri ri o c B CS © o O 01 01 Jz X •ri 01
•ri iHCO as © E •A -P XI •A •rl •ri •d ©
© t-i •P 0 •ri •p o3 c •p •P •P 0] EQ k a rl G rH
o bo Eh •ri oE •A X! •i o © c 3 OS c •p OS as O.
C t-t rl c© u co OS O 01 c © •ri 0) 01 •d •A
p^ ^ •rl 0 CQ O o ra © •rl © pq CO CS XI •P
c a
a
•P
G
Q
^^
xt •p to rl
© C O
•ri
rl rH •p
2
Oh
o
B -
© g a
•ri
o
G
O E
as •A
01
© rl o
X! O u
Eh a
©
XI
u
If as
•p
•A CO
-p
c
O
o
a
© o XI
© •P
•P
a
<H o
© c o
•ri ©
CO
CS
•A
U
01 M E •A •A Sh Eh OS © o CO Eh Eh rH 0] XI D
<H bO CD
!h o © +5
01 tsi •p 01 © 1 •P
E
g
•A
CS
rl oi •
0] i
©
•a
o 1
O
c 01 1 B •A
.p
•p o rl CS H>1 © a O c
o CO pq •P co X •rl a CS X) Sh Sh o <H ©
r-l rl OS as •P CO r**] rH •A © © rl
© N r-l •p a hO •P a o •d n u 0] © B
Q •P •ri 0) C o c 0
•p co a C B
•P a rH CO H © Sh CO c C © CS •P o
o ^
3 CS
©
•A
u
CO Q Eh E
M o
•A
•p
Sh
g
•A
©
•P
X(
bo
© <H
©
0 3 C
•A
^
3 0] •p
u ©
bO
o
•p O C c •P C O iH
cc r-l Sh O © Eh W u O -P bO c O •ri c CO
H
Sh
•P
©
o
G
s <H
H
a •A
0]
C
•A
•A © •P 8 •A rH OS
>,
c
2
o o o3
•ri
•P 01
•A
ra
©
XI
u
© O 8 •A O •p
ri
O •A g W
-p a XI B
O •A I ©
•A
+->
•P CO
•p as ©
CO
G
U
o
-p o a as ri Q © O OS •p 3 01 U '•A o x:
G C o Sh a CD CS bo HI rH CO -p co U © •P •A +j
•A <H © 0 3 Sh © G
0 •H O 01 n o •H CO O 2 •A w
© •ri as r>^
CQ •d •d CO
O
CO
•H a Sh
0 o ©
•P
OS
3
CS

Eh
CQ
m
CQ

1 ss
IH O
ri^
CQ W
 S

CO
rl CO
0 -P
•P C
CCS -H
•P at CO CO CO to CO
CO •H r^ c CO C c c
e rH -P 0 to 3 O 0 c
0 •H CO •rl 3 O •H 0 0
•rl 0 c -p •H •rl •H
•P O O •P •P to <p •P
OS O •H 0 'H •H •H © •H
•rl CO <H O CO <H CO CO 0 •H
CO O © O CO to
O C a) O

\|
O 0 Q, © O a a. as O
O, g OS rl <H a O a
OS i-l a as as CO as © U as •rl as
•P -P •h a •p CO © <p 4-> © •p O bO •p
CQ •H to CQ © •H X ^ •H 0
pi 0^ 3 ^ 1I /13 W •H -P 3 as C 3
pi 3 *> 11 •r-3 rH ^J U i-H i-H 3
3 •1-3 O to a M \ / •1-3 Eh ^1
•1-3 • ft -H •1-3 0 O '1-3

\i
Eh T3 © CQ XI -H
©
•a
©
^4
CO
CO
•rl
-(- Eh © ©
•P i-4
\/
\< ^> CS
w
© a
0
^-
Oh
-1- 3 0
^> O ^-
•p •p •a •a 0 c co c 0 w
•a C c © © s <ij CIS CO C •rl Sn
to CO
© C 0
^^ 0
u rl
a
to
c H
to
c pq
co co co
C
© © +> 0 05 © JS © to 0 0 O

II
o •rl •H c c •rl O 0 c 0 Oh CO a 0 +• 0 O
o ^ u -1 •H c •H Oh © © •H C •H CO i-H •rl
© © •P OS © c 0 ^j CO OS •P
0 0 •rl •H CD
t .p a © •H CIS 1- en i-H © ^j p-* CO © •P as as ^J CQ
t u 0^
ti
O
i-l
•H
CO
rH
3 •p
0
i-H
•H
t ©
CO
to CQ
-p as
CO i-H
a ^H
c
1 0 as XI
•H
•H
^>
as Eh
1-1 CO
•p
u
a
© rH
as CO 0 rH
•rl as
O
•H
as
1-1
0^
rl •H •p O <H CO ^ <H
Q o •a
©
© <H
c
0
0 1-4
H as
CIS ©
CO CO
•H
•a
C
O
O ©
I-l 0
©
co
© 3
0 0
c O ^p 3
M O to
0
©
©
g T 0,
1
c
OS
C
O
1 cas •rl0 bO
O a!
^H
c 0
M © OS •a rH 0 H e 3 C © 0 0 OS OS u 0 Eh c CIS •1-3 CO a CO r-l •H 0 1-3
a © 0 © •1-3 O CO i-H !-l X! O 0 0 O 0

VAL
Eh 0^ 0 CQ 1
•rl
pE^
OS O
O O ft 1
u
rH Oh ft
rH
h
•H
O 1 m
M
S
© XI
0
3
CO 1
M O a) 3
CO X ^ CQ I
CO © X^
S ft
•rl
pq
0
CO I r a
ESC TTR
W
X
a 1 CQ
01s:

•^

XN3 ^M 00 -V xaw < im.nWO 3 — < "OldOX

DIAGRAM 11: KEY TO CODE NOTES

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT EXPOSITION

Al The nervous system Term Topic

PI is Gloss Scope

Al the organ

P2 that controls

A2 the whole body

ACT OF DEFINITION ACT OF DELIMITATION

Al it Retrieval

P3 has two parts Possession Analysis

A3 the central NS Term Node

A4 & the peripheral NS Term Node

ACTS OF CLASSIFICATION ACT OF ANALYSIS

A4 the PNS Retrieval Analysis

P3 is made up of

A5 nerves Term

A5 some of which Gloss Exemplification

A6 you

P4 can easily feel

P5 in your own

A2 body
OSTENSIVE EXEMPLIFICATION ACT OF ANALYSIS & EXEMPLIFIC.

A7 the brain 1 Term Analysis

A8 & spinal cord Term

P4 make up

A3 the central NS Retrieval

ACT OF ANALYSIS

A5 the nerves running to Gloss

the CNS
PI
A5
are called

the afferent nerves

I
Term

A5 those running from it Gloss

PI
A5
are called

efferent nerves
I
Term
ACT OF DEFINITION

Al the NS Retrieval Analysis

P4 consists of

A9 cells Term

P6 like every other Gloss Theory reference

Al tissue

P3 of

A2 the body
 • + C5

o •
Sh to
0} •O ^1 ©
Sh U •P o CO
o
© -P ^ ©
o
o
•rH
O
^^ H \
CO ,Sh
©
Sh
CO
1
©
U
©
o X
6 © Sh ©
O ft o 3
t> O ^
CO
si • to
o o c
-P © rH •p O
O © © •H
c •QT3 •d •p
co CD © CO
ID73 -P COr-l
©© 10
ShrH -H
©O
Sh>^ •
CO
©
Sh
& rH
•H
Sh O©CO
OO to OO T3 © +>Sh
O>, IB O CO ft C ©O^S
O© 'rl O CO X © XIO00
w o co COU CO cr> CO © O ShCOCO

I T
c
c o © to
0 Sh •p C ©
CO •ri o © o CO to
•p Sh •d Sh •d XI •p Sh •rl •p •H
to CO CO •rl ^-h 3 0 ffl 0 CO o
© •P ^i •P rH Sh to ^ © •P
C C CO •d to CO c CD © -p 3 •
© © © > © © o c X •d o ©
© rH a Sh to •H CO © © Sh 1 O
N ^ Q © © © Sh N O •p c
O O CO U •p o 3 o3 C .O ^ •H CO
o rH CO •H •d -p r-t O rH 5 •P
CJ r-l O •p C ote O © •H 0 si
rH
© •ri
CO <H
•P to 1 •H ©
CO
to >
•H
-p
•H ' rH
•p
c
•p
X
en
•H
CO
CO o © •H T3 © c c CO •d +-> C5 CO © © CO
3 Sh CO o o © o C © CO hO o •p •P co
•P a a c CO ft O •p r-l O 'c
a co © a o Sh CO •H co 3 O >-, •p +>
0 •p o CO © -p © © -p © a © CD Sh © CO
o Sh © \^ to Sh CO M •H U
c
o
O • <H •P © to CO © ho c O
© hO
Sh a
u
si
CO 8 ©
Sh
©
en
Sh CO
a
C
CO
C
•rl
3
0"
3
co
CO
a
O
•P E
© © CO
•p
0
•H

1 ISh
o
•p
I 1
© H>> •H © c 1
bO ^_> •d -p CO o o •H bO
C •H ho c CO o •H c o
O •H C CO © B CO O CO •p ho o
-p CD r~] © © •
hO CO +> Sh CO ho <H •H o © en hO Sh CO
© c © © c © •H © •H •H CO ©
•rl •H hO © o bO rH © •P Sh CO to Sh to
> •d •H -P to •H C Sh o hO en c
Sh
©
O
CO
©
u
•d
^>
)f*>
-p CO
©
ho o
c •P
CO
©
3
•H
P*^
CO
ft
o
•P
C to•
c
•p
c
©
•d
CO
co

^h
•H
ft
0
en
k
rH •rl ©
•H
O
Sh
hO
Sh
O
•d Sh •p CO •P X
a1 o CD •H © CO rH o CO . © ©
a © © • CO r*] •H o 5^ C © •P
•rl Sh bO Q •P r; to •p c ft CO 0 ^h 3 c CO
CO •rl CO CJ © o 3 c © O •rl © O ft o ©
ho 3 CO T3 •H Sh O © -p •d •H •P •d •p •H •rl U •p
d* to © CO •> CO Sh -p c r^ •d 0 © C •P 0 X
o © co si © © XI © 0 c •H o CO •H © ©
Eh Sh a -p CO CO •P CO CO X! •H •d Eh B C

Sh
I
© •H •p •p a •s •d
bo CO X CO 0 to CO © ©
CO ft
<3 CO
to Sh
©
•p eo
•H
•P
CO
o
•rH
Sh
O
JB
3
CO
hO
C
C
•H
•d
©
©
r-^
rH
o
©
o
•H ID CO •rl CO rH CO O t>> c
O 1H <H © HJ -p a CO T3 rH CO to >> o CO
o to ft o O C o CO c c ft o 0 o a
o r-l to c © c c o © X •H © rH
a <H hO >. © •d CO •H a © c Sh w J3 CO o
CO Sh o C •d 0 -p c >^ •P © co •p C •H
U 3 to •H © r-l c •H Sh CO •d © CJ •H o •
ho ft C c to •d ft © co Sh Sh © CO rA ^ •H © CN
co CO • o to •H B to CO a © <D •P C r-l •P a
•H
•a g rH
a
•rH
•P
©
0
o
a ©
to
•H
>
•rH
Sh •H to
ft
0
c
o ^^ •d
o CO
•H O
ho
C
a
0 c
o3
to -p r-H a Sh I. to © © -P •ri •H o rH
r-i •p rH © u X CO © a r-l •H CO •p o O c
CO CO CO 3 ft © © © o i-H CO Sh 3 Sh c CO to CO ho to
3 o o a" rH •p > c CO •d o o CO O a '8 ©
•p •H •H •p XI © © O rH Sh •H ft •P ft bO •H rH
a c u .e CO O •p Sh •d •rl O o Sh X Sh o c •a o
© o o ^! Sh © c c A CO O © •H CO Sh 'H •H c >>
o •p Sh •p ft hO •P © si CJ hO
c
o o
© CO
© 0
U CO
si
a o a CO
•P
©
-p
•d a CO rH
©
^I
©
a
0
to CO © © •H •H
o o to •rl Eh •p •d •p > >
CO
CO g s u •rl
a •d
rH
< CO
©
•d
c
•rH

