Context

The Korean educational context is dominated by standardized testing historically and culturally (Choi, 2008). In terms of English education, the two tests that have the greatest influence on the type of learning and the students’ future lives are the college entrance exam (KSAT) and the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC). The KSAT is given once a year in November and tests English among the other core subjects. It puts immense pressure on the students to excel and the teachers to prepare the students for this exam. Both of these exams assess reading and listening comprehension predominantly because they can be assessed objectively. This creates significant test washback (Messick, 1996) that results in language classes that ignore the productive skills necessary to communicate in the target language. It also gives students and teachers little time, energy, or freedom to experiment with more authentic, meaningful, forms of learning. Therefore students enter universities with little communicative ability or confidence.

Learner Needs

In order to determine students' needs we gave a survey to over 2000 first year university students in their second semester. As we intended to develop a blended learning English language program we asked them about their experience learning English and using technology to do so. We also asked them about how they planned to use English in the future. Among the data the two questions that were most telling and helped shape the curriculum regarded current and future English use.

Objectives

The TOEIC is the test that the majority of companies expect applicants to achieve a good score on, despite its obvious deficiencies in measuring communicative competence. There is a TOEIC Speaking exam that is growing in popularity and seeks to address this problem. Test takers are asked to record their voice, reading a text, describing pictures, expressing opinions, and solving problems. Universities are under increasing pressure to compete with the market by providing classes that prepare students for these exams, thus increasing the employability of their graduates. The university where I am credit coordinator of the English language program decided to respond to this need by rebranding the first semester mandatory English program ‘Professional English’ with a Business English TOEIC emphasis. It was my job to satisfy this requirement by designing a course that satisfies the various stakeholders, and I did it by applying a task-based approach, utilizing the collaborative technology tools of Google+, Google Sites, Adobe Spark, and Canva.

Business English and Test Skills are notoriously dry to teach, so I wanted to find a solution that engaged and challenged the students, but also inspired the staff and did not disregard second language acquisition theory. Task-based language learning asks students to complete a task, often authentic in nature, such as booking a ticket, or communicating via email to solve a problem (Nunan, 2006). It has shown to have a positive effect on motivation, which in turn increases acquisition. The tasks that the students in this 16 week class would complete would be based around the creation of a company. In groups of four or five, students would work together

● to create a company/event/institution

● develop a product/service and create an advertisement using Adobe Spark

● create a website describing the company and advertising the product with Google Sites

● share pages of the company website on Google + and give feedback to their peers

● contact classmates’ companies about a problem with the product

● resolve the problem via email or phone

● create a job opening using Canva and post it on the website

● apply for one of the jobs and interview for the position

Technology

When introducing technology to ELL students it is important to use tools that are easy to adopt and utilize with a short learning curve. The new Google Sites is very user friendly, and in little to no time you can have some content up that is appealing. It is also collaborative, like other Google apps it can be shared with the members of a group easily, so that each member can contribute to the project.

Adobe Spark is not as open as the Google apps are, so students would have to get together outside of class, or bring a laptop with them to class and work on editing the video in class. However, it is free for students to use and also is very user friendly.

Canva is the final tool that students will use. It is a great educational tool as it is free and provides many templates that students can use to get started. Creating infographics helps students develop their critical thinking skills and digital literacy while allowing them to explore their creativity in a new medium.

Evaluation

We surveyed the students at the end of the course to get their feedback on the learning experience I designed. We wanted to know which learning tasks were valuable to the students and if the connection between the learning tasks and the learning objectives was clear. We also looked at the students' results on the standardized assessments to determine areas for growth. The results can be found in the infographic below.

References

Choi, I. C. (2008). The impact of EFL testing on EFL education in Korea. Language Testing, 25(1), 39-62.

Helliwell, M. (2014). Business Plus. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

ISTE Standards FOR EDUCATORS. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/standards/for-educators

Messick, S. (1996). Validity and washback in language testing. ETS Research Report Series, 1996(1).

Nunan, D. (2006). Task-based language teaching in the Asia context: Defining'task'. Asian EFL journal, 8(3).

Richards, J. C. (2013). Curriculum approaches in language teaching: Forward, central, and backward design. Relc Journal, 44(1), 5-33.