Building ESP Content-Based Materials to Promote Strategic Reading

This article reports on an action research project that proposes to improve the reading comprehension and vocabulary of undergraduate students of English for Specific Purposes–explosives majors, at a police training institute in Colombia. I used the qualitative research method to explore and reflect upon the teaching-learning processes during implementation. Being the teacher of an English for specific purposes course without the appropriate didactic resources, I designed six reading comprehension workshops based on the cognitive language learning approach not only to improve students’ reading skills but also their autonomy through the use of learning strategies. The data were collected from field notes, artifacts, progress reviews, surveys, and photographs. 

Este artículo informa sobre un proyecto de investigación cualitativa que propone mejorar la comprensión de lectura y el vocabulario de estudiantes universitarios de inglés que se especializan en temas relativos a explosivos en una escuela de policía, en Colombia. Por tratarse de un curso de inglés específico que carece de los recursos didácticos apropiados, diseñé seis talleres de comprensión de lectura basados en el enfoque del aprendizaje cognitivo de la lengua, para mejorar tanto su comprensión de lectura como su autonomía para usar estrategias de aprendizaje. Para la recolección de datos se emplearon notas de campo, artefactos, pruebas de progreso, encuestas y fotografías. 

Diseño de materiales basados en contenidos para fomentar estrategias de lectura en un curso de inglés con propósitos específicos

Myriam Judith Bautista Barón
Universidad Externado de Colombia
bautistamyriam@yahoo.es

This article was received on March 6, 2012, and accepted on November 20, 2012.

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This article reports on an action research project that proposes to improve the reading comprehension and vocabulary of undergraduate students of English for Specific Purposes–explosives majors, at a police training institute in Colombia. I used the qualitative research method to explore and reflect upon the teaching-learning processes during implementation. Being the teacher of an English for specific purposes course without the appropriate didactic resources, I designed six reading comprehension workshops based on the cognitive language learning approach not only to improve students’ reading skills but also their autonomy through the use of learning strategies. The data were collected from field notes, artifacts, progress reviews, surveys, and photographs.

Key words: CALLA, learning strategies, materials development, reading.

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Este artículo informa sobre un proyecto de investigación cualitativa que propone mejorar la comprensión de lectura y el vocabulario de estudiantes universitarios de inglés que se especializan en temas relativos a explosivos en una escuela de policía, en Colombia. Por tratarse de un curso de inglés específico que carece de los recursos didácticos apropiados, diseñé seis talleres de comprensión de lectura basados en el enfoque del aprendizaje cognitivo de la lengua, para mejorar tanto su comprensión de lectura como su autonomía para usar estrategias de aprendizaje. Para la recolección de datos se emplearon notas de campo, artefactos, pruebas de progreso, encuestas y fotografías.

Palabras clave: CALLA, diseño de materiales, estrategias de aprendizaje, lectura.

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Introduction

The students at the Escuela de Investigación Criminal—a police training institute in Bogotá—study English for specific purposes and there is an immediate need to design didactic resources for teaching the classes effectively because there are no appropriate materials related to crime in Colombia in English. Besides, nowadays the abundance of English information found in journals, articles, books, and web sites demands a good level of reading abilities. For this reason, these students need to be competent in the comprehension of English texts to promote their own practice and interest in their lives as police officers.

Considering the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) institutional goals and the students’ needs, I feel the main aim of this study was to understand whether and how reading comprehension and strategy awareness can be developed through the implementation of content-based materials anchored in the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA).

I developed and implemented criminalistics materials to promote reading comprehension based on CALLA by designing six reading workshops as didactic units that provide both language and content learning activities, with an explicit focus on language learning strategies, the inclusion of relevant content, the possibility for interactive teaching and learning, and opportunities for students’ self-assessment of their own learning process. The workshops also allow me to track the participants’ progress for interpretation and analysis of data when necessary.

This situation aroused my interest in materials development, so that I could provide my students with authentic readings to help them achieve the pre-established learning objectives. As a teacher, I consider that this student-centered approach helps us to get closer to the students’ language needs and enhances the success of our work. This research can motivate other teachers to develop contextualized ESP materials as a regular pedagogical task, and I believe that this study is a worthy example of how teachers can give the practice of teaching a well-deserved boost in the education field.

