Article 3

July 8

Chapter 3 is Johan Ulvin's experience regarding an ESOL course development for a Boston nursing home in which he focused on determining student needs. In "Designing workplace ESOL courses for Chinese health-care workers at a Boston nursing home," the author notes that although the course did what it was designed to do after observing and analyzing the needs of the students for three weeks, it had failed his students. Our further exploration will reveal why he had felt so. However, on the bright, as he became more involved in the classroom, he was able to accurately identify the students' needs and therefore, went on to improve the course.

After his ninety hour observation and came up with a course with already defined set of needs, he executed his course plan on his students. Eventually, he found this particular plan to be ineffective because it did not include the input of the students, neither did it include the other factors that are unique to this group of Chinese immigrants and other individually unique needs. Therefore, he revamped the program in which he considered the input of the students. In addition to that and discovering unique needs, Ulvin also made trusted relationships with his students and used student experiences in their learning.

We can see this improvement of course program in the tables on pages 46-47. In Table 1, we see that the needs and goals of the Chinese students were defined by the supervisors, nurses, department heads, and trainers. But there came a shift in the system as seen in Table 2: student experiences were included in decision making and other problems of the students that needed to be addressed were also included.

In the end, Ulvin found that course development does not exist "in a vacuum," but rather is indeed an ongoing process, that involves the active input and participation of the learners (58).

I believe that his progression between the two processes is a great improvement. Education, course development, and assessments are becoming increasingly focused on involvement of students. I learned that students being involved with various ways of assessments, in which not only written but also oral, affect, and production, makes assessment less threatening. I especially admire Ulvin's method in which he involved himself in his students' trust and used their experiences in making significant connections with the lessons. When I was learning English as a second language, I was very interested and learned best when I had the chance to make connections between English and my own primary culture and language. I was also very willing to share them.

Images

Image of Chinese flag. [Photograph]. Retrieved from http://drjamesgalyon.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/china-flag.jpg.

Image of student and teacher. [Photograph]. Retrieved from http://extend.schoolwires.com/clipartgallery/images/26256131.jpg.