CO
Ic
o
t
- 40 -
Diagram 13 CRITERIA FOR THE SELECTION OF EST TEXTS

Texts that give insight into the

reading process and thus involve
the student in the programme at a
Chosen for responsible level of involvement
pedagogic
purposes
Means
oriented
Texts that deal with
interdisciplinary or
Choice fundamental matters in
S & T : e.g.
systems theory

-Knowledge Display texts

(ie. little theoretical
discussion)

Problem sharing texts

Ends —(ie. includes explicit
oriented Chosen for theoretical discussion)
subject - X
specific
Form of Knowledge
purposes: ie
(ie. 'single' discipline
required
like chemistry)
texts = 8 types

Field of Knowledge
(ie. complex of disciplines
like engineering)

Elementary
(ie. low ratio of 'primitive
terms to glossed terms)

Advanced
(ie. high ratio of primitiv
X = simultaneous choice terms to glossed terms)

- 41 -
 c
o
•H
p
C3 rl
O CO
CO a
•H o d
CO o bo u bo d
-rl •rl o ©
cc CO P CO -H p •rl 3 •H to
a CO to p © bo
CO o bfl © p P o
oo a p d bo 3 o
CP CO O a
o •rl © CO co co CO d u
COCO ^ o
Xi CO
a
O a p x:
o
P
CO
•s
a
3
•r-S
3"
a

V. LJ
d
o
•rl
CO
CO O
W P• CO CO oco
•rl (^-rl 3 •H •rl-H
©CO •rl p CO pcn
CO3^ CO O >> CO^>
•rli—l CO 3 i—( ^^i-I
U-H •dco CO CO ©CO
. ©PU •3c p d ad
>COO ?HCO CO CO

CO P
U c
O ©
1 s
© a rH
CO •rl
p CO
CO P
a o c
•H ©
O
to CO
•rl c C •CD
•a
C o o 0 0
•H c •H to
•d •a © •H •rl CO CO CO
c p p P u u
© 3 n cfl •rl
•H p c O •H •rl o xi to
•H © c P a a
to •rl •H © a
CO P a CO •H
o
CO
CO
P
CO
© t•rl ©
a
©
CO
c rl
CO
i-l
•H •d u CO a ©
P
o
to L j
c o
•H
P
T c
o o
c ^ •H © ©
•H o P o o
p >^SS CO d •d d
•H UP a o © ©. ©
cS3 •rl •rl i-i
•rl gCO O P CO CO CO
U •H •rl CO © >
ft u >> P CD -H bO 'H
© h 3 bO 3
C
cO 3 O1 3 cr
a © CO ©

C/l

o
pI

i
w o
OS w
Oh

<S
o<
p
Appendix 2: SYSTEMS CLASSIFICATIONS

1. Boulding's classification

1.1The first level is that of static structure. It might be called

the level of frameworks: for example, the anatomy of the universe.

1.2The next level is that of the simple dynamic system with pre

determined necessary motions. This might be called the level of

clockworks.

1.3The control mechanism or cybernetic system, which might be

nicknamed the level of the thermostat. The system is self-regulating

in maintaining equilibrium.

1.4The fourth level is that of the 'open system', or self-

maintaining structure. This is the level at which life begins to

differentiate from not-life: it might be called the level of the cell.

1.5The next level might be called the genetic-societal level; it is

typified by the plant, and it dominates the empirical world of the

botanist.

1.6The animal system level is characterized by increased mobility,

teleological behaviour and self-awareness.

1.7The next level is the human level, that is, the individual human

being considered as a system with self-awareness and the ability to

utilize language and symbolism.

1.8The social system or systems of human organization constitute the

next.level, with the consideration of the content and meaning of messages,

the nature and dimensions of value systems, the transcription of images to

historical record, the,subtle symbolization of art, music and poetry, and

the complex gamut of human emotion. -

1.9Transcendental systems complete the classification of levels.

These are the ultimates and absolutes and the inescapable unknowables,

and they also exhibit systematic structure and relationship.

- 4^..V
 2. Jones classification

Kind of system and its Components Couplings between Examples

mode of operation components

Manual system
Operator directed, hand tools or aids one human operator cook plus utensils,
flexible craftsman plus tools,
singer plus amplifying
equipment

Mechanized system
System directed, powered mechanical on-line human oper railway system,
rigid sub-systems ators, tracks, assembly line
conduits, etc

Automatic system
Pre-set programmed powered mechanical cables, pipes, con clock, process plant,
or adaptive sub-systems duits, levers, etc, telephone exchange,
forming a control digital computer
circuit

Collaborative man-
machine system
Exploratory and one or more human complex displays multiple-access
flexible operators, one or and controls computers
more complete auto
matic systems

Mechanical sub
system
Operator controlled highly interdependent physical parts engine, automobile,
and inflexible forming indistinguishable components machine tool
and couplings

Administrative
system
Goal directed and human operatives with rules, messages, army of foot soldiers,
hierarchical tools or aids human administrators a business, a school
and informal contacts

Voluntary system
Self-rewarding and any number of per affection, shared family, religious order,
collaborative sons each of whom is aims, laws, customs, club, society,
also a biological managers, physical (university?)
system and some of presence, mutual aid,
whom also act as common language,
administrative ancestry, etc
sub-systems

Environmental
system
Permissive of a inhabitants and spaces and the bar- occupied building,
range of human facilities within riers between and city or region
activities and an environment, the around the components
contacts: prohib outside world
itive of others

Biological system
Homeostatic, adapt cells, organs, sub nerves, glands, chrom- cells, plants, animals,
ive, evolutionary, systems, all of osomes, etc, past , 'human operators"
growing, different which are also experience and
iating and self- physical systems environment
reproducing

- 44 -
Jones classification (contd)

Kind of system and its Components Couplings between Examples

mode of operation components

10 Physical system
Dynamically stable elementary particles, gravitation, elec- solar system, molecule,
but subject to planets, seas, land, trical forces, crystal, cloud, strut,
eventual decay etc.radiation, physical tie, beam, shell
motions and forces

11 Symbol system
Semantic, analogous words, signs, sym- syntactical rules languages, mathematics,
ambiguous or precise bols, numbers, etc.codes, etc.

Systems classified according to mode of operation and the physical nature of their
components and couplings.
Teaching En^lish for Science and Technology: the specialised training of
teachers and programme organisers

JB Ewer

Background

The teaching of English for scientific, technological and technical purposes,

though of comparatively recent growth as a specialised activity, is now emerging

as one of the most rapidly-expanding and important branches of TEFL/TESL today,

as is reflected in the growing number of conferences, seminars and articles devoted

to the subject, and the rapid growth of EST programmes throughout the world. At

the same time, considerable difficulties are being experienced in putting these

programmes into effective operation on the scale required; difficulties, moreover,

which are likely to increase rather than diminish in the immediate future.

There are several reasons for this situation, but the crucial one is the almost

total lack of teachers trained to undertake this work. Thus although in many parts

of the world the institutions engaged in the training of scientists and techno

logists (or in the actual application of science and technology) are taking the

English-language courses out of the hands of the ELT institutions because of the

latters' failure to provide the kind of instruction required, and in growing

measure are setting up their own English-teaching centres in the hope that they

will be able to develop more relevant programmes, these initiatives are bound to

have only limited success in as much as they are at present dependent upon exactly

the same sort of teacher as those who have failed in the first place to meet the

demands made upon them. This in turn is because teacher-training institutions

everywhere are not only neglecting to provide the special training which is

imperative if this type of English is to 'be taught successfully, but do not as

yet recognize that such a need exists. Our first step must therefore be to examine

briefly the main circumstances under which EST is being taught at present, and the

ways in which these make novel demands on the staff which are not catered for in

the present teacher-training courses. This procedure will also provide an

indication of the size of the problem.

There are three main situations in which the attempt to teach EST is being made.

In the first of these, the scientific subjects themselves are taught in English

from the beginning of the school course, in common with the rest of the curriculum.

The countries falling into this pattern are mostly ex-British or American

territories in Anglophone Africa, the Pacific and the Carribean who have retained

English as the medium of instruction, often because"they comprise highly fractionised

multi-lingual communities for which an eduqational lingua franca is an obvious

necessity. It might be supposed that in these cases the basic problem has been

solved, and that a student of science or technology, having completed his school

courses in English, would then proceed to university or technical college fully-

- 1 -
equipped to cope with the English of his professional training and subsequent

career. However, this is not so for reasons which it is unnecessary to explore

at length here,' but which may be placed largely.to the account of the large-scale

withdrawal of expatriate teachers, the rapid expansion in school populations, and

the fact that the language of school textbook and classroom differs markedly from

that of genuine scientific communication at a professional level. Even in these

countries, therefore, it has been found necessary to introduce EST courses into

the programmes of tertiary-education establishments . The second pattern is to

be found in large areas of Europe, Latin America and the Middle and Far East, where

although school instruction is given in languages other than English, EST is needed

at tertiary-education and on-the-job level, and where there is also a growing

tendency for it to be introduced into the last year of the school course. Finally,

the teaching of EST takes place in the principal English-speaking countries

themselves in an effort to ensure that the many scores of thousands of non-English-

speaking students of science and technology, who arrive in these countries annually

to follow tertiary-level courses or undertake research, know sufficient of the

right sort of English to enable them to carry out their assignments successfully.

From the foregoing it is clear that the strategic point in the teaching of EST is

the specialised programme at the post-school stage. But although this has the

advantage that it is also the most economical in terms of resources required, it

has to be emphasised that the world-wide population potentially affected is to

be counted in hundreds of thousands, if not millions (2) . Even at this restricted

level, therefore, the demand now and for the immediate future poses a formidable

problem whose solution is becoming rapidly more difficult with every month's delay

on the part of those responsible for teacher-training.

Apart from the factor of the scale of operations indicated by the preceding

analysis, the very nature and constraints of the teaching of EST at tertiary or

late-secondary level give rise to a series of difficulties for the teacher who

finds himself involved in this activity, for which his previous training will not
' (3)
only have done little to prepare him , but which will contain elements which

actually add to his problems. It should perhaps at this point be remembered that

the vast majority of EST teachers are not, and will not be, native-English speakers

themselves, though it should also be stated that in our experience the following

remarks apply almost equally to the native-speaker as well.

From ELT to EST: the teacher's difficulties

The EFL/ESL teacher who turns to the teaching of EST finds that his difficulties

fall broadly into five categories - attitudinal, conceptual, linguistic, method

ological and organizational: From the attitudinal point of view his previous

career is likely to have been almost entirely literary-oriented; his main

- 2 -
intellectual contacts will have been with people whose enthusiasms and values

have been formed in a rather narrow humanistic tradition centring round history

and literature. For this and a number of other reasons - ignorance of science

breeding fear and distrust, the generally defensive posture of the humanities in

recent years, almost certainly a socio-economic discrimination in his own country

against arts students as compared with science students, etc - he is likely to

have acquired an anti-science bias, overt or covert. This is a very serious

barrier to effective teaching in an EST programme, since it cannot be concealed

from the students and leads to an attitude of mutal distrust which is fatal to the

whole enterprise; equally, it tends to inhibit the teacher himself from making

the necessary efforts to overcome his other difficulties.

Since his previous education has done little to prepare him to understand science

and how it is used, his conceptual knowledge will be inadequate for his teaching

needs; this is particularly true for teachers from less-developed countries where

the division between the 'two cultures' in formal education is still sharply-

defined and where extra-curricular means of bridging the gap, such as a widely-

accessible 'quality' press, radio and TV, are lacking. Yet it is obvious that a

sympathetic understanding of what science and technology are about, their aims,

methods of potentialities, as well as a broad working knowledge of the key concepts

of the main specialities, must be an essential part of the successful EST-teacher's

equipment.