Theoretical Framework

The pillars that shape this research are reading comprehension, materials development and the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach. They were combined to set up a productive work environment to fulfill the expectations of a group of police officer trainees who were interested in learning about criminalistics as a science that deals with processing criminal events. According to The California Association of Criminalistics (CAC, 2010, p. 1), “This science involves the application of principles, techniques and methods of the physical sciences and has as its primary objective a determination of physical facts which may be significant in legal cases.”

This was the main curriculum subject at this school, so the students needed to be taught vocabulary related to physical descriptions, clothes, belongings and evidence elements relevant in a criminal investigation. Also, they needed to be familiar with crime information and to read material dealing with criminal cases, updated technologies in data analysis, fingerprints, explosives and weapons.

Reading Comprehension

The reading process is not easy to examine be-cause it is complex and personal. Many communicative events take place during the reading process and the reader has to cope with them trying to comprehend and obtain as much as he/she can from the text. There is a close relationship between the reader and the text (Alderson & Bachman, 2000), and the reader’s perception of the material is affected by life experiences and purposes.

Reading is a complex, strategic, and active process of constructing meaning, not simply a matter of skill application (Palinscar & Brown, 1984). Comprehension requires a dynamic participation of the readers and their ability to seek, organize and reformulate the information in their own words, resorting to their own experiences and background knowledge.

To prepare students to read, it is essential to overcome comprehension difficulties and prepare them to be autonomous in the future. There are lots of effective ways to guide them, but, unfortunately, sometimes teachers ignore them and tell students to simply read and hope they become skillful in getting information without planning any strategic steps i.e. organizing ideas, taking notes, using reference skills, etc. In this respect, there are many kinds of effective instructional activities that can help students comprehend and remember what they read and as teachers it is our responsibility to make them available to the students.

Additionally, the reading process includes a variety of strategies, skills and types of texts that make the reading task multifaceted and a combination of mental processes, knowledge, and abilities. Grabe (2004, p. 55) suggests that “it should be centered on the use of and training in multiple strategies to achieve comprehension.” Then, the real value and effectiveness of the reading process involve frequent practice with clear purposes and expectations.

Likewise, the use of authentic and adapted readings helps students familiarize themselves with specific content-based expressions and vocabulary, and become skillful at consciously recognizing the organization of the information and the structure of the target language. Students should also be trained in the use of terminology related to their field of study, thus feeling more engaged (Scott & Winograd, 2001).

Noles and Dole (2004) state:

Researchers have collected much evidence that supports explicit strategy instruction. The teaching of strategies empowers readers, particularly those who struggle, by giving them the tools they need to construct meaning from text. Instead of blaming comprehension problems on students’ own innate abilities, for which they see no solution, explicit strategy instruction teaches students to take control of their own learning and comprehension. (p. 179)

There is a variety of direct and indirect learning strategies to facilitate reading comprehension in the language learning process. From Oxford’s strategy classification system (Oxford, 1990) I focused on direct strategies that allow the straight learning and practice of content and vocabulary and indirect ones that help the students organize and evaluate their knowledge and performance (see Figure 1).

Materials Development

Teacher-developed didactic materials can be defined as any kind of resources and layouts that the teacher creates, looks for or adapts to fulfill the daily needs in the teaching-learning process. In the same line of thought, Tomlinson (1998, p. xi) defines materials development as “Anything which is used by teachers or learners to facilitate the learning of a language”. The interesting point here is that the author comments that learning is a shared responsibility between the teacher and the learners.

Due to the lack of appropriate didactic resources for the ESP course I teach, materials development is one of the main constructs that underpins this research. Developing materials is an opportunity to find solutions for immediate teaching problems at Escuela de Investigación Criminal and without depending on foreign resources and help. Moreover, it is really refreshing when we teachers not only instruct all the time, but also develop our own materials based on reflection and concern, and look for new experiences as teacher-researchers. We can produce solid and excellent material with the quality level of materials created in English speaking countries.

From my point of view, it is really exciting to explore this attractive possibility because it helps the teacher reflect on his/her labor to continue seeking knowledge and discovering new facets that enormously feed his/her intrinsic motivation. It is also an opportunity to be updated with recent research in the educational field (Núñez, Téllez, Castellanos, & Ramos, 2009). Reading and being informed is an essential prerequisite to know about new theories and practices that support the design of new materials.

De Mejía and Fonseca (2006) argue that foreign materials are not always appropriate to any context and do not fit in with the cultural and historical aspects of other countries. Sometimes they integrate misunderstandings or fictitious concepts about cultures in which the foreign language is taught. This is another valuable reason to convince teachers to elaborate their own materials since they belong to and are much closer to the culture and social situations in which they are teaching.

