ELC Teaching Styles and Materials

ELC Teaching Styles and Materials Page

Semester 1

Students have approximately 10 hours per week of English classes in Semester 1.  For the first few weeks, the main aim is to boost students’ confidence and fluency in General English through the EF classes, and to raise their awareness of Academic English through EAP.  Teachers follow a text-book based outline for each of these components, helping students settle in to new ways of learning and practicing their English skills.

Students attend English sessions in a number of different formats, including Lectures, Small class groups (20 students) and tutorials (5 students).  Figure 1 shows the breakdown for this Module as it was in the academic years 2007/8 and 2008/9.

Figure 1

After several weeks of these classes, students become more aware of the differences between Academic English and more general language, and begin to work on an extended assignment (1000 words).  This assignment takes them beyond the topics covered in the course book, through a set reading list and tutorial sessions.  Students are also encouraged to make use of I.C.E. (our Interactive Communications Environment) where they can communicate with each other and with tutors.

Semester 2

In Semester 2, the modules are more focused on Academic Tasks, including presentations, research projects and more essay writing.  By working through these Academic Tasks which are related to British Degree learning activities, students become aware of the “gap” in their current language abilities to deal with these tasks, they acquire new language and study skills, and they gain the “Academic Experience” of working on research projects in small teams.  Tutors take on the role of advisors and facilitators, as they explain the scope and constraints of the tasks, provide insights into the literature behind some of the assumptions of the research, and discuss different approaches to the tasks.  All through this, it is of course vitally important that the tutors remain aware of the linguistic opportunities and demands for each stage of the task, helping students focus on acquiring the oral and written communication skills they’ll require to complete similar tasks in English later on in their degree programmes.  From the 2008/9 session, students are streamed according to their major.  This allows the teams of tutors to expose students to vocabulary and language which is more related to each stream.

Semesters 3 and 4

Students continue with some English classes through their second year.  These will be English for Specific Academic Purposes, meaning small teams of tutors will work with students who are studying particular types of major, and lead to different tasks which correspond to the specific demands of their degree programmes.  In 2007/8 and 2008/9, there were two streams – one for Financial Mathematics and e-Finance students (focusing on Finance and Business plans etc), and one for Computer Science and Electronic Engineering majors.  As new programmes are introduced, the ELC will respond by adding more streams as appropriate.

Small Teams working within Frameworks

Tutors will have a certain degree of flexibility in terms of how they deliver the materials, or how they prepare and lead students through the set tasks.  Through the academic year, there are also points at which tutors have the opportunity to provide input for subsequent teaching sessions.  By establishing clear frameworks in which to operate, it is expected that tutors will be able to adjust their teaching style to the needs of the students, while remaining suitably consistent with the rest of the team.