From the linguistic point of view the non-English-speaking teacher of English will

have been rather poorly trained for teaching the special varieties of the language

with which EST is concerned. First of all, the inevitable gaps in specialised

lexis will constitute a very appreciable further-learning problem which, unexpect

edly perhaps, is far greater in size and degree of difficulty for a teacher than

for his students. This is for three reasons: (a) the teacher will need to know

the basic lexis of a wide range of different specialities, whereas each group of

his students will be concerned with only a limited number of inter-related ones;

(b) the students (but not the teacher) will already be acquainted with many items

since they will be similar in form to their vernacular equivalents; (c) the teacher

will in many cases have to learn the concept as well as its linguistic form.

Another problem for the teacher is that even the comparatively small number of

items which comprise the 'core-language' of science and technology (ie those of

high frequency and wide range over all disciplines) are likely to contain numerous

difficulties, and a fair amount of further acquaintance with these features will
"(4)
usually be necessary before his control of this type of English is consolidated

As regards teaching methods, there are again important differences in attitudes

and classroom practices between those of the conventional EFL/ESL course and those

required in the teaching of EST. In the first place, account has to be taken of

- 3 -
the dissimilarities in the students concerned. In terms of numbers and resources

employed, the main teaching effort of the school course is concentrated on ,

children of the ages 12-14, and the teacher-training courses therefore tend to

devote much of their psychological and methodological instruction to the problems

of this group. EST, on the other hand, is primarily directed to late adolescents

and adults of the age-range 17-22 and above, whose interests, motivation and

intellectual and emotional maturity are very different from those of the school

group; this requires the teacher to make correspondingly large adjustments,in the

approach and classroom methods he adopts. Similarly, many of the traditional

language-problems of the school course (reported speech, question-tags, polite

forms, R.P., many intonational features, etc) are entirely irrelevant to the EST

situation; yet without special training it is extremely difficult fo'rv the conven

tional EFL/ESL teacher to avoid wasting valuable time trying to teach such points •

in which he himself may have achieved a painfully-acquired competence - or

insisting on totally unnecessary 'remedial' work. Another point relates to

teaching materials and programme design. Whereas for the school programme a

wealth of material, however aimless, is readily available, whilst the programmes

themselves are frequently so stable as to be hallowed by the tradition of decades,

for the EST programme the teacher will find no such well-trodden highway to

follow; and although the situation as regards the supply of materials for EST is

now much improved compared to even five years ago, he will at the very least have

to know how to evaluate, select and adapt existing materials to the needs of his

students, and may well find himself in a position where he will have to produce

entirely new ones. Essential as these activities are, they do not normally form

part of the teacher-trainees' basic course of studies, and indeed are usually

lacking in any realistic sense even from the postgraduate TEFL courses. Finally,

the absence of any real-life aims in the majority of school courses, their lack

of any meaningful standard of evaluation except artificial ones often supplied

solely by the course-teachers themselves, and the combination of generous time-

allocation and low efficiency-expectations which they enjoy( 5) , all constitute

a situation which is diametrically opposed to that of the teaching of EST, where

the task is strictly practical, has to be completed within very circumscribed

time-limits, and whose results are pragmatically measurable by the students.

Hence the teacher coming from the school or 'general' EFL/ESL course to an EST

programme is required to make what is virtually a psychological somersault, and

this is far from easy in the absence of clearly-directed training.

Lastly, there is the altogether unaccustomed and unforeseen area of difficulties

which teachers are now having to face, viz that of having to be responsible for

organizing and running what for them is a new type of ELT programme and one which

to an increasing degree is administratively independent of the teacher's 'home'

institution. This necessarily involves them in problems of student job-analysis,

- 4 -
 curriculum development, time-tabling, budgetting, man-management, infrastructural

organization (the provision of books, AVA, clerical facilities, etc) and intra

and inter-institutional liaison for which their training has given them neither

the knowledge nor - equally important - the mental toughening-up necessary

Teacher-training for EST: the Chilean experience

Given the general accuracy of the foregoing analysis, it is relatively easy to

map out a training programme which should at least reduce the teachers' difficulties

to manageable in-service proportions and lead to a substantial improvement in the

efficiency of EST courses. Clearly a seminar of a few days or a week is quite

inadequate (though this is seldom recognised to begin with): nothing less than a

properly-organised course lasting a hundred or more hours will in most cases

enable the practicing teacher or trainee to acquire the extra skills he needs and

to learn to discard those he does not. Such a course has in fact been developed

over the last few years at the Department of English of the University of Chile

at Santiago as the major component(7) of its EST teacher-training programme, and

other universities in the country have introduced similar schemes. It forms part

of the normal undergraduate syllabus( 8 ^ and in its present version lasts 120 class-

hours. Its main features are briefly as follows:

For descriptive purposes it can conveniently if arbitrarily be divided into four

areas corresponding roughly to different overall objectives which are developed

both sequentially and concurrently in order to involve the students in an inter

locking and mutually-illuminating structure of activities. The first of these is

concerned with filling in the students' conceptual vacuum. Although this is being

done throughout the length of the course as a consequence of the various activities

themselves, an immediate attack on the problem is made through a pre-course reading

assignment of two general background books, one on the scope of modern technology

and the other on how scientists actually work, based on the case-study approach.

The assignment is accompanied by roneoed sheets of questions designed to direct

the students' attention to key points in each book and to get them to think about

what they are reading. During the course itself this general conceptual background

is amplified by elective reading on science and technology, by visits to scientific

and technologic^l institutions, by carefully-selected films followed by discussions

and projects, and by the compilation by each student of a port-folio of informative

material and visual aids on chosen aspects of science and technology, taken from

both English-language and vernacular sources. The portfolios are also used in

the teaching-methods part of the course and afterwards serve as useful teaching-

aids during the students' own teaching careers. This section of the course takes

up 20-25% of the total time.

The second area consists of an introduction to the special language-features of

EST. Instruction here is based on an examination and analysis of actual scientific

*~ o ™*
texts and on selected material from EST textbooks and locally-produced materials.

In addition to training in certain syntactical features which are poorly dealt,

with in the standard ELT courses (see Note 4), and some of the more unfamiliar

lexical items of the cOre-language of EST, it includes symbols and abbreviations,

'instructional' English(9) , some key items of specialised lexis from a sample of

selected disciplines, and an introduction to 'idea-following' exercises and

written and oral note-taking. . This part of the course occupies about 35% of

the time and also reinforces both the first area (conceptual background) and the

third (methodology).

The third area deals with some of the factors which affect the methodology of

teaching EST in various circumstances and is carried out partly through lectures

and demonstrations, partly through micro-teaching; it includes such aspects as

attitudes towards 'errors', the use of AVA, testing, speed-reading and the

production of materials. It finishes with a short period of class-observation

and practice teaching in a full class of EST students and accounts for another

20% of the course.

The last area is devoted to a brief consideration of how to organise and administer

an EST programme. It includes the examination and evaluation of teaching materials,

programme analysis, modular programming

(12)(13)
, time-allocation, budgetting and

staff-management, and take up the remaining 20% or so of the time.

Whilst it is not possible in the limited space of this article to describe in

detail the methodology employed in teaching this course, one or two practices and -

principles may be worth mentioning: One of the first points to emerge from the

earlier and shorter versions of the course was the necessity of having enough time

to enable the students both to overcome their initial fear of science and to absorb

the many novel aspects of this type of teaching without undue pressure; in

particular, to develop the realisation that they were not only perfectly capable

of understanding very broadly what the main branches of science were about and how

the scientific and technological mind worked, but that this could be interesting

and enjoyable activity in itself

(14)

By the same token, the attitude of the course-instructors is of fundamental

importance: it must be relaxed, patient and reassuring. They must insist, time

and again, that they are prepared to explain anything any number of times, or to

get students who have grasped a given idea to explain it to those who have not.

In our own case, a positive point has been that the instructors emphasise that

they are not experts themselves and may not be able to answer every question

raised; however, they also add that they will find out, and explain to the students

how they have found out - indeed, one of the aims of the course is to acquaint the

student with sources of information and train him to use them.

- 6 -
In the section of the course which deals with administrative skills, a series of

simulation problems in staff-deployment, programming and budgetting are given,

with the students working out solutions in 'syndicates' of 3 or 4. These problems

are based on real-life local cases and the exercise as a, whole thus not only

increases the confidence of the students in their ability to tackle this kind of

work but underlines its relevance. . ' ,

Microteaching and actual classroom teaching-practice are in our view essential

aspects of the course, but may lead to a possible encroachment on the functions

of another department or institution at times. Close cooperation in such

circumstances is indispensable, and in our own case the willing assent and

encouragement of our colleagues of the EFL Methodology and Teaching-Practice section

of the Faculty of Education has been a major factor in the smooth implementation

of this part of the course.

Conclusions

It is not suggested that the course outlined above is the complete answer to

specialised training for teachers of EST - its intention is rather to provide a

sound basis for self-improvement, and in any case needs to be supplemented by

seminars and inter-institutional staff attachments, as indicated in Note 7 - or

the only one. One the other hand, to get any such programme into operation demands

a supply of reasonably-skilled instructors, and in the absence of local teachers

who have already had experience in the teaching of EST successfully these will for

the present be hard to find . That this unfortunate situation has arisen is

largely due to the virtual neglect of this speciality by the postgraduate ELT

institutions, particularly those in the English-speaking countries themselves.

Parallel therefore to the type of course we have just been discussing, and which

is intended primarily for undergraduate teacher-trainees or as a retraining course

for teachers in service, there is an urgent need for effective EST instruction in

postgraduate courses, and it is hoped that this will be provided without further

delay.

Finally, it may be appropriate to say a word about self-instructional materials

for EST. The Very large number of students affected and the present serious

shortage of trained teachers for this area must lead one automatically to consider

whether the provision of s.i.m. is not likely to be the best solution to the

problem. There are, however, at least two serious impediments here. The first

is that it is very difficult to obtain practical training in the techniques of

producing these materials, since the upsurge in interest in this field which

occurred in the '60s as a result of the general shortage of teachers in the

Western world has now subsided; the second, and on the whole weightier, factor is

that their production in the bulk and variety now required demands extremely large

- 7 -
amounts of time and (in the case of possible AV- or. computer-aided programmes)

equally large amounts of money. It is certainly to be hoped that these,difficulties

will be solved in time; in the meanwhile the immediate and serious situation has

to be faced. From this angle, the provision of relatively short training/

retraining programmes, which will enable the practicing ELT teacher or trainee to

make the best use of the rapidly-growing amount of conventional materials now

being produced for EST, seems to be the most practicable answer. But the time for

action is now.

NOTES

(1)Wingard, pp 53-4. Similar situations to the one described by Wingard in

Zambia are reported from ESL countries as far apart as Nigeria, India and

Fiji (personal communications).

(2)From the indications available, about 70% of entrants to tertiary education

in most parts of the world are now following studies in science-and

technology (including in these categories the social sciences and business

management). Assuming that EST programmes are to be made available to only

^ of these students for only 3 of their courses, the .numbers affected run

well into 7 figures annually - and this excludes further large numbers

'>-•'•• engaged in vocational (technical) education and taking; on-the-job courses.

Although such estimates are necessarily very approximate, they at least

give an idea of the order of magnitude in play.

(3)Ewer & Latorre p 228; Ewer & Hughes-Davies 1972 pp 270-2; Strevens 1972

p 8; Swales pp 9-12.-^

(4)Ewer & Latorre p 225 and Ewer &, Hughes-Davies 1971 p 67 indicate some of

. 'the discrepancies between the core-language of science and the contents of

typical 'general' ELT courses widely used in the training of' non-English-

speaking teachers. In commenting on similar discrepancies, Strevens (1971

pp 8-9) makes the point that even where correspondences exist the transfer

of linguistic learning from a non-science context to an EST one is likely

to be incomplete.