Materials development also requires attention to affective and motivational factors (Núñez et al., 2009) since teachers should create an enjoyable learning setting that fosters students’ confidence. When there is an affectionate environment, learning is more motivating and effective because the level of anxiety decreases and confidence increases.

However, materials development is a tremendous responsibility that requires both preparation and, above all, time. Searching for exercises, strategies, visual aids and contents requires a lot of patience, time and creativity. These tools must be constantly improved to optimize their effectiveness and replaced whenever they do not fully meet the desired outcomes.

CALLA

CALLA is a helpful resource to uphold academic and linguistic development. Also, it emphasizes higher levels of thinking, fosters effectiveness, motivates learners and benefits varied language level students towards learning a foreign language. I consider this to be a model that works for content-based instruction and learning strategies development, and therefore it was suitable for the development of this research. Chamot, Barndhardt, Beard and Robbins (1999) state that CALLA provides explicit instruction that assists students in learning both language and content, and helps them to become more autonomous and better self-evaluators of their learning process.

This approach is based on the social-cognitive learning model that integrates the students’ prior knowledge, collaborative learning and the development of metacognitive awareness and self-reflection. It is an approach for learners of second and foreign languages and uses explicit instruction in learning strategies for academic tasks. The main purpose of this approach is to have students both learn essential academic content and language, and become independent and self-regulated learners through their increasing command over a variety of strategies for the acquisition of knowledge. The main elements of this instructional approach are summarized in Figure 2.

For this work, two components of CALLA have been emphasized. The first one is the cognitive learning model which defines learning as a dynamic process in which learners are fully engaged and the information given is retained when it is important to them. The second one has to do with the learning strategies defined as ways to understand, remember and recall the information; these also have a close relation with thoughts and actions that assist learning tasks and link the new learning with the prior knowledge.

Instructional Design

In order to obtain and organize evidence on the way students develop the reading comprehension through the implementation of ESP content-based materials based on CALLA, I designed reading workshops that focused on: (1) helping students to identify vocabulary and expressions related to crimes, suspects and victims with the use of their prior knowledge; (2) promoting the students’ interest in the learning content and the English language; (3) training students in the use of learning strategies for the development of different activities; (4) fostering the students’ reading comprehension of short crime-related texts; (5) aiding students in the recognition of vocabulary and expressions in context; (6) creating and adapting activities to encourage students to use the learning strategies as a routine to be more independent; (7) making the students aware of the usefulness of English in their academic success, and (8) teaching students to do an ongoing self-evaluation of their own learning process.

The reading workshops were designed considering CALLA’s five steps (Chamot et al., 1999) to organize the lesson plans flexibly so as to combine content, language and learning strategies (see Figure 3).

Preparation (Warm up): Students prepare for strategy instruction by identifying their prior knowledge and the use of specific strategies.

Presentation (Warm up): The teacher demonstrates the new learning strategy and explains how and when to use it.

Practice (Before Reading): Students practice using the strategy with regular activities of moderate difficulty.

Evaluation (While Reading): Students self-evaluate their use of the learning strategy and how well the strategy is working for them.

Expansion (After Reading): Students extend the usefulness of the learning strategy by applying it to new situations or learning tasks.

The workshops integrated these steps which were implemented in three two-hour sessions. The example presented in Appendix A refers to the first workshop where the teacher starts by introducing the topic so that the students can define the concept of crime (Warming up). Then, they identify crime vocabulary using pictures; they use these new words in context through guessing, scrambling, matching, and completion activities (Before reading). With this type of activities students are prepared for the reading process and are also introduced to the recognition of learning strategies. After that, they read short crime cases in groups (While-reading) and the teacher revises the reading comprehension exercises with the whole class (After-reading). Then, students reflect on their experience of strategy use. In the last part of the workshop, there is a self-evaluation that the teacher explains to students; in it, each student reflects on learning attitudes, content learning, development of reading comprehension skills and learning strategy awareness.

Research Design

The research approach of this study is qualitative since it gives me the chance to have a better understanding of my students’ behaviors, informing on their thoughts, feelings, motivation, and performance. James, Kiewicz and Bucknam (2008, p. 58) mention that “qualitative methods aid researchers in extracting the depth and richness of the human experiences from their subjects.”

