Before watching the UFC, sorry MMA, at Luxy today I taught a couple of adult classes.
One guy turned up early for a trial lesson and I had a chat with him about why he was studying English. He is studying to be a dentist and is in his 4th year of a 6 year course. His reason for studying English was because he has pass Intermediate GEPT or he will fail his dentistry degree. He’d already taken it and failed the second part written and spoken sections. His university provided no English language tuition, it just expected students to sort it out for themselves. They simply set a required benchmark of GEPT intermediate. I pointed out to him that I was teaching a business conversation class and he really needed to go to a GEPT preparation class where someone could teach him how to blag his way through the speaking and writing sections.
Seriously! How can this not be a situation requiring ESP? The guy needs to learn English specific to dentistry and dealing with patients. How on earth can academics in charge of a university choose fucking GEPT as a necessary requirement for completing a degree? Sorry, I’m ranting, but it just really wound me up to see a really good guy trying his hardest to do what was expected of him being totally failed by some morons in charge.
GEPT at university level :loco: :no-no: . GEPT at any level for that matter. Dicks.
While not a huge fan of the GEPT, it’s a very good measure of English ability. You just can’t fake the 2nd part. You actually have to know how to write and speak. It takes me 1-3 (painful :fume: ) months to teach junior high school students how to write effectively to pass the written part, longer for the speaking part. These are definitely skills that are not taught, that need to be taught.
This wouldn’t be Taipei Medical University, would it? Just curious. I used to teach in the “Common Studies Department” there. Back then, all they had to be able to do with English was to write a Pathology report in their 4th year (since they only had English their first year, that was a joke, really, not to mention the relative level they came in at compared to the English needed for a pathology report.)
The issue is, of course, that you need someone who can teach ESP starting at a relatively low level of proficiency in the first place. Not many teachers are equipped to do that, I think.
I didn’t ask him which university. If he comes back to the next lesson I will, although I did advise him that an exam preparation class would better suit his needs.
I don’t think these students are likely to be at a low level to start with. They knew when they started the course that they needed GEPT Intermediate, I think only about 1 in 9 Taiwanese who take it manage to pass both sections, so they should have had some awareness of the difficulty they face. They’re also at a high level of education to start with. His spoken English was certainly pretty good. He had the usual trouble of hesitating when answering a question, which is probably one of the main problems he needs to be taught to get around to get through the GEPT. As Okami notes, he probably can’t write with anywhere near the necessary degree of coherance and cohesion. I didn’t see any evidence of his writing, though.
I think most relatively experienced teachers could work out the needs of a class of dentists pretty easily. Whether they could then teach them is perhaps another matter.
@ Okami As for ‘blagging’ the GEPT, perhaps not the best word I could have used, but the exam follows a structure just like any other.
[quote=“tomthorne”]I didn’t ask him which university. If he comes back to the next lesson I will, although I did advise him that an exam preparation class would better suit his needs.
I don’t think these students are likely to be at a low level to start with. They knew when they started the course that they needed GEPT Intermediate, I think only about 1 in 9 Taiwanese who take it manage to pass both sections, so they should have had some awareness of the difficulty they face. They’re also at a high level of education to start with. His spoken English was certainly pretty good. He had the usual trouble of hesitating when answering a question, which is probably one of the main problems he needs to be taught to get around to get through the GEPT. As Okami notes, he probably can’t write with anywhere near the necessary degree of coherance and cohesion. I didn’t see any evidence of his writing, though.
I think most relatively experienced teachers could work out the needs of a class of dentists pretty easily. Whether they could then teach them is perhaps another matter.
@ Okami As for ‘blagging’ the GEPT, perhaps not the best word I could have used, but the exam follows a structure just like any other.[/quote]
I used to teach medical English to Taiwanese students wishing to enter a Polish dentistry school. The test was focussed around learning biology related English vocab etc. That was a very good course and I enjoyed teaching it. The course was specifically designed for dentistry students. However it was for Taiwanese students wishing to enter a Polish university and not a Taiwanese university . It sounds pretty weird as you would think they would require a more biological science based English course. All the dentistry courses in Taiwan are surely taught in English anyways so one would think that if his English was not good enough then he would not be able to pass the course regardless of GEPT. No doubt the university does not have anyone whose English is at the right level to be able to carry out their own testing so they use the government backed GEPT. By the way are you sure that is a requirement of the uni or one of the governement for all dentistry students in Taiwan?
