The roles of the instructors in an ESP-task based language teaching course

Abstract

The graduate program in Teaching English at the University of Costa Rica offers yearly English courses to satisfy the language learning needs at different departments, research centers, or similar institutions. The objective of this article was to analyze the extent to which a group of student teachers fulfilled the roles of the instructors in the Task Based Language Teaching method used in the graduate program. The study used a mixed-methods approach and the subjects were three instructors during their teaching practicum. The roles of the instructors were assessed by the practicum supervisors, fellow students in the practicum, the students in the course, and the instructors themselves through rubrics, observation sheets, surveys, and teaching journals. The results from the different instruments using different scales pointed to the instructors fulfilling the roles of sequencing tasks and motivating the learners a majority of the times. The roles of preparing the learners for tasks and raising consciousness were fulfilled to a lesser extent, which indicated that the instructors needed to work further on these areas. The study concluded with recommendations for improving the roles that revealed weaknesses, notably aimed to provide a manageable numbers of vocabulary items and grammar structures in the pretask, as well as to provide prompt feedback, and to elicit students’ knowledge for the development of lessons.

Framing English as a Medium of Instruction Within the Iberian-American Spanish-Speaking Education Contexts

“…Additionally, the literature from Latin America reiterates the dearth of research on emi and the need for specialized professional development addressed in the Spanish literature discussed above (Arias de la Cruz et al, 2019;Crawford et al, 2013;de la Barra et al, 2018;Despagne, 2019;Lara-Herrera et al, 2016;López & Puebla, 2014;Navas-Brenes, 2010;Rivera & Mazak, 2017;Vargas-Vásquez et al, 2016). It also exhibited the tendency of researchers to inquire into the perceptions of stakeholders about the implementation of emi (Despagne, 2019;Lara-Herrera et al, 2016;Rivera & Mazak, 2017;Vargas-Vásquez et al, 2016) rather than conducting empirical studies directly focused on instruction and learning.…”

“…First of all, the Spanish and Latin-American literature mainly addresses emi in contexts where Spanish is spoken as a first language. The literature from both contexts assigns the popularity that emi has been gaining as to the desire that institutions and countries have to internationalize education and instill competences in students that would equip them to become competitive professionals globally (Arias de la Cruz et al, 2019;Crawford et al, 2013;de la Barra et al, 2018;Despagne, 2019;Lara-Herrera et al, 2016;López & Puebla, 2014;Navas-Brenes, 2010;Rivera & Mazak, 2017;Vargas-Vásquez et al, 2016). Additionally, the literature from Latin America reiterates the dearth of research on emi and the need for specialized professional development addressed in the Spanish literature discussed above (Arias de la Cruz et al, 2019;Crawford et al, 2013;de la Barra et al, 2018;Despagne, 2019;Lara-Herrera et al, 2016;López & Puebla, 2014;Navas-Brenes, 2010;Rivera & Mazak, 2017;Vargas-Vásquez et al, 2016).…”

“…The literature from both contexts assigns the popularity that emi has been gaining as to the desire that institutions and countries have to internationalize education and instill competences in students that would equip them to become competitive professionals globally (Arias de la Cruz et al, 2019;Crawford et al, 2013;de la Barra et al, 2018;Despagne, 2019;Lara-Herrera et al, 2016;López & Puebla, 2014;Navas-Brenes, 2010;Rivera & Mazak, 2017;Vargas-Vásquez et al, 2016). Additionally, the literature from Latin America reiterates the dearth of research on emi and the need for specialized professional development addressed in the Spanish literature discussed above (Arias de la Cruz et al, 2019;Crawford et al, 2013;de la Barra et al, 2018;Despagne, 2019;Lara-Herrera et al, 2016;López & Puebla, 2014;Navas-Brenes, 2010;Rivera & Mazak, 2017;Vargas-Vásquez et al, 2016). It also exhibited the tendency of researchers to inquire into the perceptions of stakeholders about the implementation of emi (Despagne, 2019;Lara-Herrera et al, 2016;Rivera & Mazak, 2017;Vargas-Vásquez et al, 2016) rather than conducting empirical studies directly focused on instruction and learning.…”

“…emi research in Latin America has also endeavored to increase language awareness and students' self-reflection upon their learning process (de la Barra et al, 2018;Vargas-Vásquez et al, 2016). For example, de la Barra et al (2018) examined the design and implementation of two rubrics following the principles of content and language integrated learning in second-year students at a university in Chile to assess oral skills in terms of grammar and lexis.…”