This inquiry is an action research whereby “the participants examine their own educational practice systematically and carefully, using the techniques of research” (Ferrance, 2000, p. 1). The purpose is to improve the way they address issues and solve specific problems within the classroom; thus, I consider this type of research to fit my study because it can generate genuine and sustained improvements in language learning at Escuela de Investigación Criminal. This action research comprised various phases: problem identification, theoretical research, diagnostic stages, selection of learning strategies to be promoted, development of reading materials and workshops data collection and analysis.

Research Questions

• How does reading comprehension develop through the implementation of content-based materials founded on the Cognitive Language Learning Approach in an English course for undergraduate students majoring in Explosives?
• How can students’ awareness of learning strategies be raised through reading workshops using the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA)?

Context and Participants

The study was conducted at Escuela de Investigación Criminal de la Policía, a police training institute in Bogotá accredited by the Ministry of National Defense. Regarding ESP, is imperative to improve the police officers’ performance in English, because it has become an important means of communication and information in their profession. Additionally, during their studies, they have to work with different materials and situations in English and use it to solve problems or to be informed. They also need to manage technical vocabulary related to criminalistics to understand, for example, foreign texts related to racketeering.

The group where the research was carried out was attending the undergraduate program “Technical Professional in Explosives.” It was composed of 16 male students whose ages ranged from 24 to 36, and all of them participated in the process. The English subject is divided into two levels: Basic English and ESP. The students belonged to the latter, but their real language performance was elementary.

Data Sources

Freeman (1998) considers the triangulation of data sources as a suitable methodological strategy to test the credibility of qualitative analysis. Incorporating various sources of information will make the research results more vigorous. First of all, a needs assessment (see Appendix B) and a diagnostic test were carried out for the diagnosis process and the design of the workshops.

Three main data sources were used during and after the implementation of the workshops: students’ self-evaluation reports in six reading comprehension workshops, and two surveys: The first survey (see Appendix C) was a final questionnaire to gather data about the students’ thoughts and behaviors, factual information and preferences; the second survey (see Appendix D) consisted of three open-ended questions that the students answered in their own words, providing qualitative information on their learning process (Marsden & Wright, 2010).

Apart from these sources, I also used three progress friendly reviews consisting of written papers with different exercises to observe the students’ reading comprehension progress through the implementation of the workshops. These reviews were a very helpful tool since they provided evidence about the students’ cognitive and metacognitive processes, and their ability to choose the appropriate learning strategies to do the tasks. I also took observation field notes and some photographs that document the development of collaborative work in class and the teaching-learning environment in general.

Data Analysis

According to Seliger and Shohamy (1989, p. 201), data analysis refers to “sifting, organizing, summarizing and synthesizing the data so as to arrive at the results and conclusions of the research”. The procedure was systematic and included the description, the illustration of two research categories supported with the information collected from various sources: Knowing the what, the how and the what for and Building it up together. The type of data analysis was the a priori approach since the categories were the support of this study, as affirmed by Freeman (1998, p. 103): “It starts with established categories and organizes them into a basic display, then names by category and finds patterns in the display.”

Findings

The needs assessment form was used before the intervention and included 14 multiple choice questions to find out about the students’ previous English learning experience and performance, their definition of strategy, their opinions about reading comprehension in criminalistics, their learning activity preferences and their meaning of autonomous work. The last question had to do with expressing general comments and suggestions to facilitate the achievement of the ESP objectives.

Most students indicated that English was an essential component in their professional development and they had to read a lot of material in English. Nine students agreed that the type of learning materials that might help them in their learning process could be guided reading workshops with a variety of crime-science activities to allow some complete and holistic progress.

Finally, 8 students mentioned that they felt more comfortable during collaborative work (between the teacher and the students) and emphasized the importance of the teacher’s help and guidance in the whole teaching-learning process. 6 of them preferred to develop their work and class activities under the teacher’s supervision and 2 felt better when working alone. A subsequent diagnostic test, that included the reading of a crime text in which students had to answer some comprehension questions, revealed that almost half of the class (14 out of the 16 students did it) had a low level of language proficiency (49%). I also asked them some oral questions after the test to know how they solved each one of the exercises. I found that most of them were not aware of the handling of strategies while doing the exercises.

