Der sichere Umgang mit fremden Sprachen und Kulturen stellt heute ...

ibw-Forschungsbericht 143 | Fremdsprachen für die Wirtschaft INGRID GARSCHALL
These findings underline that the teaching of English at vocational schools must take into consideration
that joinery students are only confronted to a very limited extent with the need of
using English in their profession. So the teaching of ‘English for Joiners’ is the ideal backgroun
for VOLL (Vocationally Oriented Language Learning), the learning of the English language for life
and personal development as outlined by Brewster (1995) or Liszt (1999).
3. Presentation of a Needs-based Framework
for an English Course for Woodworkers
3.1 A Revised Course
The evaluation of the syllabus showed that
■ the content listed in the syllabus cannot be dealt with every year in different grades of
difficulty. The syllabus also includes the preparation for the Berufsreifeprüfung exam (with
additional contents) but this is unrealistic with only 80 English lessons during their entire
time at vocational school.
■ Information about target levels, assessment and evaluation is not provided in the syllabus.
3.1.1 SYLLABUS ADAPTATION
The importance of incorporating information about the subjective needs of learners into the curriculum
development is underlined by Nunan (1990: 18-19) as these needs relating to the learners’
perceptions of what and how they want to learn add an important dimension.
3.1.2 GROUPING LEARNERS AND GOAL SETTING
At Poechlarn, it was found that it is not possible to group learners based only on information
regarding the number of years of English tuition. Therefore, English classes are currently organised
by dividing one class into two groups according to the alphabetical order of their names
without taking previous knowledge into account. This method lacks the factors of aptitude and
personal communicative goals used by Nunan (1990: 21) for grouping learners. For the future it
is suggested that, at the beginning of the course, students fill in a questionnaire indicating their
present language level in a German-language self-assessment grid (Council of Europe). Based
on the collected information together with answers to the questions about the learners’ personal
communicative goals and their intention to take the Berufsreifeprüfung, two groups should
then be formed. The suggestion to investigate the learners’ target needs and how they want to
learn is part of the adapted syllabus document as well.
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