return to index page Initial Recommendations on the Technical English Program at P.T. Koba Tin
3 April 1996
Consultant: Thor May
1. Course Focus
2. Language Teaching Materials
3. Classroom Contact Hours
4. Local trainer preparation and availability
1. Course Focus
Koba Tin is sponsoring an mechanics trainee program based on English language modules from John Batman Institute of TAFE. The students involved in this program will have, at best, some marginal competence in English. A focus on the students involved in the mechanics program would therefore lead to the most efficient concentration of teaching resources (staff, materials) with the optimum language outcomes.
It is understood that there is a general interest amongst Koba staff in accessing an English language program. This would certainly be beneficial when resources are available, but at this point might dilute the effort needed to bring the mechanics trainees up to standard.
2. Language Teaching Materials
As a model, the consultant has bought a set of teaching units with him, developed for overseas trained mechanics entering Australia. While these units can be taught at Koba, the most productive language learning materials are likely to be developed from workshop publications, training modules etc. which directly relate to the operations at Koba. Students will readily learn language which they can see is an immediate part of their working environment.
If local resources are to be used for language teaching, as suggested above, then those resources will have to be adapted for teaching needs. The experience of the consultant is that L2 (second language) technical students can handle topic units of up to about ten sentences in a two or three hour session. Such a unit draws on the information available in manuals or mechanics training modules, but carefully structures the language in a way that is suitable for English language teaching, and specifies accompanying activities. The preparation of such units takes time: perhaps three or four can be written in a day of full-time work by the consultant.
The consultant can prepare a certain number of units built on local resources while he is on site, but as a long term proposition the local trainer needs to begin doing this work. He is in the best position to develop, adapt and innovate as student performance progresses. Koba Tin will therefore need to allocate a realistic amount of time to the local trainer for materials preparation. There will need to be some experimentation to establish just how much time that should be.
The initial Koba plan had been to run technical English classes on a voluntary basis after hours. This is workable -- any exposure to English will help -- but may not give optimum outcomes for the target group of mechanics trainees.
The optimum outcome for mechanics trainees would be to integrate their technical program as closely as possible with the language program, both in terms of teaching materials and time tabling. The present Australian procedure, for example, is to have overseas trained mechanics come to language classes for three hours, four days a week in the mornings and go to technical workshop programs for three hours in the afternoons. [Student concentration fades badly after three hours, or even two sometimes]. That is fairly clearly beyond the current resources of the on-site Koba project.
Koba management will need to decide, as quickly as possible, how many students can be released (if at all) for the language as well as the mechanics program. We also need to establish on what days they can be released (if at all) and for how long. The ideal, as mentioned above, would be to have language preparation back to back with the technical training.
Local trainer preparation and availability
The mechanics modules are pre-manufactured for delivery by a trainer. Language teaching, as explained above, works best when units are prepared on-site for local conditions. However, this does require a commitment of time and some talent. There is no reason why it could not be done here, but there will need to be a fairly early decision both by management and available training staff as to whether they are able to make that optimum commitment.
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