Abstract
The increasing importance of English as a global language as well as the recent attention to the merits of the integration of language learning with knowledge/content construction has led to the necessity for the inclusion of courses satisfying these requirements. This presentation will discuss the development of an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) program that enables students to study content related to their graduation seminar subjects in English. The presenters received a university grant to research and develop new ESP courses on topics identified by seminar professors as important to provide students with the critical thinking as well as the language skills necessary to discuss their graduation thesis topics in English. In this presentation the process of constructing this new program including a needs analysis with cooperation from the seminar professors to determine specific topics for the new content English courses, will be elaborated upon. Important caveats will be outlined for example how to overcome perceived institutional barriers often occuring with the implementation of new programs; in this case the necessity to make the courses accessible to all third and fourth year students of various English language proficiency. The logistics involved in the successful resolution of this situation will be discussed; specifically the steps taken to amend the current stringent institutional policy of a TOEIC requirement in order to create a more inclusive ESP program. This interactive presentation will detail the development of the new ESP courses and the plans to pilot the courses in the 2021 academic school year.
Author Information
Darlene Yamauchi, Bunkyo Gakuin University, Japan
Wendy Gough, Bunkyo Gakuin University, Japan
Paper Information
Conference: IICEHawaii2021
Stream: Curriculum Design & Development
This paper is part of the IICEHawaii2021 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Yamauchi D., Gough W., & A. (2021) English for Graduation: The Development of an Innovative Japanese University Program Connecting ESP Courses With Graduation Seminar Topics ISSN: 2189-1036 – The IAFOR International Conference on Education – Hawaii 2021 Official Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2189-1036.2021.19
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2189-1036.2021.19
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