OBSERVACIN Y PRCTICA DE LA ENSEANZA II

ESP Observation 1

Student: Juan Pablo Mura

This observation task was carried out in a Mdulos 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 glndulas
principals, torrente sanguneo, etc. In another reading activity, students had to read a text
and tell the teacher what the text was about (prevencin 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 Qu ser 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.