French for Field Work: A Specific-Purpose Language Course

Author(s): Dana Strand

Source: The French Review , Apr., 1984, Vol. 57, No. 5 (Apr., 1984), pp. 669-674
Published by: American Association of Teachers of French

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THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. LVII, No. 5, April 1984 Printed in U.S.A.

French for Field Work: A Specific-Purpose

Language Course

by Dana Strand

THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, INCREASED INTEREST IN LEARNING A SECOND LANGUAGE for

work-related reasons has resulted in a growing demand for specific-purpose
language courses. In an article published in 1978 by Great Britain's Centre for
Information on Language Teaching, Peter Strevens notes that these programs
are usually relatively successful, since prospective learners are highly motivated,
regarding what they are being taught as directly relevant to their professional
goals.1 Sometimes, second language skills are even viewed as necessary for
advancement in one's field.
A brief look at the literature devoted to special-purpose language courses in
the past few years reveals, however, that comparatively few such courses hav
been offered in the United States.2 With the exception of commercial foreign
language classes, placing emphasis on business terminology and often integrate
into the college or university curriculum, specific-purpose courses have not
attracted the great interest in this country that they have in other parts of the
world. In Europe, for example, where the geographic proximity of other nation
and the need to communicate across national boundaries for professiona
reasons provide strong incentives for learning a second language, special
purpose language programs have flourished in the past decade.
The relative lack of interest in courses designed to develop the second
language communication skills of Americans for professional purposes may be
attributed, at least in part, to the attitude of the American business communit
toward linguistic capacity. In a Modern Language Journal article reporting the
results of a survey on foreign languages and U.S. multinational corporations,
Marianne Inman points out that few large international companies place lan-
guage skills near the top of the list of qualifications they value in prospective
employees.3 A representative of the American Graduate School of International

"Special-Purpose Language Learning: A Perspective," in Language Teaching and Linguistic

Surveys, ed. Valerie Kinsella (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 186.
2 Two examples of special-purpose language courses taught recently in the United States are
outlined in the following papers, presented at a session of the ACTFL Convention in November
1982: Don lodice, "Producing Students with Marketable Skills: Specific-Purpose French and Spanish
Courses"; and George P. Mansour, "Spanish for Medical Personnel."
'"Foreign Languages and the U.S. Multinational Corporations," Modern Language Journal 64
(Spring 1980), 64.
669

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 670 FRENCH REVIEW

Management recently
not place great weigh
tion, he related the s
never encountered an
of his lack of languag
to working with non-
him the first time h
louder voice.
In discussing the findings of her survey, Inman does observe that the growing
pressures of competition in the international marketplace should eventually
force the American businesses with international dealings to recognize the valu
of genuine second language communication skills. If Inman's prediction
correct, then the demand for special-purpose language courses should also rise
With this perspective in mind, I would like to describe a special-purpos
French course that I designed and implemented for a group of social science
professors and graduate students who were preparing to do field work i
francophone West Africa. Starting with the generally acknowledged assumptio
that the content and aims of teaching in a specific-purpose course are deter
mined by the requirements of the students rather than by external factors.
will define the objectives of the course according to the model developed by
Jan Van Ek for the Council of Europe:4
1) The situation in which the language was to be used: the researchers
planned to communicate with local government officials in Upper Volta and
Mali in meetings during which revenue collecting procedures would be dis-
cussed.
2) The activities in which the learners expected to engage: the students would
gather information in formal meetings as well as through informal exchanges
with local village leaders.
3) The language functions which learners were to fulfill: the students would
have to gather information by asking questions that would involve the use of
a specialized vocabulary. They would then, of course, need sufficient listening
comprehension skills to be able to understand the responses to their questions.
In addition, they would have to follow basic office procedures and engage in
simple social conversations.
4) The general skill level to be achieved: since time was limited, structure and
skill mastery was set at a level corresponding to that achieved at the end of a
more traditional introductory intensive course.
In accordance with the model I have just outlined, the course was designed
with the following learning objectives:
1) The students will gain a command of the fundamental principles of French
grammar.
2) The students will acquire a working vocabulary the composition of which
is determined less by the daily requirements of someone living or traveling in

4 The Threshold Level in a European Unit/Credit System for Modern Language Learning by Adults,
Council for Cultural Cooperation of the Council of Europe, 1975, p. 5.

