An ethnographic approach to syllabus design: A case study of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

Ramani, Esther; Chacko, Thomas V; Singh, Sushma; Glendinning, Eric H.

doi:10.1016/0889-4906(88)90026-9

Cited by 16 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…For example, Cumaranatunge (1988) consulted Sri Lankan domestic aids through various qualitative and quantitative methods (questionnaires, structured interviews, and participant observation) and conducted structured or informal interviews across both in-service and domain expert sources (e.g., domestic aids, agencies and employers, government officials). Similarly, Ramani, Chacko, Singh, and Glendinning (1988) employed non-participant observation and unstructured interviews with the same source (pre-service science and technology students) and conducted interviews across two sources (students and domain-expert scientists). Table 2 shows the target learner population, context, sources, methods, and triangulation of sources and/or methods reported in twenty-three studies published between 2000 and 2014.…”

Section: A Survey Of Methodological Practice In Needs Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Needs analysis for specialized learner populations: Essential methodological improvements

Serafini

Lake

Long

2015

English for Specific Purposes

137

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Section: A Survey Of Methodological Practice In Needs Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Needs analysis for specialized learner populations: Essential methodological improvements

Serafini

Lake

Long

2015

English for Specific Purposes

137

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“…Observations were done with the aim of collecting discourse samples of authentic tasks and to gain further insights into the language needs of receptionists (for studies which used these methods, see e.g. Cameron, 1998; Chew, 2005; Cowling, 2007; Evans, 2013; Jasso-Aguilar, 1999, 2005; Li So-mui & Mead, 2000; Ramani, Chacko, Singh & Glendinning, 1998; Sullivan & Girginer, 2002).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From needs analysis to task design: Insights from an English for specific purposes context

Malicka

Guerrero

Norris

2017

Language Teaching Research

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Needs analysis (NA) has long been argued to be the prerequisite for the design of language curricula or syllabi and the selection of tasks. According to Long (2005), a one-size-fits-all approach should be substituted by a careful examination of learners' needs in a particular domain or learner community. Despite the increasing practice of carrying out a NA as a first step in curriculum design, it is still unclear how exactly the insights obtained from NA can be used in meaningful ways to take informed decisions about task and syllabus design. This study attempts to fill this gap by applying the findings obtained in a NA in the domain of a hotel receptionist's job to the design of pedagogic tasks. The goals of this study were to obtain insights into what tasks are done in this domain (task selection), what kind of language use is associated with these tasks (task discourse analysis), how the information about perceived difficulty of tasks can be translated into instructionally manipulable variables (task difficulty), and in what order the resulting tasks should be presented to learners (task sequencing). The study design employed in-depth qualitative data collection, including 10 semi-structured interviews and three observations, and the sources were domain experts and domain novices. By linking the information obtained in the NA with a theoretical task complexity model, the study provides a detailed account of how real-life tasks can be translated into an articulated set of genuine and instructionally relevant pedagogic tasks.

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“…In the EAP research tradition, this approach has been influential particularly for the exploration into students' and lecturers' perceptions of their experiences in the target language use situations (e.g. Jacobson, 1987;Ramani et al, 1988;Northcott, 2001;Morita, 2000Morita, , 2004. The current research follows this tradition to reveal the insiders' perspectives of how peer interaction can constitute the medium of learning in postgraduate education.…”

Section: Overview Of the Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peer Interaction Opportunities for Non-Native-Speaker-of-English International Students in Postgraduate Courses of a NZ University

Mukai¹

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<p>In educational/academic contexts, participation in spoken interaction has been drawing attention as a potential source of problems for second language learners (Ferris & Tagg, 1996). Many scholars have acknowledged a need for students to participate actively in spoken communication in the higher education contexts (e.g. Mason, 1995) and also identified influential factors, including language proficiency (e.g. Xu, 1991) and socio-cultural incongruence (e.g. Lee, 2009), for the participation of non-native-speaker of English international students in their new educational practices through oral communication. While postgraduate students are assumed to have opportunities for educational interaction, the nature of activeness and collaboration in postgraduate educational practices as well as expected communicative competence need more attention. In the current study, peer interaction was conceptualized as a focal point that would help understand students’ active and collaborative learning in postgraduate education. The current study explored the processes of the creation and utilization of educational peer interaction which are afforded and constrained by contextual factors. An ethnographic approach, inspired by the development of Needs Analysis in the English for Academic Purposes research tradition and Ethnography of Communication (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972), was adopted. Specifically, insider perspectives of lecturers, local students, native-speaker and non-native-speaker international students, from three disciplines, namely, Applied Linguistics, Engineering, and Business School, were investigated through semi-structured interviews, triangulated with non-participant observations and Floor Analysis (Edelsky,1981) of audio-recorded interaction among students. Particular foci are on what types of peer interaction opportunities are created and utilized in postgraduate courses, what motivations are behind the creation and utilization of peer interaction opportunities for postgraduate learning, and how postgraduate students use communicative competence in peer interaction. Findings show that different types of peer interaction are situationally created by lecturers as well as students under the influences of multiple contextual factors, including learning objectives, pedagogical belief, and physical classroom settings. The findings also confirmed that students bring into postgraduate educational practices multi-faceted personal resources, including linguistic competence, social relations, domain knowledge, and previous educational experiences, which could accommodate or impede their participation in peer interaction. Also, students were found to utilize peer interaction opportunities to collaboratively develop their learning of the target academic knowledge while actively and interactively deploying a wide range of communicative functions, such as utterance completion, repetition, summary, validation, and information addition/edition. Pedagogical implications from this study can inform EAP practices, in the sense that EAP learner international students should be made aware of the interactive nature of learning in the target educational contexts, what factors could influence their interaction, and what sorts of communicative competence are needed in postgraduate environments where students are expected to actively and collaboratively engage in the development of their own learning.</p>

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An ethnographic approach to syllabus design: A case study of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

Cited by 16 publications

References 3 publications

Needs analysis for specialized learner populations: Essential methodological improvements

Needs analysis for specialized learner populations: Essential methodological improvements

From needs analysis to task design: Insights from an English for specific purposes context

Peer Interaction Opportunities for Non-Native-Speaker-of-English International Students in Postgraduate Courses of a NZ University

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