- The document describes an intensive 7-week English course for overseas graduate students attending Manchester University with insufficient English abilities. - It focused on developing skills in listening comprehension, note-taking, and academic writing through practice exercises and model texts. - Key challenges identified included students having difficulty understanding spoken English, taking accurate and complete notes during lectures, and producing written work in an appropriate academic style and register for their studies.

1. English For Academic Purposes: Practice
Material for the Listening Comprehension and
Writing Needs of Overseas Students
[RR Jordan and Alan Matthews, DepEd,
University of Manchester]
Agbay, noralyn
@YenAgbay

2. Pre-Session Intensive English Course
✣ 7week course August to September for overseas
graduate who have been accepted for post graduate
studies at Manchester University.
✣ The students applied because their ability in English
is insufficient.
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3. Data
1979, 48 students:
-23 from Middle East
-10 from Asia
-9 from Europe
-7 from Latin America
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4. Language Needs of the Students
✣ Students need to practice listening to lectures, takin
notes, writing continuously and taking part in
discussions.
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✣ Survey of overseas postgraduates’ use of English for
speaking, reading and writing were conducted at the
University of Manchester and Newcastle between
1972 and 1974.

5. The main points to Emerge
from the survey
-The largest proportion of a student time is spent in listening
situation
-70% of those in the survey listed understanding of spoken
English as their biggest difficulty on arrival in Britain,
-11% listed writing as their biggest language problem [this
increased by 22% six months later]. Writing became
important since students need to submit essays, report and
thesis outlines. 5 @YenAgbay
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6. Language Needs of
the Students
 The research, survey and, teaching experience helped them focus on
the needs of the students.
 So, decided to limit the number of objectives in the belief that if the
students felt they had made some demonstrable progress it would help
to develop their self-confidence in using English.
 They decided to focus on listening comprehension, note taking and
academic writing.
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7. Listening Comprehension
and Note-Taking
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8. The units: General
Advantage of Selecting Study Skills as main theme
include:
 It conveys useful information about
language learning
 It is relevant to all the students, irrespective
of their individual specialisms and;
 It is suitably academic.
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9. The three stages of each
Unit deal with the same
subject-matter:
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10. ✣ Stage 1: consist of a
few sentences
containing the key
ideas which are to
be developed at
greater length in
subsequent stage.
It is a lead-in to the
unit and also
functions as
preparation for the
more demanding
exercises at stage 2.
✣ Stage 2: it is an
expansion of Stage
1. It prepares the
ground for the
most difficult task,
that of note-taking,
in Stage 3.
✣ Stage 3: a further
expansion of Stage 2, it
is a fully-fledged
lecturette.
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11. THE UNITS:
DETAILS
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12. Stage 1: (between 50 and 90 words)
 Aims at giving practice at intensive listening and dictation.
 Students follow the text silently as they listen to the recording on
tape while tutors draw attention to important phonological
points and lesser extent to the syntactic and lexical difficulties.
 The text is put on one side and students are required to write the
passage from dictation.
 It is important that features of continuous speech known to cause
problems in understanding are made explicit to the students.
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13. Stage 2: (between 280 and 500 words)
Listening
Comprehension
Students listens,
given 5 true/false
question to test
comprehension.
Depending on the
level, passage played
twice. Then checked
and let students
justify their answer
orally.
Blank-filling
✣ Main aim is to
practice listening
and distinguishing
contractions and
weak forms.
✣ Tape scripts is
given to students
with blanks. Listen
and fill in the
blanks.
Reading
Comprehension
Consist of 5
true/false. Students
search for relevant
info from tape script
and justify their
answer by giving
evidence in writing
like quotation from
the tape scripts.
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Written
Grammatical
Exercises
Certain key
grammatical
structures and
functions of
language are built
into the text of Stage
2 and serve as the
basis for written
exercises..