- 8 -
(5)^n Chile, for example, the school ELT course is,allocated more than 600

hours, at the end of which 80-90% of candidates fail the (at present)

unrealistically easy exemption examinations of the university science

departments. The university EST programmes, on the other hand, are allotted

only about 90 hours as an average, though there is now a welcome tendency

for this to be extended to the 130-140 hours which is considered to be the

minimum required.

(6)One of the most interesting and challenging aspects of tertiary-level EST

programmes is the possibility they offer of breaking with established

traditions and hierarchies. One factor in this is that expansion is becoming

so rapid in some parts of the world that one out of every three or four

teachers entering the field can expect to be immediately appointed a

programme supervisor or assistant supervisor; another is that there is a

marked tendency for new programmes to move away from the traditional ELT

institutions and come under the wing of the science departments, who are

much better off financially but who expect the EST staff to run their own

affairs efficiently in all respects.

(7)For a brief description of earlier versions of the course, see Boys.

Training is also carried out by means of seminars and staff attachments.

Seminars last from 2 to 5 days and have so far been held for the purpose of

giving practicing teachers a general idea of the nature and scope of EST;

as expertise becomes generalised, workshop-seminars of similar length will

need to be arranged to discuss particular aspects of EST-teaching such as

programming, testing, AVA and research. Attachments of staff-members from

the- less-developed EST institutions to the more-developed ones have proved

to be stimulating to both parties: to be effective, these should be from

1-3 weeks in length - a visit of a day or two is of little use.

(8)And is thus compulsory for all students. Hitherto the course has been

spread over an academic year, as is the usual practice for University

courses. 'This year (1975) it has been reprogrammed as an intensive course

of 15 hours a week for 8 weeks, thus enabling practicing teachers from the

rest of the country and abroad to attend.

(9)Ewer & Hughes-Davies, 1974, pp 19-24.

(10)Ewer (a).

(11)Ewer (c), pp 41-9.

- 9 -
(12)Ewer (b).

(13)Ewer (d), pp 24-27.

(14)One of the interesting sidelights on the programme has been that students

regularly make the comment that if they had had a similar course at school,

or on entering the university, they would have chosen a scientific career

instead of English. One should not overlook the fact that a proportion of

students choose Arts subjects (including English) for negative reasons and

have been 'put off1 science at school for quite fortuitous reasons - there

may well be many a scientist manque' in the ranks of EFL/ESL teachers I

(15)Regional centres such as RELC, CIEL, the Indian Institutes and ELTI, which

are able to draw on the resources of a wide area, clearly have a major part

to play in offering a speedy solution to this problem .

- 10 -
Boys, 0. The specialised training of teachers,for EST at the Department
of English, University of Chile at Santiago, Bull. Ped. I.U.T.,
No. 18 February 1972.

Ewer, J.R. & Preparing an English course for students of science, ELT
Latorre, G. Vol XXI No. 3, May 1967.

Ewer, J.R. & Further notes on developing an English programme for students
Hughes-Davies, E, of science (1) ELT Vol. XXVI,

" No. 1, October 1971

" No. 3, June 1972

Ewer, J.R. ^ Instructional English, ELT Documents 74/4, 1974.

Hughes-Davi'es , E.

Ewer, J.R. (a)Idea-following Exercises, (mimeo-Department of English,

University of Chile at Santiago), 197T!

(b)Integrated Programming for Scientific, Technological

and Technical (STTE) courses (mimeo-Department of English,
University of Chile at Santiago), 1974.

(c)Note-taking training for non-English-speaking Students

of Science and technology, RELC Jnl. Vol. V, No. 1,
June, 1974.

(d)Preparing the budget for an STTE programme, ELT

Documents 74/4, 1974.

Strevens, P. Alternatives to daffodils, in CILT Reports and Papers No. 7,

1971.

Technical, technological and scientific English, IATEFL

Ann. Conf. Papers, January 1972.

Swales, J. Introducing ELT teachers to English for science and

technology, ELT Documents 73/6, 1973.

Wingard, P.G. English for scientists at the University of Zambia, in CILT

Reports and Papers No. 7, 1971.

- 11 -
Developing study skills in English

Christopher N Candlin, J Michael Kirkwood <^ Helen M Moore

A. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

1. Traditionally, ELT materials have been based on an inventory of grammatical

structures, the signification of which has been brought home to the learner through

a selection of situational contexts, and the learning of which has been achieved

through a battery of drills and exercises. The selection of grammatical structures

for the most part rested on ad hoc assumptions about frequency and difficulty,

while the selection of lexis in part depended on<the situational contexts chosen

to provide a setting for the massive practice of the structure under discussion,

and partly upon non-registerially defined wordcounts. There have been recently

a number of criticisms of this approach to syllabus design from a number of

standpoints (Allen and Widdowson 1973; Widdowson 1971; Candlin 1972, 1973; Wilkins

1972; Kirltwood 1973; Jakobovits 1968; Palmer 1970). In essence what these writers

are doing is to raise objections to defining units of learning - 'learning items' -

in grammatical terms. They argue that linguistic progression, such as is found in

an analytical grammar of a language, is not to be equated with the psycholinguistic^

progression appropriate to a set of course materials intended to develop in the

learner a growing ability to 'use' the language pragmatically. This leads them to

resist equating linguistic 'difficulty' with learning 'difficulty' and to raise

objections to the assumption, often tacit in course materials, that it is possible

in some globally applicable way to assert that some structures will be needed before

others, and that there is thus an ordained pattern of grading. It would seem, too,

from research into error analysis, that the way learners modify, extend or restrict

the range of their perceived rules of the language being learned, argues strongly

against syntax being acquired in some linear bit-by-bit accretion. (For further

discussion of this point see Righter and Moore 1973; Richards 1974; Ravem 1974).

In classroom terms the inflexibility of this 'whole grammatical system' approach

arguably affects^ motivation negatively, and it is a frequent complaint that

'situations' chosen not to highlight role and status differences in the use of

language but merely to offer opportunity for the repeated display of particular

grammatical structures have produced a low return in terms of out-of-class usability.

Perhaps even more importantly, recent writers have raised'objections to the lack •

of depth in terms of layers of meaning handled by these structural-situational

materials. Stimulated by a switch of concentration in theoretical linguistics from

the study of syntax to the study of semantics and sociolinguistic concern with the

nature of communicative competence (Hymes 1972) they argue that it is only by

observing langua^e in use by particular learners and how it reflects both the

deep-structure semantic links between sentences of heterogeneous surface structure

- 1 -
and the nature of connected discourse that one can bring into materials the

pragmatic values of everyday talk. We shall explore later this distinction

between 'semantic' and 'pragmatic', but in essence to the question: What is the

structural form of sentence X? has to be added the supplementary: What com

municative value does sentence X have as one or more utterances? A concentration

on language in social interaction involves an examination of the speaker's

intention and the hearer's response; as such it requires analysis of implication

and communicative strategy which goes beyond surface structure and beyond the

boundary of traditional language learning 'situations'.

2. If one now looks at the field of specialist ELT, with which this paper is

concerned, a similar change of attitude to that of ELT in general is clear.

Early and global attempts to handle the 'English of Science' went very little

further than fitting a generally and non-subject-specific 'technical' lexis to

a similar range of structure as was available in the non-technical general course.

Under the impact of the notion of 'register' (itself defined, as Widdowson 1973

points out in essentially linguistic terms of grammatical structures and

'specialist' lexis) and based on empirical research into the structures and

vocabulary of technical texts (Huddleston, Hudson, Winter and Henrici 1968;

Ewer and Hughes-Davies 1971), materials were developed which indicated in a

most useful way the lexical and structural identity of a variety of sub-branches

of science and technology. Although, as is pointed out in Corder (1973), such

differences in structure as were enumerated were fewer than one might have at the

outset imagined, it was clear that EST (English for Science and Technology)

materials could no longer merely replace 'orange' by 'Bunsen burner' in the 'This

is a' structure of Lesson One. A similar shift of emphasis from form to functional

value as was noted above, and under the same influences, involved materials-

writers in analysis of specialist English in terms of the concepts portrayed by

sequences of language in text. In addition to noting formal structure, writers

(like Strevens 1971, Allen and Widdowson 1973, Kirkwood 1973, and Candlin 1974)

emphasise the way in which language is used to exemplify certain common reasoning

and conceptual processes of science, such as defining, classifying, spatial and

temporal relations etc. Rather than looking at the formal register of scientific

writing as merely a collection of specialist lexis and structure, materials-

writers have to take account of the way such processes are expounded in rhetorical

patterns in scientific discourse.

Furthermore, it may be possible, at least in the numerate sciences, if not the

social sciences, to demonstrate that these reasoning processes are common to the

scientific and technical stock-in-trade of speakers of a variety of languages,

rather than being viewed, like grammatical structures, as something novel.

Without ignoring the problems of Whorfism, and accepting that investigation is

- 2 -
needed to determine in a given case whether the learning blockage stems from

a deficiency in reasoning by the learner or insufficient linguistic resource,

it may be the case in teaching EST that one is indeed involving specialist

learners in performing in the target language those mental processes and in

tellectual operations already familiar to them from their 'doing science1 in

their mother tongue. As Selinker and Trimble (1972) point out;

'Generally, foreign language learning is considered as subject matter,

with no specific goal for using the language. We ... cannot take that

position at all... Our students are learning a foreign language primarily

in order to manipulate difficult intellectual material in it.1

3. We have indicated above a gradual movement in both general and specialist

course design away from an exclusive emphasis on the formal structure of

sentences towards a portrayal of the communicative value of utterances in dis

course. We have implied that present approaches to relating linguistic theory

to language teaching are less dogmatic than in the recent past. That is, al

though fundamental criticisms are being offered about particular language

teaching methodologies and about the linguistic and psychological assumptions

underlying such methodologies, a common approach is to draw more freely from

whatever body of knowledge seems to offer insights to developing in the learner

that competence which enables him to produce utterances which are grammatical

in the purely linguistic sense and enables him to structure utterances in ways

appropriate to the expression of chosen communicative values in particular

settings and encounters.

In this section we concentrate on a three-part foundation for the StudySkills

in English case-study in the light of this shift of emphasis. We look,in turn,

at an EST view of meaning, of grammar and of the communicative conceptsof

science.

B. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1. Meaning

We referred in the introductory section to a reorientation of teaching materials,

including EST, to a concentration on meaning, rather than exclusively on

linguistic form exemplified in isolated sentences. One can (following Leech

and Svartvik 1975, Candlin 1975, Widdowson 1973, 1974 and Wilkins 1972), usefully

for EST, look at meaning as operating at a number of levels such that a string

of lexical items has a layered structure of latent meaning. Strings of language

are multivalent, and communicative competence rests on a capacity to decipher

levels of meaning, peeled off, as it were, from the formal object. Let us

assume that our object is a string of lexical items taken from a text in which

- 3 -
the author is concerned to put across his personal opinions, and in particular

his qualified agreement:. j

'This seems acceptable but we must take X into account'

For this or any other such string of language we could firstly peel off a layer

of meaning which has to do with the basic semantic categories of a grammar

(Wilkin's logico-grammatical categories for example - see Wilkins 1972 and

section 3.2 below) where we examine how Time, Manner, Number, Quantity, Place

are expounded. We note indefinite and future Time, we note particular Quantity

and so on. This notional level of meaning is of course commonplace to ELT

materials, with, however, the important difference indicated above, that under

such headings are now contained various syntactic structures sharing that

notional meaning: the data are reorganised.

If one strips off a further layer, what one might call a layer of propositional

or referential meaning (what Austin (1962) called the 'locutionary force' of an

utterance), this string of lexical items is valued for its objective propositional

content: (we-necessity-take into account-X) asserted by a speaker and open to

confirmation or denial by reference to known experience, viewed objectively. At

this level of meaning, utterances have a literal value. In terms of textbooks,

an interrogative structure means a question, a declarative structure means a

statement, and so on.

