With the continued expansion of English as an integral communication tool for education, science, technology, business, and commerce, post-secondary technical students are increasingly finding themselves in positions that require them to administer high-tech studies in technical English. If you teach EFL, business or technical English, or teach a technical subject in English, you can use ESP workshops to successfully promote better reading and comprehension among LEP students.
A group of my limited English proficient (LEP) students studying an electrical engineering class on antenna design had an American textbook in English, so it was necessary for me to convert chapters of the text in a series of ESP reading and comprehension workshops designed to allow students to practice strategies for deconstructing written text as an aid to comprehension.
A Series of Workshops
When my LEP Spanish-speaking law school students were asked to study aspects of capital punishment used in the US, I again produced a series of materials such as written workshops and full multimedia presentations.
So that my LEP Economics students do comparative studies of the population of Colombia (population 44,222,000) with:
o South Korea (population 47,700,000)
o Poland (population 38,587,000)
o Argentina (population 38,428,000)
o South Africa (population 45,026,000)
o Ukraine (population 48,523,000)
A series of ESP workshops and multimedia presentations proved invaluable in furthering her reading and understanding of her program’s technical materials in English. The process of creating effective ESP writing workshops is not easy, but it is well worth the effort required. It benefits students in reading and understanding difficult written material and develops the wit and skills of the teacher of English as a foreign language.
Preparing the Workshop
When preparing for an ESP writing workshop, the reading text is divided into manageable segments that are easier for LEP students to understand. Students are taught to identify in context items such as:
o Cognates: words that look the same in different languages; True cognates have the same or similar meanings, uses, and connotations in different languages, while false cognates have different meanings, uses, and connotations in different languages.
o Connectors – words that link simple and complex sentences to each other. Examples of connectors are: and, but, or, so. They can be of different types, depending on their function. There are connectors that express sum, contrast, sequence of time, choice, cause or result.
o Referents – words that refer to words that have been used before. They are used to avoid repetition of words. Commonly used ones include parts of speech (words) such as: pronouns, determiners, quantifiers, and proper names.
o Affixes: consist of prefixes and suffixes. A prefix is a syllable added to the front of a root word to form another word with a different grammatical function. A suffix is a syllable that is added to the final root of a word to form another word with a different grammatical function.
In addition, a list of high-frequency key vocabulary is prepared together with a glossary of technical terms that may be difficult for students. Pre-reading, during-reading, and post-reading activities are incorporated into the writing workshop to complement and complete the total package. A variety of exercise types are used to provide in-context practice with the vocabulary and grammatical elements of reading. Comprehensive support in the form of graphs, photos, diagrams, and images, as well as video, animation, and sound files, is included when reading and comprehension workshops are produced online on websites, blogs, or class pages.
ESP reading and comprehension workshops can be invaluable assistance to LEP students who need to understand and apply technical material related to their field, study, or employment. A good workshop prep can take three to five hours, but it is timeless and can be used and reused for years. With regular and frequent practice in preparing for ESP workshops, teachers can often significantly reduce preparation time. The benefits for students are countless.
If you would like some examples of completed and prepared ESP workshop writing, feel free to email me for an immediate response with examples.