I’ve no idea. Whether it’s a government requirement or just this university it’s totally daft. I can kind of understand businesses requiring external exams as a way of judging English competence. It’s a shame they all tend to use TOEIC, but that’s another issue. But a university! It just beggars belief.
TT, I meant I wasn’t a huge fan of the GEPT, because the powerful dumbasses in charge deem it beneath them to put any of the information in English. I wasn’t knocking on you at all. The GEPT is probably a requirement because the president of Taida is the Chairman of the GEPT corp and is probably using his influence to get universities island wide to accept the GEPT for dubious reasons. The GEPT is a huge earner. I believe that the pass rate has gone up or at least they are saying it is. With the students at my current school we tend to enjoy a 70+% pass rate, but it would be higher if we could get more to pass the second part. They usually fail the reading or writing section. For the first part only our jackass coaster kids fail that.
Don’t worry, I didn’t get the impression you were knocking on me at all.
If they are going to use GEPT as a measurement of English ability, shouldn’t it be as a test for entering the university not for completing the degree? It just seems totally illogical. The course doesn’t contain any English language teaching, but one of the requirements for completing the degree is a certain level of English. Just bizarre.
If they made it a requirement then they would have fewer students. Universities here work on a quantity system and not a quality one. High school students already have the stress of entrance exams, so you can imagine the outcry if this was imposed on them. The GEPT also took some knocks 6-12 months in the media and wish to avoid bad press to keep the gravy train going.
An English language level requirement is part of most schools’ graduation requirements, some are much lighter.
All students at NCCU have to pass a proficiency exam to graduate. They do get English instruction for one year, but it is General English (so-called Freshman English), not test prep. Most students take the instruction in the first year, anyway, and the TOEIC or GEPT test at the end of their course. This is what happens in most Taiwan unis now, AFAIK.
The MOE/unis have decided that the Taiwanese must learn English, and this is how they are implementing it.
I have often thought that it would make more sense to offer an “English in the Taiwan workplace” course in their final year, and forget about Freshman English. People don’t seem to like the idea; the main reason given is that students would have forgotten the English learned in high school by the final year of uni.
But to require this without providing any English tuition? It all seems very odd to me. Perhaps I just ought to stop thinking so much .[/quote]
Just think about the money made by cram schools -run by the same college professors who vote for these amendments-, publishing comapnies, etc… It’s a win-win situation.
And again, this is test English, not real life English. We all have seen the results many times. Worse: the tests give the kids the hubris to ignore atoga’s corrections… After all, they passed the test.
Um…not sure about this one. I seem to remember when I was teaching dental students at the medical college, their classes were taught in Chinese, like everyone else’s, and the textbooks, or some of them, were in English. That meant that the group cooperation dynamic went into full play, with those who read English better producing “cheat sheets” for those who didn’t, and those who understood chemistry better doing the “cheat sheets” for those who didn’t, etc. etc. etc.
In the past, at least, any requirements for English proficiency were quite separate from what actually went on at the school. And anyway, why require English oral proficiency from a dental student in Taiwan? (apart from the obvious dentist jokes, I mean…) Most of what the majority of them would truly need English for could be served by reading ability. I smell a university trying to make a name for itself without thinking about practicalities or feasibility.
Um…not sure about this one. I seem to remember when I was teaching dental students at the medical college, their classes were taught in Chinese, like everyone else’s, and the textbooks, or some of them, were in English. That meant that the group cooperation dynamic went into full play, with those who read English better producing “cheat sheets” for those who didn’t, and those who understood chemistry better doing the “cheat sheets” for those who didn’t, etc. etc. etc.
In the past, at least, any requirements for English proficiency were quite separate from what actually went on at the school. And anyway, why require English oral proficiency from a dental student in Taiwan? (apart from the obvious dentist jokes, I mean…) Most of what the majority of them would truly need English for could be served by reading ability. I smell a university trying to make a name for itself without thinking about practicalities or feasibility.[/quote]
I presumed that most doctors and dentists would require some English language level. This would allow them to keep up to date with the most recent scientific research in their field. The dentistry school in Spain (quite a large one) carries out all its medical courses in English despite having mostly Spanish students and being in Spain. I understand your point that a dentist in Taiwan would not necessarily require English any more than Vietmamese to treat customers in Taiwan. However to keep at the cutting edge one would think having a good knowledge of English the international language of science would be highly desirable even if only living your whole life in Taiwan.