If, however, we return to the original string in the text and see it in the

context of an expression of opinion by a particular Speaker/Writer with particular

Listener/Hearers in mind, a pragmatic or sociolinguistic meaning (Austin's

illocutionary force) is suggested whereby this string has the value of qualified

agreement. At this level, strings have the value of indicating personal attitudes

or of directing the behaviour of interlocutors (hearers or readers). Here

interrogatives are not necessarily questions, nor are declaratives statements.

To this point we have concentrated on meaning looked at as a property of single

strings. Since language occurs in connected sequences, strings need also to have

a meaning in context identified: what could be called contextual meaning. At

this level one examines how strings pattern together in sequences and how any
one such string 'has a value in relation to what it presupposes and what it entails.

Widdowson (1973) makes a crucial distinction here when he refers to the way

strings interconnect and cohere grammatically in formal terms (see our earlier

remarks on formal definitions of 'register'), a textual view, and the way in

functional terms strings are looked at as exponents of communicative concepts

such as reports, classifications, hypotheses etc, a discoursal view. Looking

at this level of meaning concerned with connected text more deeply, it is clear

that just as in conversation there are distinct patterns which can be isolated,

- 4 -
for example how individuals - open and close talk, how they interrupt, how they

force repetitions of information and the like (Sinclair, Coulthard et al 1974,

Schegloff 1968, Jefferson 1972) ; so in written texts, including EST texts,

repetitive rhetorical patterns can be observed: a proposition opens, is

exemplified with evidence, the evidence estimated, a counter-proposition is

forestalled, further exemplification is given, an opinion (overt or covert,

tentative or direct) is delivered, and a conclusion made. It is, then, part

of the meaning of a string how it relates formally and functionally to the other

strings in the text which contains it.

In the case of the example above, the this and the X have contextual meaning

in the textual sense in that the string is inexplicable without anaphoric

reference, while the entire string has contextual meaning in the discoursal

sense in that it exemplifies the giving of a tentative opinion after the citing

of evidence and before the making of a conclusion. It has a particular place

within the pattern of the exchange of information and attitude within the whole

context, ie the article in this case.

Learners of language and EST learners in particular, have to decode strings at

all layers of meaning; one cannot only look at EST in terms of particular gram

matical structures fleshed out with technical vocabulary or look only at the

way sentences cohere textually in a context; each sentence has to be evaluated

in terms of its propositional and pragmatic value and the way it suggests a

place in the argument of the discourse.

2. Grammar

An audience in an EST course at postgraduate level presents certain significant

differences from initial learners at school, especially in regard to the teaching

of grammar. Such a student is a learner in transition not a novice, between

English seen as a formal system to be learned through illustrative drill or

grammar translation techniques and English seen as a communicative medium for

the expression of concepts and verbal purposes through which complex intellectual

material has to be grasped, assessed and reacted to. What is essentially a

remedial operation does not involve a faster run over the isolated syntactic

structures of the typical secondary course; on the contrary, at our level the

learner has to become involved in a sorting process whereby he begins to

associate together the surface-structure heterogeneity of schoolbook patterns

under, for example, the kinds of logico-grammatical category (outlined in Wilkins

1972). Under Time, for example, can be grouped not only tense exponents but also

adverbials, conjunctions, temporal phrases and the consecutive ordering of

sentences in a paragraph insofar as they all serve to indicate temporal relations.

The learner has to put his syntactic stock under semantic headings, associating,

let us say, a range of possibility expressions (possibly, may, could, might,

- 5 -
maybe, perhaps, it is possible that etc), themselves learned for their form's

sake at widely different stages in a traditional structural course under a

single conceptual head. This is, then, a central organisational principle.

It clearly involves also an equally significant principle of choice, whereby

sociolinguistic criteria of role, audience and channel determine which ox the

semantically available exponents is to be employed in a given case. 'Maybe'

and 'It is possible that' are semantically equivalent in this organisational

sense; they are not sociolinguistically equivalent in the sense of implying

identical criteria of choice.

A pedagogical implication of this for the typical EST learner is that he is

involved in handling at least partly known data; to be sure, formal error still

exists, and the job of a course like Study Skills in English is to extend his

range of exponents under typically met-with sociolinguistic constraints, but

this is for him a redirecting operation rather than a totally novel one.

One danger, however, lies in wait. This is to imagine that the learning of

however finely tuned a set of sociolinguistically differentiated exponents of

a single semantic concept is equivalent to understanding and 'knowing' in a

generative sense the relations between grammatical form and our multi-layered

meaning. One cannot replace insights into the practical realisation of gram

matical structure which enables the learner to generate his own utterances with

memorising the idioms of a phrase book. Building up that knowledge in productive

and receptive terms involves greater understanding than the learning of idiomatic

lists implies. Achieving that competence involves at least the following aspects

of grammar:

1.The learner needs to be aware of grammar in categorial terms; ie

he has to be aware of word-classes and slots in structure. Part

of his grammatical knowledge involves handling the labelled bracketing

of sentences. He needs this knowledge so that inter-sententially, as

Allen (1973) documents, he can have a clear understanding of the

structure of the English noun-phrase and verb phrase, and be able to

'block off syntactically lengthy and disjunctive sequences for

sectipnal decoding.

2.Equally, as Corder (1973) makes clear, he has to be aware of the ways

English can express grammatical processes such as passivisation,

relativisation, nominalisation and thematisation. He needs this

knowledge not only so that he can see deep-structure semantic

equivalences among heterogeneous surface structures such as the

following:

- 6 -
 a)It has been government policy to preserve monopoly in the

agricultural sector.

b)Preserving monopoly has been the government policy in the

agricultural sector.

c)What the government policy in the agricultural sector has

been is to preserve monopoly.

d)It is in the agricultural sector that it has been government

policy to preserve monopoly.

but also so that he can choose among them according to which of the

units of information in the sentence he wishes to raise to prominence.

Encoding or decoding sentences in a text involves this awareness of

the sentence as a bearer of information (Halliday 1970) made plain

through the grammatical processes indicated here.

3. Finally, he is concerned not so much with producing and understanding

sentences as with the processing and production of connected texts.

As such he has to have a knowledge of the intra-sentential function

of grammar so he can control the cohesive devices of text and employ

the grammatical processes of (2) above to indicate the value of

utterances in discourse.

The implication in pedagogic terms of the aspects of grammar listed above is

that we are not merely concerned to allow the learner to exemplify a linguistic

structure such as 'subject - verb - object - adverbial clause of manner' but to

express in an appropriate way what he wants to say. Such a view involves a

departure, as we have indicated, from those courses which are based on the twin

concepts of linguistic structures graded in an assumed ascending order of dif

ficulty and practice in exemplification. The problem about minimising randomness

in relation to linguistic structures (the purpose of grading) is that it leads

to a maximisation of situational randomness. Our need was precisely the opposite.

We needed to minimise situational randomness. We started therefore from the

position of deciding not 'what structures do we need to teach and how will we

grade and sequence them' but rather 'what situations will our learners be

required to perform in' and what structures will they need?', or, more precisely,

what do they need to do with English, and what structures do -they need for doing it?'

As will be seen later, the specification of the content of a language course based

on this concept of grammar required us not merely to select exponents of particular

grammatical structures but also to select a range of specific activities. The

'linguistic content' of the course, then, was seen as inseparable from the

'activities content'. This is an important point. Traditionally the 'linguistic

content' is selected first, then graded and 'situationalised'. Activities are

- 7 - •
sfeen as a series of operations'which can be'carried out on particular sequences

of linguistic data. In our course, 'activities' and 'linguistic content' were

perceived to be directly interrelated.

3. The Communicative Concepts of Science

As a third foundation for Study Skills in English we have referred to the con

ceptual techniques used by science to talk about its subject matter. Writers

(like Strevens 1971, Widdowson 1973, Candlin 1974, and Williams 1973) make the

point that the practice of science involves processes such as giving directions,

describing, generalising, exemplifying, evaluating, quantifying, differentiating,

concluding etc, which are in themselves a definition of the activities of the

scientist. To be a scientist for example is to be engaged in these and similar

patterns of thought. Williams (1973) outlines a possible taxonomy:

Identification involving defining

questioning

Classifyingtaxonomy
matching
differentiating

Analysingevaluating
generalising -
measuring
simplifying
concluding
testing
predicting

Processinteraction
causality
change of state

Describing. evidence
inference
hypothesis
states
processes
quantification
explanation
instruction

Bearing in mind that such a taxomony could be made up for any branch of intel

lectual activity and-therefore that for any particular specialist learner con

siderable selection would be necessary, we can point to these patterns of

thought as a central input to EST materials. Our initial assumption is that

are not involved in teaching the patterns of thought but rather extending th

ability of the student of science to communicate them in English. Just as in

our comments on Grammar above we suggested that at the level of Study Skills

part of the task was a reorganisational one, so here we lay claim on the

student's professional competence and in language teaching involve him in -

- 8 -
procedures with which he may be already familiar. Once again it is clear that the

task is not (Williams 1973) 'grafting special lexis on to laymen's language' but

designing a course to develop recognition,and production abilities in verbal and

non-verbal modes for well-known.techniques. One then comes to define the language

of science in terms of communicative concepts and then to examine the formal ways

in which, speciality for speciality, these concepts are expounded in oral and

written texts.

An important corollary to the emphasis on the procedures of the scientist, and

a general principle in specialist courses, is that the manipulation of the pro

cedures themselves in the foreign language extends the learn©^"t"s competence as a

scientist. Currently there is a significant emphasis among secondary schoolchildren

which stresses the involvement of the young learner in,developing his own logical

control and communicative ability in language in general through the medium of a

foreign language. In a similar way, the student of Study Skills working with the

language of the operations of science within the themes of his own speciality may

well be involved in a process which has wider educational value than merely as

signing new labels to old concepts.

C. STUDY SKILLS ANALYSIS AND COURSE DESIGN

Study Skills Analysis Course Design

study situation

language language
varieties functions

simulated
SYLLABUS
'study situations'

linguistic data
background information TEACHING
practical classes, etc

EVALUATION remedial
work

•; Figure 1 •• "; - •.-.'.••. • ;

Notes: i) The objectives are governed by our knowledge of the audience and

our research into the nature of study skills.

- 9 -
 ii) The syllabus is determined by our analysis of the various combina

tions of skills which are employed in specific situations, and the

linguistic content is determined by the varieties of language which

manifest themselves in specific specialist fields.

iii) The mode of teaching is determined by the nature of the simulated

'study situations' in relation to particular types of pre-activity

preparation.

iv) Evaluation provides two types of feedback:

a)in terms of remedial requirements

b)in terms of design faults.

1. Study skills analysis

We began our analysis by collecting as much information as we could about the

background of our audience and the types of postgraduate study in which they

would be engaging in this country. The manpower and material resources at our

disposal determined the possible scope of our activities, and we informed the

British Council that we could take 40 students and run four specialist groups.

The final choice of subject area was determined on the basis of data supplied,by

the British Council in terms of the distribution of foreign students over a

range of specialisms. From this information it seemed sensible to concentrate on

Engineering, Economics, Urban Planning and what became known as Foreign Service,

a term for the training undertaken by overseas postgraduate students who were

embarking on a career in the Foreign Service of their respective countries.

Having chosen the subject areas, we then requested the British Council to send

us only those students who were going to study in one of these fields.

After we had determined our subject areas, we set out to obtain as much informa

tion as we could about the type of course students would be taking this country,

at what institutions, and for what length of time. We wrote to the institutions

concerned for information on course-structures, modes of teaching and set reading

lists. On the basis of this information we were able to assemble a picture of

the types of study situation our students would find themselves in and the types

of activities in which they would have to engage.

We discovered that most of our students would be in this country for at least

one and possibly two academic years. In most cases the terminal award would be

a master's degree. The mode of instruction in most cases would be a combination

of lecture, seminar and tutorial. It was assumed that each student would

naturally engage in a great deal of private study.

