Development of tailored language courses

The idea behind tailored language teaching activities is that participants will experience a high correlation between the course goals and their everyday language needs. Our experience shows that relevant and practice-oriented teaching maintains a high motivation in participants and results in the most efficient utilization of resources. This applies to both the time and energy each participant puts into acquiring the new language, but also to the cost of participating in the course.

The development of teaching activities follows a cyclical pattern:

Planning

Each cycle begins by conducting an extensive needs analysis. The configuration of the analysis can assume a variety of forms, ranging from surveys to dialogue or interviews with participants to observation of classes. Teachers will also collect both their own and their colleagues’ experiences, evaluations and feedback from previous courses which might be relevant for the current request.

Development

During the preparation of a course, teachers also consult the current research literature in order to make the most appropriate choices in terms of pedagogical method. Simultaneously, teachers look for the most relevant research literature to present to the course participants. Finally, the teacher often conducts an extensive investigation into the actual fields of work in order to uncover the specific work-related terminology or academic genres relevant to the course participants. Based on the findings, the teacher compiles materials and exercises tailored to the request.

Teaching, evaluation and revision

The teaching activities are continuously adjusted in accordance with feedback from the participants, and at the end of the course, each participant is asked to fill out a comprehensive evaluation. Experiences are shared with colleagues and become part of CIP’s knowledge base for the development of future teaching activities and research into foreign language acquisition.

Examples of tailored language course development

At CIP, experienced academic language consultants carry out all teaching activities. The language consultants develop and provide teaching in: