Dealing with Needs Analysis For ESP and GE (Case Study Of The Students Of Faculty Of Medicine)

As per 2008, I have been working at a such particular English-Based Edu-Institution which offers the course material delivered not in a class-themed but one-on-one handling management.  I am one of the teacher-so-called tutor in that institution and I have been assisting a few numbers of specific students afar, notably the students of faculty of medicine.

However, most of the medical students who attended to my course seem to have almost the problem alike, that is to say, their inability to adjust the proper conversation either conducted in informal or formal situation.  They appear to be twistingly perplexed to have conversation and to give description about something that is commonly or specifically used, for an instance, confusedness to apply collocational words established in their every conversation, both idiomatic and base-word expression.

These matters are also in contrast with the needs of them to come to my course in hoping to learn more about their own specific language of discipline, with the basis of medical-ESP-oriented and those appear to be problem, as it is in line with Steven (1988) in Rahman (2009) who stated that ESP is designed to meet specified needs of the learners, related in content (themes and topics) to particular disciplines, occupations and activities, centred on language appropriate to those activities in syntax, lexis and discourse, semantic and so on, and analysis of the discourse, and so it is contrast with ‘General English’.  ESP is a matter of exclussiveness, and it has to be treated well-arranged to meet the requirement as well.  Somehow, there could be slightly a friction between ESP requirement and the use of general English implemented.

The problem insisted is how to bridge those matter of conditions? Recent analysis has been conducted by my so-called staff of English Program Division at my office, to seek for the well-acquainted steps which are applicable with the program taken by the notably students of Faculty of Medicine .  These also are similar with the procedures drawn on page 60-61, such as making questionnaire (my division calls it personal facts finding), conducting self-rating assessment (personal attending system), doing (on-table) interview (welcome session), as well as conducting such observation during the meeting held with the students instead.  We also can not repudiate the students level of basic English, as they have come from a wide range of taking course experience before, that they feel it does not meet with their needs.  So, my division holds like a sequence initial procedures given before the students are officially learning, consists of clear-cut grammar-based questions adjusted with the particular duration of time, also the others steps as mentioned above.

However, the test given also related to whether the division are intending to perform the so-called TSA (Target Situation Analysis) or PSA (Present Situation Analysis).  TSA, which was first introduced by Chambers (1980) (in Rahman 2009) according to Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998, p. 124), TSA refers to task and activities learners are/will be using English for target situation.  In the meantime, Robbinson (1991, p. 8) in Rahman (2009) coined the term PSA as seeking to establish what the students are like at the start of their language course, investigating their strengths and weaknesses.  The TSA is intending to perform at such medical students who already have a good basic in English (after having the placement test), as of Medical ESP and general English, and so the latter PSA is intending to perform at such students with low rate of placement test.  Those students will be taught starting from the basic one, assisting the well-made general English then going through to the specific Medical English.  In this case, psychological aspect is also considered, whether those the PSA-intended students have an extrovert or an introvert upbringing.  So, by those considerations, the division will be able to initiate to core problems brought by each students taking the ESP course in my institution, along with giving the sequence of needs analysis based on their skill and competence as a Medical students.

Reference :

www.asian-esp-journal.com

The Asian ESP Journal, August 2009, Vol. 5, Issue 2

Md. Momtazur Rahman, Thang Siew Ming, Mohd. Sallehhundin Abd Aziz, and Norizan Abdul Razak

Need Analysis for Developing an ESP Writing Course for Foreign Postgraduates in Science and Technology at National University of Malaysia

Deixis Location : Visibility

Tolakinese (or Tolaki) is one of the native tribes in Southeast Sulawesi (Sulawesi Tenggara). It is a part of language family of Ereke (regency of Raha) and Moronene (regency of Bombana). It covers six regional regencies from the total ten regional states, that are Kota Kendari, regency of Konawe, Konawe Selatan, Konawe Utara, Kolaka and Kolaka Utara. Tolakinese comprises two major subethnics, Mekongga and Konawe. Subethnic Mekongga exists in western Kendari (Kolaka, Kolaka Utara), while Konawe is located in eastern Kendari (Kota Kendari, Konawe, Konawe Selatan, and Konawe Utara). That is to say, subethnic Konawe takes a great number of people than Mekongga. Both are different in accent and great deal of words but are a bit same in particular words. It is distinctly clear that we can regonize whether one speaks Mekongga or Konawe (Kendari) from the cadence and lilt they utter.

Both subethnics Mekongga and Konawe apply three-term system in defining proximity’s visibility. Here we found :

Distance-oriented; ikeni (near S), ikitu (near H) and ikiro (uncertain location; invisible for both S and H)
e.g :
- Humbee laha’ano I ory ? (where is Ory?)
Laa ikeni, monggaa sinonggi. (she is here, eating sinonggi).
- Humbee laha’amu monggi’I o gondi? (do you see a scissors?)
Laa ikitu, I wawo lamari. (there. On the cupboard).
- Humbee laha’ano I Arul ? (where is Arul?)
Laa Ikiro, I laikano o Lurah. (there, in Subdistrict Head’s house)

Based on the examples above, there we find the word ‘ikeni’ to say ‘here’ near the S, ‘ikitu’ to say ‘there’ near the H, and ‘ikiro’ to say ‘there’ but both H and S can not see the referent point, which is far from them.

The phenomenon faced by the speakers eventually occurred if the speakers are from the family that is Tolakinese but does not apply Tolakinese as their mother tongue. It happens to family who resides in capital city, with many other languages’ influence and it creates a new dialect rather than the one who lives in native district. I am a Tolakinese girl by nature, but has been out from my own ethnic, notably the language on account of my residence in Kendari. My father is a Mekongga-Tolakinese, but in fact makes a flesh from Butonese (Wolio) by his paternal great grandfather who was a nobleman (‘Laode’), who moved to Kolaka some time ago. He was born in Kolaka but educated at college in Makassar and now is residing in Kendari.

My mother is a Konawe-Tolakinese who is from Unaaha (capital city of Konawe Regency) but was born and raised up in Kolaka and Raha, due to her father’s duty as an army officer. She was educated in Kolaka and then attended a college in Kendari. I was born in Kolaka but raised up and was educated in Kendari, then attending a college and working in Makassar. Both my father and my mother still put on the tradition but when my mother was still alive, Konawe-Tolakinese’s custom and language were more dominant, as my father could also speak Tolakinese both Mekongga and Konawe’s dialect. The situation changed after my mother’s demise, my stepmother is a Makassar-born-and-raised-up woman who is actually Mekongga but as of a Buginese anchestry from her paternal grandfather. Mekongga-Tolakinese both costum and language are now applied more dominant in my family.

The problem occurred when I and my siblings are visiting our relatives in our parents’ native village, as my parents are never thoughtful to tell us about our own language, that is to say, we learn it from another relatives during the visit, even so, it is so rare. Notably in defining the proper word to say ‘there’ –I kiro and I kitu- we feel disoriented to define which the referent point could be seen or could not be seen when we speak to another relatives who can not speak bahasa, like old relatives (grandparents). It leads to misunderstanding point of direction, for an instance, to ask about someone’s precise position.

Likewise, mostly the ones who were born and raised up out of their own native region are only understand what the natives say, but just in common word (pidgin), and they tend to not be able to utter it. It is more understandable to listen than to say.

Similar with the study of Tolaki language that becomes one of additional subject we take in Primary School (Elementary and Junior High School), it is no longer to be learnt in Senior High School anymore, without any well-defined reason. Its function was just an additional subject and eventually misled by its own teacher. We only learn the grammar, vocabulary and reading, but those took little influence in making our well-studied understanding. So, mostly the students –mainly Tolakinese- can understand the language merely from their family and surrounding rather than study material from school. It is to say, the study of vernacular language for high school is not definetely serious to be applied and less intensive attention.

Ikiro, ikitu, and ikeni are studied as parts of pronoun, subdivision of demonstrative pronoun.

Adjective Vs Stative Verb

What I know about English used to be merely limited by numbers of vocabulary and clear-cut grammar skill. Initially, I start learning English officially since I was a first grader in Junior High School. English, in my sight, was just an interesting subject to be learnt. It was like we were trying to explore the new things across the boundary within. I came out of more interested decision to take major in English Department when I was in the third grader of senior high school. It was a kind of gambling, but I was sure as hell that I can handle it off as well as making a good achievement for the sake of my own.
I definitely understand that English is a group of four major kinds of class-word. Those are Verb, Adjective, Adverb, and Noun. I had no clue about differing between those kind of things as we do not add the Verb with ‘tobe’ (unless using in Continuous form ‘sedang’), whereas the latter three should be put with ‘tobe’. When I was studying English Syntax, I had just known that between Verb and Tobe had the same level of Verb, but in the other hand, Verb was classified as a lexical Verb, meanwhile ‘tobe’ was a non-lexical verb.
That I know about Verb, is consisting of infinitive, present participle and past participle, dealing with their own subject matter of tenses. But soon I realized that there are other classifications of defining the verbs, that are we call ‘action and stative verb’. According to web2.uvcs.uvic.ca, action verb is usually describe actions we can take, or things that happen, meanwhile, stative verb is more about referring to a state or condition which is not changing or likely to change. Often stative verbs are about liking or disliking something, or about a mental state.
Here, the problem appears to be complicated when we try to distinguish between adjective and stative verb. We sometimes are puzzled with defining the sentence structure, whether it is about omission or addition. We often insert the ‘tobe’ into the stative verb word such as instead of saying ‘I forget’, we would like to say ‘I am forget’, or omitting the ‘tobe’ in the sentence ‘I sick’ or ‘I late’, since those words belong to an adjective area. We got confused to understand why ‘forget’ and ‘like’ should be belonged to the ‘stative verb’, not merely adjectives.
But we actually had better not to be overwhelmed with the problem of why those words should be categorized into particular kinds of word, but it is obviously taken into some relevant explanation. www.writingcentre.uottawa.ca states that the adjective modifies a noun or a pronoun by describing, identifying, or quantifying words. An adjective usually precedes the noun or the pronoun which it modifies. Therefore, we can see the clear difference between adjective and stative verb.
Making mistakes, is only one way to more trigger us to get used to applying words correctly, by putting the correct words into the correct sentences. As Selinker (1992;150) in Caroline Mei Lin Ho’s Empowering English Teachers to Grapple with Errors in Grammar (iteslj.org/Techniques/Ho_Grammar_Errors.html) states that ‘Errors are indispensable to learners since the making of errors can be regarded as ‘a device the learner uses in order to learn’. Indeed, as Carter (1997;35) notes on that paper, ‘Knowing more about how grammar works is to understand more about how grammar is used and misused’.
Learning English through understanding the use of vocabulary is a lot of fun to do, by which making us eager to apply words and feel no hesitate to say it aloud. So do not be afraid of making mistakes.

REFERENCES :
1. Empowering English Teachers to Grapple with Errors in Grammar Caroline Mei Lin Ho
mlcho [at] nie.edu.sg Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Ho_Grammar_Errors.html
2. What is an Adjective?
http://www.writingcentre.uottawa.ca/hypergrammar/adjectve.html
3. Stative and Dynamic Verb
http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/410/grammar/stat.htm