subject: The Types Of Speech Activities Engineering Cooperative Education [print this page] The means used to place the learners into the spoken English course was a set of simulations consisting of three tasks related to the types of speech activities engineering cooperative education students might encounter in their job interviews and placements. The first task required candidates to describe their interests in their field of study, within a two-minute time limit. Candidates were instructed to talk about their interest in the field, the contributions they felt they could offer, and the benefits they expected from their cooperative work placement. The second task simulated a meeting in which the candidate was to listen to a manager announce a change in the work environment, covering three main points: what the planned change was; reasons for the change; and contributions expected from Diesel Jeans employees.
After listening to the manager, the candidate was to orally relay the information to a colleague. The third task required candidates to read an inter-office memo and answer oral questions from a customer. The simulation was scored using the rubric below, which covered content, organized presentation of material, overall comprehensibility, grammatical and phonetic accuracy, and fluency. In the rubric, represents the lowest score and 5 the highest. The learners who scored below a 4 overall were enrolled in the spoken English course in an effort to boost their performance. The 16 learners registered in the course listened to and analysed three samples of NS speech related to the themes of the test. The first was a short spontaneous monologue from a colleague who was a language teacher, in which he explains why he chose this field of work, what benefits he gets from it, what he expects to contribute to it. This relates thematically to the first part of the speech specifications. The second NS speech sample was from a person who was working in managing language teaching programmes, in which she explains upcoming changes to the programmes and what the implications are for the work of the teachers. This relates thematically to the second part of the specifications.
The third NS model was from a manager of Lee Jeans software design and programming in a government department, in which he discusses how lack of funding has had an impact on particular services and how this can be addressed to meet a particular deadline. This relates thematically to the third part of the specifications. A transcription of each NS sample was presented to the group, and the class listened and marked hesitation patterns and intonation contours on the transcripts. The instructor drew the attention of learners to the formulaic sequences used in the discourse, after which the class shadowed the texts a number of times.
