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Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) for Undergraduate and Postgraduate Courses: A Case Study
Susanne Mühlhaus (University of East Anglia, formerly Kingston University) outlines her study to evaluate innovative teaching approaches in specific purpose teaching of French and German for law and European real estate management students. The article is based in part on Mühlhaus and Lawlor (1999).
This article was first published in Higher, issue 2, April 2001.
Firstly, the principal investigator (Susanne Mühlhaus) looked at the new demands, which were made for more specialised language teaching in recent years at Kingston University and how these demands were met (with Teresa Lawlor of Kingston University).
The term specialised refers to specialised as opposed to specialist, knowledge. This presupposes that the teaching is informed by knowledge deriving from three areas: disciplinary culture, the epistemologies of different disciplines and knowledge of genre and discourse. These provide a basis on which specialist knowledge can be incorporated into the course design.
Kingston has an institution-wide language programme (IWLP) covering 7 languages (French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Mandarin), most of which are offered at various levels from beginners to advanced. Certification is provided through the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) Foreign Languages at Work (FLAW) profiling scheme. Most students have either taken languages as a counting option or an additional qualification within another parent degree.
An initial issue was the extent to which students would receive LSP content and to what extent the delivery could be standardised. It was decided that students on the Joint Honors French and Science, LLB Law with French Law and LLB Law with German Law courses would receive specific purpose language tuition. A similar decision was taken with regard to the MSc Immobilia (European Real Estate Management), although the scenario is quite different. Both of these cases are outlined here to demonstrate how the course design has linked them both to the IWLP framework in very different ways.
In the case of LLB with French Law or German Law, the normal entry is post A-level with the occasional post-GCSE student. Students studied either French or German with Law for two years prior to a year abroad at a university. They required preparation enabling them to follow law courses in the foreign language during their year abroad and to use the language for professional purposes. These students followed the IWLP for three taught hours per week in dedicated groups, taught by a tutor with specialised knowledge of French/German law. One of the characteristics of the programme has been the interrelationship with the foreign law classes which provide an introduction to the law of the area where the target languages are spoken. Prior to the delivery of the introduction to law, tutors planned the necessary lexical and conceptual input, practising them in the language class with materials relevant to the subject specialism. This has also had a positive influence on student motivation. Although the French Law course had been established first, German Law and legal language syllabuses differ mainly due to differences between the legal systems, which bring out different language points.
Teaching materials for German legal language are not widely available; many are not necessarily communicative resources. This was examined more closely in Mühlhaus (2000) with respect to the learning needs of this particular group. An often neglected area is the polysemous nature of language; some important terms in German legal language differ considerably from their meaning in a general language context, such as Gericht meaning dish or meal in a general context, and court in a legal setting. In Mühlhaus (2000) the author presented an example of her own materials, which addresses some of the students needs.
Language provision within the postgraduate Immobilia course differs in that the students attend IWLP classes appropriate to their level of existing proficiency ensuring that a range of skills are practised. They also participate in one-to-one or small group sessions with a language tutor focusing on a cycle of professional presentations made in front of their peer group on issues such as property valuation, legal aspects, town planning, environmental issues and project planning and delivery and an outline of their dissertation. The content is thus prescribed by the Immobilia syllabus, whilst the specific language input for these presentations is planned in sessions with language tutors. Students work at their own level and are in control of what is learned and how - thus deep learning is encouraged. This postgraduate course is jointly managed by a Languages Course Manager, who interviews and advises the students individually at the beginning of the year and draws up a learning contract in which the students define their own objectives for language learning and how to go about it. The programme is backed up by self-study packages for using languages for professional purposes, which inter alia uses the Internet as a resource for property management materials. Use is also made of tandem learning. With this framework, the problem of the inclusion of sufficiently challenging specific language content when done by teachers of general language is avoided.
Although some students on this programme started with an initially low level of language competence they were still able to achieve a high level of subject-specific linguistic competence. The success of the course design in both cases was largely due to the initial development by tutors with an understanding and prior experience of specialised language teaching, who had taken up the challenge to diversify into these fields.
References and Further Information
Mühlhaus, Susanne & Teresa Lawlor, 'Languages for Specific Purposes for Undergraduate and Postgraduate Courses: A Case Study' in Fachsprache - The International Journal of LSP Vol 21 (1-2), 53-60 (1999).
Mühlhaus, Susanne, 'Lernerbedürfnisse englischer Studenten der deutschen Rechtssprache.' in D. Veronesi (ed) Linguistica giuridica italiana e tedesca. Rechtslinguistik des Detuschen und Italienischen, , 435-448 (Padova:Unipress 2000)
Contact: Susanne Mühlhaus. E-mail: s.muhlhaus@uea.ac.uk. Tel: 01603 592145