Based on the results of the students’ needs assessment and the diagnostic test, I designed 6 reading workshops with activities that allowed them to work on crime-science content and learning strategies for vocabulary and reading development. To carry out the process of self-reflection, I selected and adapted a brief evaluation at the end of each workshop to gauge the awareness of their performance in terms of learning and autonomy. The two research categories supported by the data sources are presented in Table 1 and explained below.

Knowing the What, the How and the What For

Suitable Content and Linguistic Input

For the students it was a double challenge since they had to handle both the language and the new contents at the same time, which brings to my mind what Cantoni-Harvey (1987, p. 201) says: “Language is essential for understanding content materials and can be taught naturally within the context of a particular subject matter.” Both the specific content (crimes, victims and suspects, relevant suspect’s marks, criminal notice and summary of crime reports), and the language (colors, parts of the body, clothes, simple sentences in present and past tenses, expressions of time and places) were addressed by means of a consistent application of an array of learning strategies that aimed at developing the students’ reading processes.

The results of the survey at the end of the course (see Appendix C) confirmed that 63% of the learners considered they were always able to understand the contents developed through the reading workshops, and the other 37% could usually comprehend them.

In survey 2, the students answered a question related to the contribution of the implementation of the strategies in their content and language learning. Some of their answers appear in the following excerpts (translated from Spanish):

Yes, the strategies help to understand the topics

Some strategies are easy to understand the crime words and expressions

The reading of the texts was easier with the help of the strategies Survey 2 (November 8^th, 2010)

Students’ Learning Attitudes

In general, my students’ attitude was really motivating as the planned topics had to do with their own work as police officers. In fact they were willing to participate, take risks without feeling disappointed, and accept more responsibility for their learning from the beginning. Even though the instruction of learning strategies was both interesting and useful to the students, it was difficult for them to take full control of their own learning process and this had a direct effect on their attitude depending on the tasks and the time they had to invest in the workshops. Sixty-two percent of students indicated that they always had positive feelings towards the class, the learning process and their classmates. Ten percent answered they usually had them, 5% sometimes and 23% did not give any answer.

Strategy Use Awareness and Appropriateness

Students realized they had used strategies and vocabulary but had not been aware of their use in other contexts as can be verified in some of their opinions:

I didn’t know there were strategies to learn English

So, the strategies can be used for everything?

I learned vocabulary watching police films

Field notes (October 4^th, 2010)

Some instruments evidenced the fact that in the first tasks students tended to use direct strategies like imagery, making associations, translating and placing new words into a context, etc. They also began to realize which strategies were most appropriate for each activity and that using them was helpful for developing the tasks and doing the readings. The examples below confirm this variable:

It is imagery porque hay dibujos (It is imagery because there are drawings)

I need the strategy list para usarla cuando hago los exercises (I need the strategy list to use it when doing exercises)

Terrorism como in Spanish (Terrorism as in Spanish)

Field notes (October 4^th, 11^th, 2010)

The information from the survey at the end of the course showed that 60% of the students considered they always implemented the learning strategies and used the reading ones for a better understanding of texts and descriptions. Thirty-five percent indicated that they usually implemented them and only 5% sometimes did so.

Collaborative Work

The majority of the students agreed that they felt more comfortable working with others and with the teacher’s guidance. In this respect, the strategies that brought this issue to the surface were the social ones: Asking for clarification or verification and cooperating with peers, which are documented in the following excerpts.

Teacher can I use the same strategies?

I like this exercise because we can work in pairs

I am always cooperating with my partners because they don’t understand

Field notes (October 12^th, 2010)

The evidence collected from the survey at the end of the course evidenced that 62% of the students always respected others’ opinions and points of view and also asked the teacher and classmates for help to solve problems and doubts. Ten percent stated that they usually paid attention to their partners’ ideas and only 5% sometimes did. Unfortunately, 23% did not answer.

What I enjoyed the most was the work in groups

I liked a lot to share ideas with my classmates

My partner was my best strategy because he clarified all my doubts

Survey 2 (November 8^th, 2010)

The collaborative work implied students working together as well as with the teacher, which brought more resources into play, improving mutual trust, self-confidence and support. Overall, this enhanced the human relationships that I, as a teacher, deem an essential part of my mission.

For the aforementioned reason, I included an item related to the teacher support in the final self-evaluation to know if my role as a guide, facilitator and companion was effective and supportive. The data gathered showed that 72% of the students considered that I always promoted their interest in several aspects such as learning content and language, instruction of strategies, development of their reading comprehension of crime science related topics, and encouragement to become independent readers able to use learning strategies as a routine. The remaining 27% asserted that I usually accomplished these goals and 1% declared I sometimes carried them out.