Back home, engineers, doctors, etc. all but language majors have to take one year special English course that enables them to reach a certain level of reading comprehension, where they can keep up with trade publications and such. If they want to speak, they can do it in their own time, but this reading course is hard and intensive. However, we have the advantage of the environment -English is basically another tool, as computers, and used in daily life-, plus we begin learning foreign languages at a very early age, again, because of the surroundings -lots of immigrants. There is a lot less pressure in learning English, of course it is a business, but no one has come up with a money making scheme as here. And it wouldn’t work there, anyways.
Here you got the pressure, the deadlines, the threats, the career hanging on the balance. But little incentives, no environment. Meipanfa.
[quote=“Icon”]Back home, engineers, doctors, etc. all but language majors have to take one year special English course that enables them to reach a certain level of reading comprehension, where they can keep up with trade publications and such. If they want to speak, they can do it in their own time, but this reading course is hard and intensive. However, we have the advantage of the environment -English is basically another tool, as computers, and used in daily life-, plus we begin learning foreign languages at a very early age, again, because of the surroundings -lots of immigrants. There is a lot less pressure in learning English, of course it is a business, but no one has come up with a money making scheme as here. And it wouldn’t work there, anyways.
Here you got the pressure, the deadlines, the threats, the career hanging on the balance. But little incentives, no environment. Meipanfa.[/quote]
They have such a one-year course in Taiwan, as I posted above. But it is completely useless to them.
You are right that university students have no motivation to learn English. They would hardly be thinking about trade publications in uni year 1, and they do not really even clearly understand, I believe, that English is a primarily a communication tool rather than a test subject.
That’s my point, they have courses that are useless, so they have to pay outside the same profs to teach them at cram school so they can have a test on what they did not learn at school…
sigh
OK, maybe not trade publications, but for Pete’s sake, how are you going to read a Rolling Stone, a gamer’s manual, break the iPhone computer code, without English?! Mortivation, folks, we gotta find the right buttons to get these kids into the program.
In the past, at least, any requirements for English proficiency were quite separate from what actually went on at the school. And anyway, why require English [color=#FF0040]
oral [/color] proficiency from a dental student in Taiwan? (apart from the obvious dentist jokes, I mean…) Most of what the majority of them would truly need English for could be served by reading ability. I smell a university trying to make a name for itself without thinking about practicalities or feasibility.[/quote]
I presumed that most doctors and dentists would require some English language level. This would allow them to keep up to date with the most recent scientific research in their field. The dentistry school in Spain (quite a large one) carries out all its medical courses in English despite having mostly Spanish students and being in Spain. I understand your point that a dentist in Taiwan would not necessarily require English any more than Vietmamese to treat customers in Taiwan. However to keep at the cutting edge one would think having a good knowledge of English the international language of science would be highly desirable even if only living your whole life in Taiwan.[/quote]
In the past, at least, any requirements for English proficiency were quite separate from what actually went on at the school. And anyway, why require English [color=#FF0040]
oral [/color] proficiency from a dental student in Taiwan? (apart from the obvious dentist jokes, I mean…) Most of what the majority of them would truly need English for could be served by reading ability. I smell a university trying to make a name for itself without thinking about practicalities or feasibility.[/quote]
I presumed that most doctors and dentists would require some English language level. This would allow them to keep up to date with the most recent scientific research in their field. The dentistry school in Spain (quite a large one) carries out all its medical courses in English despite having mostly Spanish students and being in Spain. I understand your point that a dentist in Taiwan would not necessarily require English any more than Vietmamese to treat customers in Taiwan. However to keep at the cutting edge one would think having a good knowledge of English the international language of science would be highly desirable even if only living your whole life in Taiwan.[/quote][/quote]
:loco: :no-no: . GEPT at any level for that matter. Dicks.
.
Most of what the majority of them would truly need English for could be served by reading ability. I smell a university trying to make a name for itself without thinking about practicalities or feasibility.
ORAL