Our next step was to analyse these various modes of instruction and private study

in terms of the particular skills and combination of skills which the students

- 10 -
would have to employ, and to produce an inventory. Figure 2 illustrates the

macro-skills and combinations of macro-skill under each mode heading: -

MODE Lecture Seminar Tutorial Private Study

SKILLS a) Listening a) Listening a) Listening a) Reading

Comprehension C omprehens i on Comprehens ion Comprehens ion

b) Note-taking b) Note-taking b) Note-taking b) Note-taking

c) Ordering c) Oral c) Oral c) Ordering of

points in a delivery delivery points in
hierarchy of from notes/ from notes/ hierarchy of
importance without without importance
notes notes

d) Formal
(academic)
writing,
report
writing

Figure 2

Each of these 'macro' skills was further analysed into 'micro' skills to produce

data which would allow us to plan the activities of our course. There is not

space here to reproduce the full inventory. However, we can give an^example.

Reading comprehension is understood as a generic term for a range of different

types of reading skill or, alternatively, a set of reading strategies. We dif

ferentiated for our purposes between two basic strategies, one for skimming pur

poses and for obtaining an overview or gist of a body of written material, one

for intensive study of highly complex data. Both strategies we regarded as being

extremely important, although we spent perhaps more time on the latter. We spent

much time trying to analyse what the reader must be able to do when seeking to

assimilate a body of written data. We have established (Section B above) that

it is not enough simply to 'understand' the meaning of a text in terms of its

syntax and lexis. In addition it is necessary to understand the significance of

a text. In other words the student must be able to do more than simply analyse

the semantic and syntactic interrelationships in a text. He must be able to

say that 'This text means X' but also to ask questions of the order of 'Is this

text significant for me?', 'Is it important?', 'What points are of primary

interest?', 'What are secondary?', 'Is this fact or opinion?', 'Is this argument

tendentious?', 'Is this hypothesis well founded?' and so on. In other words we

regarded the macro-skill 'Reading' as consisting of a dynamic attack on a given

text, during which it is subjected to a range of questions posed by the reader.

The same approach was adopted for the other macro-skills. 'Listening compre

hension' was thus a convenient label for a range used, to which students would

put their knowledge of the language while they were 'listening' to it. Again,

a list of micro-skills was produced: the student would have to be able to analyse

- 11 -
the incoming information in relation to specific needs of his own and to

formulate questions such as 'What is the significance of this message?', 'Is

the speaker giving me facts or opinions?', 'Can I accept this argument?',

'How does this information relate to my own opinion?', and so on. In other

words, we assumed that in both reading and 'listening' the student would be

processing data and analysing them in relation to his own knowledge of the

subject matter of the written or spoken text. On every occasion he would

have to be aware of the 'significance' of the text as well as its 'meaning'.

Of equal importance was the fact that in any one 'learning situation', whether

in a lecture or seminar or when engaging in private study, the student would

be called upon to draw simultaneously on a range of skills, and not just one

in isolation. In a seminar, for example, he would need not only to listen to

what was said, but also to respond to questions, initiate discussions, challenge

points of view, take notes of important points, perhaps use written notes as

a basis for elaborating orally on a particular topic. This fact has important

implications for our later decisions about the design and content of the course

itself.;

2. Questions of Course Design

Our decisions on the design and content of the course were governed to a large

extent by the following factors:

1)Our knowledge of the intended audience in terms of their previous

English language learning and proposed field of study.

2)The time at our disposal (3 weeks)

3)O^r concept of 'grammar'

4)Our analysis of the study situations which our students would encounter.

One of our chief problems, for which we have yet to find a really satisfactory

solution, relates primarily to the first of these four factors. We assumed that

our audience would have completed a course in English as a foreign, or indeed

second, language and would have a firm grasp of English sentence structure. It

was our intention to use this level of proficiency as a basis for advanced work

not on English 'grammar' but on the use of English for particular (study) purposes.

In fact we discovered that, although many students had been tested in their

command of English at their respective home institutions, not a few who had

attained an 'advanced' level skill made many 'grammatical' errors when called

upon to produce English utterances. This situation has happened every year

since the course was first mounted and the intractable problem has been the

integration of an efficient remedial programme into the mainstream course which

takes it for granted that the students can handle structures accurately. We

are aware, therefore, that more work needs to 'be done by everyone concerned in

- 12 -
the selection of students for this course. Another possibility is that we may

indeed have reached the point where we might have to consider that the English

Study Skills course is perhaps aimed at an idealised audience which in fact does

not exist.

Clearly the second factor listed above exerts a grave constraint on the design

and content of the course. Basically ,the question is; what can one hope to

achieve in the three weeks? We decided that in terms of a measurable improvement

in the performance of students we could not hope to achieve very much. However,

we considered that the following aims were both desirable in principle and

realisable in practice: ...

i) to give students maximum insight into the nature of the uses which

they would require to make of their knowledge of English language

ii) to give them as much awareness as possible about their own individual

problems and areas of weakness and help them to diagnose their own

long-term learning needs and provide them with structures for

systematic and profitable self-study

iii) to give them as much practice as possible in performing in simulated

study situations using English.

Aims i) and ii) we regarded as being of fundamental importance. We decided that

if the student could be made maximally aware of what was in store for him during

the period of his studies in this country he would then have a much clearer idea

of what his own particular needs were likely to be at a time when he could still

consult with the course tutors. He would thus be able to use his time to best

advantage when he was on his own.

The time factor together with our decision that the course should be 'activities-

based' rather than 'structure-based' and our knowledge of the specialisms of our

students provided us with criteria for decisions about the means of realising the

above aims. We made three basic decisions:

i) the activities should be seen to be relevant to the student's

future language needs

ii) the activities should be seen to be interrelated and mutually

motivated

iii) the number of activities should be limited and practised cyclically.

We may now move to a description in some detail of two of the boxes in the

Course Design flowchart, namely syllabus and teaching

- 13 -
3. Syllabus

Drawing up a detailed timetable/syllabus for the course was not easy. Firstly

we established the main components of the course and then considered the nature

of the various activities which belonged to each component. Finally we con

structed a highly integrated, not to say intricate programme. What follows

now is a statement of the main components with the activities listed under each

heading

A Specialised Topic Groups

Tnese corresponded to the four major fields of postgraduate study, namely

Economic/Business Studies, Foreign Service/International Relations,

Engineering, Planning. Specialist topic group activities took up by far

the major part of the course. Each group took part in a number of different

types of session, namely:

1.Seminar sessions: reading comprehension and associated exercises.

2.Language laboratory sessions: note-taking, close listening exercises,

pair-work.

3.Televised seminar sessions: two sessions on specialised topics led

by staff from the particular disciplines.

4.Project and case-study sessions: problem-solving 'games'.

Details of some of these sessions are given in the next section of this paper.

B.Remedial Groups

Here students were allocated to groups on the basis of types of learners'

error and not in terms of their specialist field of study.

C.Individual Tutorial Sessions '.

This type of session allowed tutors to discuss the problems of individual

students to hand back work and to give advice.

D.Assignments

Students were expected to do a considerable amount of private work, much

of which was essential for later class-work.

E.Orientation Sessions

These formed a 2\-day block at the beginning of the course and served to

introduce students to the type of activities they would be engaged in

during the main course.

- 14 -
F. General Lecture Sessions

Our major design problem was to integrate these different sessions in such

a way that the activities of each were motivated by preceding activities

and acted as preparation for later activities. Here is a schematised

version of one strand in the course.

General Session Practice Activities Simulated Situations

Lecture 'The Reading Comprehension I In the language lab

structure of a Analysed in the light of Pair work: One student
written the lecture summarises the reading
argument' comprehension text, the
Step 1 Step 2 other student questions
and evaluates argument

Step 5

\/

Lecture: Formulating questions

'Asking questions, about a lecture text
evaluating
arguments' Step 4

Step 3
Assignment: prepare
reading materials for
TV seminar, analysis
of argument - TV Tutorial
preparation of
discussion points Step 8
Step 7

\/

View and discuss

VTR of overseas
students in a
seminar
= is input to
situation

Step 6

Figure 3

As can be seen from the above chart of interlocking events, students were re

quired to carry out a range of different types of activity. These activities

are at least as significant a part of the syllabus as the 'linguistic' content.

As was stated above, we decided from the beginning that it was not enough merely

to provide students, with examples of English used for scientific or specialist

purposes but that it was equally essential that students practice the activities

which would be required of them later on. In this way they would immediately be

placed in the position of actually having to use English as opposed to merely

analysing it or carrying out stereotyped 'language classroom' operations on

exemplifications of English structure.

- 15 -
It is clear that producing a timetable for the total course was a very complicated

task, since the.integration exemplified above had to be sustained to the end of

the three-week course. , The advantages of such an integrated programme are that,

firstly, each session is:motivated by,sessions which preceded it and serves, as an

input to later sessions. The relevance of each session is consequently .clear to

the students. Secondly, the cyclic nature of the course permits the repetition

of a series of activities while permitting variation in the teaching materials.

Unfortunately there are also disadvantages. Firstly, flexibility is reduced

significantly, since it is difficult to change one part of the course without

having to carry out a series of consequent changes in the remainder of the pro

gramme. Secondly, it is easy for students to become confused unless the structure

of the course is explained carefully and in detail before the course begins. To

this end we introduced this year for the first time a 2^-day 'orientation session'

in order that the students could have time to study the design of the course and

to practice some of the activities which would recur regularly during the course

itself.

In this discussion of the syllabus so far we have been discussing the design of

the course and the types of activities which students are required to perform.

We must now discuss the 'linguistic' content of the syllabus.

The principle guiding our choice of data is quite simple. In every case we use

'real data which we then modify for particular purposes. Details of examples of

some of these modifications are given in the next section of the article. We

have found that there is little, if any, published ELT material which can be used

on a course of this type. Either the style of examples of, say, 'scientific'

English has been of doubtful validity or the subject matter has been at best of

tangential interest and usually far too elementary in terms of its content. We

decided to acquire our data from 'source' as it were and collected as many texts

as necessary from books and articles which the students will have to read during

their postgraduate courses. Audio-material in every case consists of actual

lectures given by specialists to final-year or postgraduate audiences. This

decision to use nothing but real data results in a considerable amount of

organisational work and is totally dependent on the goodwill of lecturers in the

specialist departments concerned. We are glad to take the opportunity here to

record our extreme gratitude to all our collegues at Lancaster who have contributed

material for our coursesover the last few years. Without their help, our task ,

would have been exceedingly difficult.

4. Teaching

The teaching methods are best described in relation to the four main components

of the course, namely general sessions, practice activities, simulated situations

and remedial sessions.

- 16 -
General sessions

In earlier versions of Study Skills in English general sessions played a much

more important role than they do in our latest version, namely Study Skills in

Engli^h 1974

Originally general sessions took the form of lectures to the whole audience.

These lectures were of two types. Firstly, some of the lectures dealt with

aspects of language function. Secondly, there were lectures on various points

of formal grammar. Examples of lecture titles of the first type include:

a)Asking Questions in Seminars

b)Focussing.Information and Attention

c)Logico-grammatical Categories I

d)Logico-grammatical Categories II.

e)Categories of Communicative Function

Lectures of the second type include:

a)The Syntax of Time and Aspect

b)Specification

c)Modality
d)Temporal/Locational Relations

All the lectures were accompanied by quite substantial handouts which were dis

tributed to students. These handouts consisted basically of lists of exemplications

of the subject of the lecture and were designed to provide the student with in

formation which he could use later on after the course. The handouts also served

as reference lists during practical sessions in that students were asked to find

examples in texts of the various logico-grammatical categories, functions and

syntactic structures discussed in lectures. They were also expected to consult

these handouts when writing their assignments.

