OBSERVACIÓN Y PRÁCTICA DE LA ENSEÑANZA II

ESP Observation 1

Student: Juan Pablo Murúa

This observation task was carried out in a Módulos de Idiomas course at Facultad de

Medicina, UNC. The teacher in charge was Paula del Castillo and the group was made of

about 35 students, aged between 18 and 50 years old. In this college, English is an

obligatory subject and students can choose to do it whenever they want but before they

reach their 5th year of schooling. That is why their level of expertise in the field of medicine

is varied. In this report I am going to provide a descriptive narrative and the perceived

rationale of the class and a final reflection.

With regard to the activities students carried out in the class, they were all short

reading activities and in most cases in written form. Students were allowed to work in pairs

mostly and they carried out individual tasks as well. In one of the exercises, students had to

read a short text and indicate in which line they found, for example, the terms glándulas

principals, torrente sanguíneo, etc. In another reading activity, students had to read a text

and tell the teacher what the text was about (prevención primaria). Again, students were

asked to identify in the text words that were associated with primary prevention,

“education” and “legislation” students answered. The teacher also asked for specific

vocabulary in the text, such as ¿“Qué será health maintenance”? y ¿”medical interview”?,

where she strengthened the importance of context, and she made students aware that in the

context of the text they read “interview” meant “consulta” and not “entrevista”. Grammar

was also dealt with in the class. The teacher wrote on the board the “ING” suffix and she

draw three arrows, and she explained that this grammatical item could be found in the text

to express not only verbs (which they are most familiar with) but also nouns and adjectives.

She asked students to work in pairs and indicate whether ING words like testing, seeking

behavior, family planning, among others, were used as nouns, adjectives or verbs.

As students worked most of the time with reading activities, I believe the rationale

of the English class was the comprehension of written texts. The objectives of many of the

activities were reading for general and specific information. The teacher first made students

skim the texts so that they could understand what they were about. After they identified the

topics, students looked for specific information so that they could learn specific vocabulary

in English about the field they are studying. The teaching of grammar items were also dealt

with the purpose of improving the students´ reading and comprehension skills. The teacher

made a distinction between ING meanings because students typically associate this form

with present progressive tense of verbs. She made students aware of the fact that they could

also find the ING form in texts with nominal and adjectival function. So the teacher

integrated background knowledge (what they already knew about ING form) with written

texts so that students could contrast the different ING meanings. As what I could observe, I

can say I learnt many positive aspects of an ESP class. In this course, I observed that

students had different levels of expertise as they are in different school years of their

careers. I think this makes the class ongoing, since collaborative work is possible, not only

among students but also between the teacher and the learners. That is, what that teacher

may not clearly know about the field of medicine, more advanced students can be of great

help in providing accurate information. The same happens the other way round. The teacher

is the language expert and their role is, among others, to clarify language issues like the one

on ING forms. In addition, when students looked for specific information in the texts, they

had to make point of comparisons about what they already knew and what they were

reading. They bring background knowledge to class and compare it with that they read in

texts, for example, they already know what primary prevention involves and compare their

knowledge to the information provided in the texts. It was interesting to see that the whole

material was prepared by the teacher and a team. They adapted the activities they included

in the reading material so as to make it more comprehensible for students of the field of

medicine and to satisfy their needs. I learnt a lot of positive issues of an ESP class and I

should take these aspects into account for further observations and teaching experiences.