Self-reflection

Self-reflection implied the students’ awareness of the use of the learning strategies for the development of reading comprehension. Ormrod (2004) defines this awareness as “people’s knowledge of effective learning, and cognitive processes and their use to enhance learning” (p. 358). It also has to do with the form, the appropriate time and the reason to apply the learning strategies that helped students to become autonomous and more self-regulated.

I took into account the metacognitive model proposed by Chamot et al. (1999): organization of the learning strategies which includes the reflection processes of planning, monitoring, problem solving and evaluating, all useful for reading and retention of language and content. The first step, planning, consisted of socializing the objectives at the beginning of each reading workshop making sure they are clear to all the students. Prior to starting the activities, I invited them to look at the list of strategies and to select the ones they considered more appropriate.

The second step, monitoring, implied the students resorting to their prior knowledge, the previous workshops or the dictionary to complete the tasks. The third step, problem-solving, entailed having students use learning strategies like asking and verifying, linking with already known materials, adjusting the messages, and using the context, among others, to sort out problems during their implementation. The last step, evaluation, comprised correcting and verifying the exercises within their groups, which allowed them to reflect and become aware of their results. This stage enabled students to reflect upon all these issues and consider them to solve the following workshops and more complex tasks. The evidence below exemplifies the students’ perceptions.

I need the list of strategies to do the exercise

I used placing new words into context because the words are in the first exercise

There are key words that help to recognize the type of crimes

To complete with letters I have to use the strategy asking for clarification and verification

Field notes (October 12^th, 2010)

Building it up Together

Tailor-made Materials

I took into consideration an array of aspects to modify the syllabus and to create the plan of activities for this ESP course. Among them, I incorporated students’ needs and expectations as the improvement of their reading comprehension, the design and implementation of activities and tasks with an increasing degree of complexity, the use of authentic materials as much as possible, and the continuous teacher support and guide. This can be seen in Appendix A and in these students’ remarks:

In the way you learn more the difficulty is greater

Very positive experience because the methodology was innovative and easy

I think the learning was good thanks to the teacher’s methodology

I liked the readings because they were real

Survey 2 (November 8^th, 2010)

Moving from Simple to Complex Reading Comprehension Exercises

This aspect features the reading process in the design, the implementation of the workshops and the progress reviews. As getting information and its manipulation are two of the main objectives in reading, I merged a variety of activities and tasks to nurture mental processes, build knowledge, and improve learning skills to strengthen the students’ reading comprehension abilities. I also implemented permanent practical procedures to make it more effective. Additionally, I chose appropriate teaching strategies to promote a didactic reception of the reading passages moving from the simpler to the more complex.

In addition, I made use of authentic readings that allowed students to read real information in the foreign language, familiarize themselves with different reading processes and become skilled in consciously recognizing the organization of the information and the structure of the target language. In reference to this, Jacobson, Degener and Purcell-Gates (2003, p. 13) propose that “It is best for adult students to receive instruction which utilizes authentic, or real life, materials and activities to be also grounded in the context of the learner’s life outside of class.” Furthermore, the learners were trained in the use of common expressions and vocabulary related to their field of study which made them more engaged and enthusiastic. Here are some views that illustrate this issue:

There are many words related to crime

I used placing new words into context because it helps me to know the meaning.

I used selecting and paraphrasing to understand better

The marks are very important to describe the suspect

Field notes (October 12^th, 25^th, 2010)

Figure 4 illustrates the process of developing materials that gradually moved from the simplest reading exercises in the first workshops to the most intricate in the last ones. In the first 4 workshops, according to the students’ perception of reading comprehension abilities, progress was increased 20%. However, in workshops 5 and 6 almost 45% of the students did not complete the survey, which made it impossible to check their complete insights. But according to the graphic the students who did complete the survey (55%) kept the perception of a possible improvement (40%).

Students’ Self-Appraisal of their Learning Attitude and Strategy Use Awareness

This last aspect that supports the second category concerns the reflective manner in which students reflect on their learning process and their attentiveness in the use of strategies. According to Scott and Winograd (2001), when students are strategic, “they consider options before choosing tactics to solve problems and then they invest effort in using the strategy. These choices embody self-regulated learning because they are the result of cognitive analyses of alternative routes to problem-solving” (n. p.).