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 FRENCH FOR FIELD WORK 671

a francophone country than b

field research on local revenue
3) The students will be able t
French.

4) The students will learn to formulate questions concerning the research

they will be conducting and will understand responses given to those questions.
It should be noted that since all the objectives stress oral communication, the
course had to be organized to give primacy to active listening and speaking
skills. While each student in the class had some reading knowledge of French
and could understand, usually with the help of a dictionary, materials written
in French pertaining to his own area of expertise, none had ever developed the
ability to speak or understand spoken French.
The initial series of classes was held during the summer, for two hours a day,
five days a week over a period of ten weeks. Thereafter, because of professional
demands on the students' time, classes were limited to three hours a week for
an additional eight weeks.
Standard audio-lingual techniques were used to teach grammar and struc-
tures, and included a wide variety of oral practice exercises. Most of the exercises
were drawn from the French Basic Course developed by the Foreign Service
Institute of the State Department for use in its intensive language training
program. The program is designed to prepare diplomats and other government
officials for overseas duty.
In the first few weeks, the FSI text was followed fairly closely, since students
had to attain what Van Ek refers to as "a certain level of general ability' before
substantive specialization can occur. Whenever possible, however, adjustments
were made to add greater relevance to the students' aims. For example, dialogues
were altered to reflect situations in which development experts might find
themselves (e.g., a meeting with a Minister of Finance or an introduction to a
local government official). Although the shift in emphasis toward meeting
specific purposes was minor in the beginning, it proved to be an important
factor in determining learner motivation, even in the early stages of the course.
As Strevens notes, the validity of a special-purpose language course rests on
the supposition that it "makes all the learning relevant and therefore secures
good motivation, and ... leads to relatively high rates of achievement and
learner satisfaction."s Since learner satisfaction and motivation were clearly
augmented by the suggestion that what was being taught might have immediate
practical application, an attempt was made to reinforce that impression as often
as possible and through any means that did not contradict fundamental prin-
ciples of foreign language pedagogy.
Vocabulary building was approached in two ways. At first, appropriate
vocabulary items were incorporated into conventional oral exercises. For ex-
ample, a standard intensive course might introduce the following pattern: "Je
vais faire la vaisselle," and then might offer as a practice substitution, ".. . faire
la cuisine." A sentence, with the same grammatical structure, that might be
' Strevens, p. 185.

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 672 FRENCH REVIEW

potentially more use

"je vais faire l'analys
After the first four
through the reading
research of the proj
language social scie
Afrique. Students we
sion. Little stress wa
written material was
in which the answer
the rearranged quest
difficult tasks but w
vocabulary that they
The students were t
would answer, based
use the teacher's ques
research in the field
mental procedures i
great deal of empha
The question-makin
students would assum
discussing, on a rudi
should be noted, how
taken only after the
principles and after
the passage or article
Since listening com
the primary langua
explanations, when c
warm-up periods at
in informal conver
respond to questions
After the first six w
to meet with native

as visitors. In order t
coincided with the p
their familiarity wit
French-speaking fa
Tunisian student w
Development in his c
Prior to the visit of
which were review
accuracy. During the
asked as discussions with the visitor developed. While seldom completely
correct, these questions were usually understood with apparent ease by the

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 FRENCH FOR FIELD WORK 673

guest. The enthusiasm that the

is an indication of how impo
improving motivation. They w
gogical tool.