It was as a result of our experience with these handouts in group session work

that we decided that the lectures were not in fact very successful. We found

when we tried to analyse texts according to various logico-grammatical, functional

and grammatical headings that in fact many of our categories were either too^

vague or were pseudo-categories or that'categories overlapped considerably. In

short, we were faced with the fact that language is multifunctional and that

attempts to dissect it into discrete functional categories, while perhaps

theoretically desirable, lead to large problems when attempts are made to measure

actual utterances against only one functional heading. Our students did not seem

able to tackle these problems successfully.,

We decided therefore to reduce drastically the number 'of general sessions in 1974,

allowing as a consequence considerably more time for practice activities in '•:•:

specialist 'groups.;...-..;.• •- • .•:•••••

- 17 -
 Practice Activities

These are of two basic types:

a)those relating to the analysis of discourse

b)those relating to specific simulated situations.

Teaching in this context is best described as organising and monitoring. There

was little overt teaching. Students were asked to read specialist texts or

listen to excerpts from specialist lectures and to carry out a series of operations

ranging from comprehension questions of the 'what is the passage about1 type to

analysing the devices in written and spoken English for focussing the attention

of the reader/listener to those parts of the discourse regarded by the writer/

speaker as being particularly important. A range of these exercises is given in

the next section of this paper.

Simulated Situations

These fall into three categories:

a)lectures on specialist topics;

b)'pair-work' (ie students working in pairs) on the content of these

lectures - generally involving oral summary, question-answer, argument,

etc;

c)televised seminars on specialist topics.

Again, teaching in the sense of presenting new information played little part

in these activities. Students worked on prepared materials, whether tapes or

texts and specific tasks were worked out by tutors before the course began. The

most important function was monitoring performance, and here both tutor and

students were heavily involved. This was particularly true of c). These seminars

•• were recorded on video-tape and played back afterwards in order that students

could have an opportunity to assess their own performance and to discuss with

tutors particular aspects of the seminar situation.

Remedial Sessions

Here teaching was much more conventional and followed the pattern of presentation

of information,iconsolidation by means of exercise and evaluation of the degree

to which students had assimilated the new material.

These sessions were organised not according to specialism but in relation to

specific grammatical topics. Ideally they should have been sessions which were

organised to deal with specific problems experienced by individual students.

This would require, firstly, a very reliable diagnostic test; secondly, a large

battery of differentiated self-instructional learning packages arranged in terms

of grammatical point and specific linguistic skill; and, thirdly, multi-media

facilities with individual study carels. None of these three requirements can be

met at the present time.

- 18 -
In earlier years we tried to react 'on the spot' when we became aware of these

problems which our students had not solved before coming to Lancaster. It was

not possible however to produce effective remedial programmes 'on the spot',

mainly because of shortage of manpower and the lack of packaged remedial teaching

materials. Recently we attempted to predict the remedial needs of students and

we employed two members of staff to produce a programme of remedial English which

was interwoven with the main course from the beginning. This has been a reasonably

satisfactory solution from an administrative point of view, but we have yet to

solve the problem of reacting sufficiently quickly and effectively to learning

problems which come to light in the main part of the course. If a student as a

result of doing a piece of written work, for example, asks for a remedial class

on a problem which we have not 'predicted', our solution tends to be of a rather

ad hoc nature, and consequently possibly not as effective as it might have been

if we had had more notice. In short, we are conscious of a rather serious lack

of 'back-up' facilities, which is a function rather of lack of finance than of

anything else. Lancaster University does not mount any EFL or ESL courses, and

consequently the course is short of a bank of remedial teaching materials.

We need to say a word about the case-studies which each specialist group carried

out during the course. These were particularised projects involving teamwork

and the use of real data to solve real problems. The work was monitored by a

specialist in the given field and the projects and the data were provided by

the respective specialist department.

These case-studies were not simulated situations - they were real in the sense

that there were real problems to be solved and they could only be solved on a

team basis. Consequently the use of English for specific^communicative purposes

was absolutely motivated by the need to achieve particular goals. Student interest

and motivation were well stimulated by these case-studies and we regard them as a

very successful component of the course as a whole. Details of these case studies

are as follows:

1974 Group A: A role-playing case study: a company merger. (Economists.)

Group B: Simulation of a British Cabinet meeting (Foreign Service.)

Group C: A case study of electricity supply in a remote

valley area.(Engineers.)

Group D: A case study of regional planning and the

issues involved.(Planners.)

D. SOME SAMPLE MATERIALS

On page 15, a schematised ver^ion of one strand of the course was given. As an

illustration of our methodolgy, some discussion follows of what constitutes the

practice activity Reading Comprehension I for the specialist topic group Foreign

Service.

- 19 -
1.Reading Comprehension Exercises

The students were each given copies of an article which had been set as pre

liminary reading for a tutorial they would later have with an outside tutor in

their own specialist area. Accompanying the article was a set of comprehension

questions divided into two sections: Section A, which aimed to develop skimming

skills, and Section B, intended as a deep reading exercise (see above, page 11),

The students were instructed to read through the Section A questions before

starting the passage and to ask for clarification if the questions were not

clear to them. The questions were simple True/False questions and could be

answered with a fairly superficial reading of the passage; most of them fall

within the category of 'literal' questions as proposed by the Barrett taxonomy.

The title of the passage was also discussed.

Pre-reading and discussion of the Section A questions and the title of the

article aimed to develop in students a sense of reading for a specific purpose.

They were instructed to read the passage as quickly as possible, simply looking

for the answers to the questions and nothing else, ie their task was to find out

whether the passage substantiated or denied a number of statements. This

replicated as closely as possible one of the main reasons for which students

might wish to use skimming techniques. It was also often necessary to give

some brief instruction regarding the avoidance of vocalization and the possibility

of increasing eye span width. It must be admitted that training students in

skimming techniques was very difficult, especially at our level and with the type

of text difficulty they encountered; the students tended to be perfectionists and

the prose was often turgid. In our experience it took a great deal of practice

and a good deal of 'moralizing' on the tutor's part to persuade students that

it was not a crime to subject a text to one's own purpose, ie to read it to

extract simply the information that one wanted from it.

Having completed and corrected Section A (the faster students correcting themselves

by re-reading the text), the student began Section B: deep reading. The questions

in this section utilized the Barrett taxonomy and ideas from McKay and Mountford

(1972) in their design.

2.Paraphrase'Exercises

The third step (usually a separate session) was what we loosely termed 'paraphrase'.

This could focus on any of the areas discussed in section Bl - 3 above (pp 3-9y.

To give an example, the following sentence might form the basis of discussion:

Even if both dogma and growing power should push Peking toward a :

global role, given its internal problems the transition will be

long, and China is bound to remain' in the meantime a potential

super-power, ie a major player presently limited in scope but ; '

exerting considerable power globally. './..'

(Stanley Hoffman: "Weighing the Balance of Power' in
Foreign Affairs Vol 5 July 1972, p 620

- 20 -
Questions which relate to intra-sentential function and NP/VP unity (see Section

B2 above) are as follows:

1.At what point in the sentence would you divide it in two?

2.Taking part 1:

(a)At what point would you divide it in two?

(b)Where would you make another division?

(c)What is the main clause?

(d)What structures introduce the sub-clause?

(e)Make up a sentence using the first sub-clause marker plus a

main clause.

(f)Make up a sentence using the second sub-clause plus a main clause.

(g)Make up two sentences of the same type as (d) and (e) with

different sub-clause markers

(h) Make up two sentences with the same meaning as (d) and (e) but

with different structures.

3.From 'a major player ...' to the end:

(a)what points in the sentence can be expanded using which?

(b)What other words have to be added if which is used?

A syntactic/semantic paraphrase question:

4.Re-express the following phrases, keeping the meaning the same

but changing the structure if necessary:

push Peking towards a global role

the transition will be long

in the meantime

is bound to remain

presently,limited in scope

exerting considerable attraction

These questions can hardly claim to be revolutionary: their main claim is that

they relate to structural and semantic problems that the student is going to have

to face in this and similar texts. They are aimed at presenting the student with

a strategy for dealing with complex syntax as well as at bringing to light the

particular problems posed by this specific sentence. Presented as they are above,

they appear rather bald. In fact, they represented a strategy for class discussion

rather than a set exercise which the student had to work through on his own.

Question 2 (f) for example, gave rise to considerable discussion and experimentation

towards the precise structural and semantic function of given as a subordinator:

What was its logicosemantic function? Could it be replaced by other subordinators-

syntactically/semantically? Similarly, Question 4 raised problems of audience,

role and channel for discussion.

- 21 -
3. Vocabulary Extension

An exercise which concentrated on building up vocabulary and, very importantly,

collocations is as follows:•

(the text to which these questions relate is omitted for

reasons of space; however, it is hoped that their purpose

will still be clear)

1.(a) What nouns in this passage are related in meaning to the

noun model as it is used here?

(Expected answers:

design, blueprint, system, policy, structure)

(b)What verbs are used with these nouns? eg 'the model moderated ...

the accomplishments of rulers.' Give other examples in this way.

(Probable answers:

the blueprint is inspired ... the past

the model restrained violence

the model provided flexibility

is in favour

is tempting

the system is coming to an end

.. .etc)

(c)Use the word model in a sentence of your own on this topic.

2.(a) Pick out all the words and phrases in paragraph 3 that are to

do with types of relationship between states.

(Probable answers:

balance-of-power

a contest of actors

ambitions...have to be contained

by the power of other states equilibrium

fixed blocs

(b) Use one of these words/phrases in a sentence of your own on

the same topic,

i
The main problem with these types of question was that they did not provide the

student with enough opportunity for practising the structures and lexis discussed.

This problem could be complicated by differing ability levels within a class. In

this case we were confronted with what we have described above as the problem of

reacting sufficiently quickly and effectively to learning difficulties. This

could be solved by building up a bank of supplementary exercises, but as yet time

and manpower have precluded this.

A further difficulty is also evident: it was easy for the student to do well in a

class run on the above lines and yet retain very little at the end. So far, we

- 22 -
have given insufficient attention to follow-up from one lesson to the next. This

problem could be fairly easily overcome by giving short and frequent tests.

4.Discoursal Exercises

It will be noted that Reading Comprehension I is preceded by a lecture on 'The

Structure of Written Argument' (p.15). A handout exemplifying and expanding the

points made regarding discoursal meaning accompanied the lecture and was applied

to the reading text. Exercises which concentrated on discoursal meaning were of

the following general type:

I. Students label sentences or parts of sentences according to headings

such as hypothesis, qualification, exemplification etc.

II. Students provide explicit linguistic markers for the rhetorical patterns

to be found in a text.

III. Students underline topic sentences.

IV. Students sum up each paragraph of a passage in a sentence or phrase,

and then rewrite their summary in a connected paragraph.

5.Questioning Strategies

Reading Comprehension I was followed by a lecture 'On Asking Questions and Evalua

ting Arguments'. The points covered in this lecture were applied in a later case

(see Step 4 of diagram, page 15 ) and again as part of the preparation for a

language laboratory session. The following assignment exercise based on Reading

Comprehension I is set as preparation for the language laboratory and also

indirectly for the TV tutorial:

1.Imagine that, after reading this article, you were to have a seminar

with the writer:

(a)Make up one question for paragraphs 2-8 that you would like to

ask him.

(b)After you have made up these questions, refer to the handout 'On

Asking Questions'. What is the function of each of the questions

you have made up?

(c)Use the examples given in the handout to make up one question for

paragraphs 9-17.

(d)Use the examples in the handout to make up one more question for

paragraphs 2-8. The function can be the same as your original

question, but the way you express it must be different.

2.Tomorrow, in the language lab, you will have an opportufti-ty to discuss

this article with a colleague:

(a) List five topics you think might be discussed with your colleague.

- 23 -
 (b) .,••• Formulate a question to put to your colleague about each of

; these topics. .

(e) What is the function of the questions you have formulated?

(d) Make up two more questions with a function different from those

you have already formulated.

This exercise was designed not only to sharpen the students' critical abilities

but also to highlight the way in which role relationships can affect both the

function and formulation of questions. The exercise*moves from a fairly straight

forward imaginary situation where the student probes the writer about what he had

written (here one expects the student to be largely concentrating on making his

doubts and criticisms of the article explicit) to a more complex activity: the

student probes a fellow-student about his reactions to what they have both read.