In the first workshops I explained to the students every aspect to consider in the reflection process and how to do it. However, it was not easy for them since they were not used to doing it due to their cultural and educational backgrounds. At the beginning they mentioned that their success or failure was a direct result of the difficulty of the new concepts and vocabulary and lack of personal abilities in the use of appropriate strategies. Fortunately, through continuous practice they started to feel more comfortable judging by how well they applied the strategies to do the tasks and then compared with their classmates, discussed in group or talked with the teacher.

They also learned that various strategies could be used in the same activity and began to think about better ones they could have used. In general, there was a tendency to use the most attractive to them, as imagery, asking for clarification and verification, making associations, cooperating with peers and translating what they found difficult to understand. However, when they started to gain control over strategy use, they began to select more difficult strategies as placing new words in context, taking risks widely, getting the idea quickly, adjusting and approximating messages, using linguistic and other clues. The examples below confirm the idea that students have specific preferences.

I always use imagery

I liked this exercise porque trabajamos de a dos (I liked this exercise because we work in pairs)

I liked this workshop porque hay mucha imagery (I liked this workshop because there is a lot of imagery)

I choose translating with the dictionary because hay muchas palabras que I don’t know (I choose translating with the dictionary because there are many words that I don’t know)

Field notes (October 12^th, 25^th, Nov 3^rd 2010)

According to the analysis of the final survey, 60% of the students recognized that the self-evaluation at the end of each workshop was always important as part of their learning experience and that they were able to choose the strategies by themselves. Thirty-five percent said that they were usually able to do it, and 5% stated that only sometimes they knew how to do it. Similarly, 63% of the students considered that they were always able to evaluate their own progress in the new language; 34% were usually able and 3% only sometimes as shown in Figures 5 and 6.

Conclusions and Implications

Based on the data collected, I concluded that the students understood the importance of ESP in their professional performance, praising the creation of Criminalistics-based reading workshops under pinned by CALLA principles. They improved their reading comprehension by consciously selecting and applying learning strategies and self-evaluating their own progress. In addition, there was a significant advancement in self-sufficiency and communication in general as they were able, at the end, to share their failures and achievements, identify their difficulties, and look for possible solutions grounded on their own knowledge while interacting with their classmates and the teacher.

They learned most of the crime-science topics developed through the course mainly because those had to do with their professional aim and interests. This fact helped them to improve their language competence, have a very positive learning mood, be willing to take risks and be more responsible during the learning process. The use of a variety of direct and indirect strategies helped the students to understand the content better even though in the first workshops they preferred to use the direct ones since they were memory and cognition-related. Progress was observed as they learned to use all the strategies and became aware of their appropriateness in the different tasks.

To sum up, the whole analysis gave me confidence to state that the development of reading comprehension through content-based material was an effective process in which the learners used their prior knowledge and built up on it as they fused their experience as police officers with the language.

The field of materials development not only gives teachers the opportunity to design new and motivating activities for the students but also opens their minds to become more proactive and creative in their teaching practice. Moreover, the use of innovative materials encourages students to participate more actively, increases general interaction, and gives an enhanced sense to the teaching profession. It is also an alternative to the continuous use of the same textbooks, traditional class activities and teacher-centered classes.

This issue is also a good point to foster thinking about the current teaching practices and the need for teacher-generated materials that cater to students’ language learning and professional needs, likes and expectations. Indeed, contributing to the betterment of the English level of our students through the development of contextualized materials reduces the tendency of using traditional textbooks and methods that are not always the most suitable for ESP context.

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References

Alderson, J. C., & Bachman, F. L. (2000). Assessing reading. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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About the Author

Myriam Judith Bautista Barón studied Philology and Languages (Spanish and English) at Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She holds a specialization in Bilingual Education (Universidad Antonio Nariño, Colombia), and a Master’s in Education with emphasis on English Didactics (Universidad Externado de Colombia). She has taught in different educational institutions in Colombia and Spain.

Acknowledgements

My infinite gratitude to my master and friend, Astrid Núñez Pardo, for her patience and support. Special thanks to my graphic designers Nicolás Ávila and Juan Fernández for their devotion and collaboration.

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Appendix A: Workshop 1

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Appendix B: Students’ Needs Assessment

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Appendix C: Final Self-Evaluation (Survey 1)

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Appendix D: Expressing my Personal Opinions (Survey 2)