14. Stage 3: (between 800 and 1200 words)
 The aim is to train the students in note-taking.
 Students are given sheet of Guided Notes which they will
complete.
 Prior to exercise, tutors give background and tips on note-taking,
abbreviation etc. Tape script played only once so not to move
away from realistic lecture situation in which lectures happened
only once.
 Second haft of the course, students listen to talks given by tutors
and lecturers to allow practice note-taking in authentic situation..
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15. Note-Taking
Difficulties Observed
 1. ‘once-only’, students cannot ask the lecturer to repeat.
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 2. Assumes that everything the speaker says is equally
important and will write everything down.
 3. Grammatical accuracy, it seems that it does not come
naturally to the students to forsake much of the grammatical
system in favor of a shorthand expressions.
 4. Different writing system which needs to cope with the
speed of speaker. @YenAgbay

16. Design Problems
Encountered
a. Initial problem is to decide on the theme of the Units.
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 Study Skills and the problems of overseas
students studying through the medium of
English
 Subject-specific materials
 Aspects of living in Britain
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17. Design Problems
Encountered
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b. We aimed to produce Units which
is flexible enough to cater a wide
range of abilities.
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18. The following problems
relate specifically to
note-taking:
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c. The first attempt showed a certain lack of
standardization, particularly noticeable in the
guided notes sheets. Each tutor has their own ways
of abbreviating for instance.
d. Some of the written prompts on the guided notes
sheets were paraphrases of the tape script and not the
exact words used which caused confusion.
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19. Academic Writing
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20. a.
Writing Needs
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1. Students must organize his thought and know what he wants to
communicate and summarized using the term notions.
2. He must then select the appropriate language register, in general, may
referred to as academic and later as specific (ESP). At the same time, he
must use the appropriate style which will normally be formal.
3. The organization of the writing, particularly the overall effect upon the
readers. This includes: introducing, developing and discussing and,
concluding. The mechanics includes: punctuation and paragraphing etc.
4. Accuracy and Legibility
5. Fluency of writing. A slow writer is necessarily inefficient with regard
to his limited time. Ideas cannot be developed fully in a given time.
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21. b.
Notional Approach
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The shortest route to minimum
communicative adequacy was by way of
notions, enabling a student to express his
ideas within a framework of language
appropriate to his academic subject.
Frequent notions: describing, defining,
exemplifying, classifying, interpreting data,
comparing and contrasting.
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22. c.
Types of Writing Practice
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Blank-filling exercises.
 The aim was to focus attention on the
particular language features (eg: tenses) or
forms (eg: stem+s) that constituted the notion
under consideration.
 This has its value but alone is insufficient
as little writing is involved and is not
continuous. @YenAgbay

23. c.
Types of Writing Practice
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Illustrating approaches to writing
 Tend to select long model passage so
student devotes more time to reading and
understanding rather than writing.
 It is necessary starting point as it allows
the whole context to be seen and language use
analyzed.
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24. c.
Types of Writing Practice
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Informative Transfer
 The type of writing practice which seems to be
effective.
 A passage is read; attention is focused on them by
longer blank-filling or sentence completion items.
 A diagram, table or chart may be drawn; hence, it
becomes the summary of the passage. The
diagrammatic information is then used as a basis for
reconstructing the language forms necessary to express
the notion being considered. @YenAgbay

25. d.
Writing Units
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One writing unit will serve as an example of the
approach we have adopted. It is concerned with
Classification. Previous units are concerned with
description, definitions and exemplifications.
Subsequent units deal with comparison and contrast,
and interpretation of data.
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26. e.
Writing difficulties
observed
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Notional Approach assumes a certain minimum level of
competence in the language.
We have found that invariably some explanation or
indication of learning strategy is needed for some
language features and forms. Therefore, a bank of
remedial practice material, on the principle of self-access,
seems to be the most satisfactory solution whereby the
tutor refers the student to the appropriate items.
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27. e.
Writing difficulties
observed
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Difficulties:
a. Depends on the mother tongue of the students
b. Educational background and
c. Competence in English.
d. Common difficulty is associated with choice of
appropriate style.
e. Difficulties of spelling, appropriate lexis,
concord and verb tense usage
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28. Thanks!
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