In shifting from the first situation to the second (and one supposes that the

student would initially regard this as a relatively trivial change), the student

should become aware of a shift in style and function; that is, of how doubts and

criticisms can be formulated differently.

6. Pairwork Exercises (Language Laboratory)

It might be of interest to give a few details regarding the language laboratory

activity to which the above exercise (together with a summary exercise) acted as

input. In the language laboratory the student tape recorders were adapted to

allow two students to record on one tape deck. (Many modern laboratories have this

facility; failing this, junction boxes can be made up fairly easily). The students'

brief was a suitably elaborated version of that given on page 15 (Step 5). They

discussed for five minutes or longer, wound back and monitored what they had done,

making a critical appraisal of their discussion and questioning techniques together

with the tutor (see above, page 18). This kind of work has proved to be an

extremely valuable follow-up to reading and written work in that it has provided

students with a context in which they have had to draw extensively on material

(and therefore lexis and probably structures and rhetorical techniques) which they

had met in their reading. As a language laboratory exercise, pairwork has the

advantage of involving all students simultaneously in discussion: no one can opt

out as is,possible in class discussion. This type of exercise requires skilful,

efficient and intensive monitoring by the tutor and some experience in phasing

each pair's rewind and monitor steps; also students need to be encouraged to be

critical of themselves and each other. (Eg the tutor monitors something that

fairly obviously requires comment; the students pass it by; the tutor stops the

tape, elicits rather than directly makes the comment, and then says something to

the effect of 'Well, why didn't you stop the tape and discuss this yourselves?'

he then lies in wait for the students to pass something else by, and repeats the

same performance. In other words, the tutor's technique is to make it obvious to

the students that part of the activity is self-monitoring). A further advantage

- 24 -
of this type of activity, in terms of the course structure, is that all students

had a chance to discuss the topic, before the TV tutorial class and should

therefore have felt reasonably familiar with the topic and how it might be discussed.

E: CONCLUSION' -

In the light of our experience with the course over several years, we believe that

it does meet, however imperfectly, the real needs of the students for whom it is

designed. We are aware, however, of several problems which must be solved before

we would claim more in terms of the success of the course than we do at the moment.

In relation to the three key variables (the course itself, the audience and the

time at our disposal) we believe that the design of the course is basically

adequate, given that the competence of the audience for whom it is written meets

the assumptions of the course designers. Even if the audience in terms of their

command of English are less competent than is assumed by the course, we believe

that the design is still adequate if the timescale is extended considerably beyond

three weeks.

Having said this, however, we feel that we would need to re-evaluate the objectives

if we had to assume that the duration of the course would always be three to three-

and-a-half weeks and that the audience would continue to include a reasonably large

group of members who had failed to reach that command of English which is taken for

granted as the basis from which work during the course can proceed.

Since it is likely that future timescales will be the same as before and that the

audience will not change radically (although we always hope that a way will be

found to select students more delicately than is the case at present), it is the

objectives themselves which will probably change.

How the objectives will be redefined is a question which has yet to be discussed.

At this stage, however, we can give some idea of the likely direction by listing

in summary form the points we shall have to consider seriously.

We shall have to simplify the structure by reducing the range of activities,

concentrating perhaps more on the need to improve the reading and writing skills of

our audience. In particular we are worried about the extent to which 'errors' in

student work cannot always be classified easily in relation to obvious 'points of

grammar'. Very often they can be (however crudely), but often students produce^

'stylistic infelicities' which reflect a lack of precision in their modes of

thought - ie they produce written and/or spoken utterances which are either

illogical or else vague and unclear. We shall need, therefore, to think more

about the relationship between linguistic skills and thinking.

Also we shall need to watch that the 'grammar' component of the course does not

become merely a sophisticated 'phrasebook'. In other words, while we believe that

the quest for stylistic variants in relation to communicative purposes is a valid

objective, we must be careful to include instruction in the linguistic code which

- 25 -
will allow students to construct their own utterances rather than merely

'reproduce' examples of utterances culled from a variety of sources. In this

connection we shall also have to continue the quest for a really effective way

of integrating remedial work into the course structure as a whole.

C N Candlin

J M Kirkwood

H M Moore

Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language/

Department of Russian and Soviet Studies

University of Lancaster

- 26 -
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allen J P B: 'An Approach to the Revision of Basic Sentence Structure in a

Remedial English Syllabus' in Corder and Roulet, 1973 (see infra).

Allen J P B and Widdowson H G: Focus on General Science. OUP 1972.

Allen J P B and Widdowson H G: 'Teaching the Communicative Use of English'

in IRAL. Y2l 1

Austin J L: How to do Things with Words. OUP 1962.

Barber, C L: "Some measurable characteristics of modern scientific prose" in

Contributions to English Syntax and Philology. Almqvist and Wiksell (Stockholm)
1962.

Bartolic, L: 'English for Engineering' English Language Teaching. Vol 17 1

(1962).' "

Brasnett, C: English for Engineers. Methuen 1968.

Broughton, G: A Technical Reader for Advanced Students. Macmillan 1965.

Candlin, C N: 'The Status of Pedagogical Grammars' in Corder and Roulet, 1973

(see infra).

Candlin, C N: 'An approach to treating extratextual function in a language

teaching syllabus' in Corder and Roulet, 1974 (see infra).

Candlin, C N (ed): The Communicative Teaching of English. Longman 1975.

Candlin, C N: 'Some metalinguistic problems of communicative language

learning'. Forthcoming 1975.

Candlin, C N, Bruton, C and Leather, J: 'English Language Skills for Overseas

Doctors and Medical Staff in Work in Progress Reports I, II, III, University
of Lancaster 1974. (Mimeographed).

Candlin, C N, Bruton, C and Leather, J: 'Doctors in Casualty: specialist

course design from a data base'. Forthcoming in IRAL.

Candlin, C N, Kirkwood, J M and Moore, H M: Study Skills in English I and II.

University of Lancaster 1974.

Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research: Science and

Technology in a Second Language: Papers from a Seminar Held at the University
of Birmingham, 1971. CILT (Reports and Papers 7) 1971.

Close, R A: The English We Use For Science. Longman 1965.

Cobb, D: 'Materials for Listening Skill Development and Aural Comprehension

Testing'. Unpublished language laboratory materials developed at the Asian
Institute of Technology, Bangkok, 1971.

Corder, S P: Introducing Applied Linguistics. Penguin 1973.

Corder, S P and Roulet, E (eds): Theoretical Linguistic Models in Applied

Linguistics. AIMAV (Brussels) and Didier (Paris) 1973.
Corder, S P and Roulet, E (eds): Linguistic Insights in Applied Linguistics.
AIMAV (Brussels) and Didier (Paris) 1974.

Ewer, J R and Hughes-Davies, G: 'Further Notes on Developing an English

Programme for Students of Science and Technology' in English Language Teaching
26_ 1 (1971) and (1972).

Ewer, J R and Latorre, G: 'Preparing an English Course for Students of

Science' in ELT 21 3 (1967).

Garwood, C H: The Examinations of Certain Linguistic Structures Contained in

Chemistry Textbooks Used in Courses for the General Certificate of Education.
M.A. London University, 1963. (Thesis).

Garwood, C H: 'The Teaching of English to the Non-English-Speaking Technical

Student' in ELT 24 2-3 (1970).

Griffiths, G R: 'Honest Deception' (the teaching of irony). University of,

Lancaster 1971. (Mimeographed).

Gorosch, M: 'English in the Industrial Workshop' in IRAL 3 4 (1965).

Halliday, M A K: 'Language Structure and Language Function' in Lyons, J (ed):

New Horizons in Linguistics. Penguin 1970.

Hawkey, M: English Practice for Engineers. Longman 1970.

Herbert, A J: The Structure of Technical English. Longman 1965.

Hoffman, S: 'Weighing the Balance of Power' in Foreign Affairs 50 (1972).

Huddleston, R D: The Sentence in Written English. CUP 1972.

Huddles ton, R D and others: The Linguistic Properties of Scientific English.

Communications Research Centre, Department of General Linguistics, University
College, London, 1968. (The OSTI Report).

Hymes, D: 'On Communicative Competence' in Pride, J B and Holmes, J:

Sociolinguistics. Penguin 1972.

Jakobovits, L A: 'Implications of Recent Psycholinguistic Developments for

the Teaching of a Second Language' in Language Learning 18 (1968).

Jefferson, G: 'Side sequences' in Sudnow, D (ed): Studies in Social

Interaction. New York Free Press 1972.

Kirkwood, J M: 'Towards an Integrated Programme for Advanced Students of

Russian' in Audio Visual Language Journal 11 3 (1973).

Leech, G N and Svartvik, J: A Communicative Grammar of English. Forthcoming

from Longman.

Leong, C T: An Examination of Certain Linguistic Features of Textbooks on

Physics up to General Certificate of Education at the Ordinary Level. M.A.
London University, 1960. (Thesis).

Mackay, R and Mountford, A: 'A Programme in English for Postgraduate Students in

the Faculties of Sciences,^ Applied Sciences and Agriculture at the University of
Newcastie-on-Tyne' A S LA/A I M A V Conference (Stockholm) 1972. (Mimeographed).

Palmer^, A; 'Teaching Communication' in Language Learning 20 1 (1970).

- 28 -
Perren, C E (ed): Science and Technology in a Second Language. CILT 1971.

Pittman, G A: Preparatory Technical English. Longman 1960.

Ravem, R: 'Language Acquisition in a Second Language Environment' in Richards

(see infra; reproduced from IRAL 6 2 (1968)).

Richards, J C: (ed): Error Analysis; Perspectives on Second Language

Acquisition. Longman 1974.

Righter, G H and Moore, H M: 'Towards a Model of Performance' in Candlin,

1975 (see supra).

Saunders, P: Introductory English: A Course for Technical Students Overseas.

ULP 1967.

Schegloff, E A: 'Sequencing in Conversational Openings' in American

Anthropologist 70 6 (1968).

Selinker, L and Trimble, L: Technical Communication for Foreign Engineering

Students. Seattle: Office of Engineering Research, College of Engineering,
University of Washington, Seattle, 1968.

Selinker, L, Trimble, L and Vroman, R: Working Papers for English in Science

and Technology. Seattle Office of Engineering Research, College of Engineering,
University of Washington, Seattle, 1972.

Sinclair, J and Coulthard, R M: Towards an Analysis of Discourse. OUP 1975.

Strevens, P: 'The Medium of Instruction (Mother Tongue/Second Language) and

the Formation of Scientific Concepts' in IRAL 9 3 (1971).

Strevens, P: 'Technical, Technological and Scientific English' in ELT 27 3

(1973).

Theobald, D W: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Methuen 1968.

Thornley, G C: Scientific English Practice. Longman 1964.

Turner, G W: 'The Passive Construction in English Scientific Writing' in

Aumla 18 (1962).

Widdowson, H G: 'The Teaching of English through Science' in Dakin, J and

others: Language in Education. OUP 1968.

Widdowson, H G: 'The Teaching of Rhetoric to Students of Science and

Technology' in Perren (see supra).

Widdowson, H G: 'Directions in the Teaching of Discourse' in Corder and

Roulet, 1973 (see supra).

Widdowson, H G: 'The Deep Structure of Discourse and the Use of Translation'

in Corder and Roulet, 1974 (see supra).

Widdowson, H G: 'Two Types of Communication Exercise' in Candlin, 1975.

Wilkins, D: An Investigation into the Linguistic and Situational Content of

the Common Core in a Unit/Credit System. Council of Europe (Strasburg) 1972.
(Mimeographed).
Williams, R: A Function-Based Course in English as a Foreign Language in
Science and Technology. University of Lancaster 1973. (Mimeographed).

Wood, A M M: 'Tunnels for Roads and Motorways' in Quarterly Journal of

Engineering Geology, j> (1972).

(Various authors): Special English Series. Collier-Macmillan 1970.

© British Council 2015 / F044
The British Council is the United Kingdom’s international organisation
for cultural relations and educational opportunities.