Conclusions

Although the program I have described was generally successful, there wer
some shortcomings. Time was too limited, particularly during the second pha
of the course when the demands of the academic calendar severely curtailed
the availability of the students for French classes. Furthermore, I had difficulty
in providing an accurate description of the context in which the language wa
to be used. In his thorough outline of the procedures for establishing a special
purpose language course syllabus, John Munby presupposes a very detail
knowledge of the circumstances under which the students will be called upo
to use their language skills.6 Since my students were to work in a previousl
untested situation, I had no precedents to guide me as I tried to define,
precisely as possible, the scope of the course.
Additional difficulties resulted from two related factors: the type of learner
who constituted the class, and their motives for learning French. Strevens offers
what proved, in my experience, to be a very accurate description of typical job
oriented learners. They are, he remarks, "usually more pragmatic, intolerant o
what they feel to be irrelevant, critical of inauthentic materials, keen to achieve
effective communication but contemptuous of aesthetic niceties such as elegan
of style, native-like pronunciation, etc. In addition [they] tend to have fixe
ideas (often in conflict with their teachers) about how they should be taught."
Almost all of my students had had very limited language learning experience
and none had ever taken an audio-lingual course. Since the majority of the
class members were university professors who were used to learning by achiev
ing an intellectual grasp of new concepts, they were skeptical of what they
considered to be my nonanalytical approach. They would have preferre
extensive grammatical explanations and written work to the oral exercises o
which I insisted.

However, after a few weeks had passed and they discovered that they were
already able to engage in simple conversations, an accomplishment that had
eluded them in their previous language learning experiences, they began to
accept the validity of the techniques we were using.
The students also exhibited a tendency to set their own standards of com-
munication, standards that often did not coincide with my own. Although I
was careful to stress native-like pronunciation, the students were inclined to
downplay the issues of correct pronunciation and grammatical precision, argu-

6 Communicative Syllabus Design: A Socio-linguistic Model for Defining the Content of Specific-
Purpose Language Programmes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).
' Strevens, p. 195.

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 674 FRENCH REVIEW

ing that their only

were inclined to con
course that they tho
educators, they beli
was not essential for them to know.
Beyond the question of the type of learner, the most serious obstacle I
encountered was the lack of adequate instructional materials. While I was able
to modify the FSI program to suit my needs, I was not completely satisfied with
the results. Furthermore, I found no available reading selections that were both
relevant in terms of content and graded to the skill level of the students. To
meet my requirements, I had to adapt articles taken from journals, popular
magazines and local government reports. Another problem, that seems to be
common to specific-purpose courses, is that there is a tendency, as materials
become more specialized, for classroom activities to focus on vocabulary build-
ing at the expense of other skills.
Despite the drawbacks I have mentioned, the students did make substantial
progress toward accomplishing the learning objectives that had been set before
we began. By the end of the course, they could generate simple sentences and
could formulate questions. They were able to understand conversational French
as it might be spoken by someone who was simplifying his or her speech out
of consideration for a foreign speaker. They had a command of a useful
vocabulary that they could build upon as they worked in the field.
What is perhaps more important in terms of the course's pedagogical impli-
cations is that the students were highly motivated and maintained a positive
attitude toward a new and difficult learning experience. They were clearly
encouraged to learn by the relevance of the material to their professional needs.
It is interesting to note, for example, that lexical items drawn from the social
sciences, including words that were neither cognates nor borrowed directly
from English, were retained by the students and became part of their working
vocabulary much more quickly than general vocabulary items that were given
equal stress.
Because the students were so familiar with the subject that formed the basis
for discussion, they were able to make intuitive connections that extended their
linguistic accomplishments beyond the level they had attained in classroom
work. They could often anticipate what was going to be said and so appeared
to have better listening comprehension than one might have expected.
The results of the program I have described tend to uphold the merits of
specific-purpose language teaching, under appropriate circumstances. The out-
come of the course lends support to the belief that when language skills are
viewed as a means to further professional goals, that is, when language is seen
as a tool that will have immediate practical application, motivation is great and
learning is enhanced.-

CARLETON COLLEGE

8 This article was originally presented as a paper at the Annual Meeting of the ACTFL
November 1982.

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