Bringing it all together:Strategies students apply

when synthesizing informationIlse Born-Lechleitner

Centre for Business Languages and Intercultural Communication

Johannes-Kepler-University, Linz

Background to teaching

• Johannes Kepler university (JKU)

• Business, law, science and medical faculties

• 20,000 students

• Languages mainly taught to business and economics students

Information 3Information 2

Report MemoEmail Editorial

Recommen-dation

Analysis of

trends

Relevancefor company

Information 1

Task

• Integrated

• 3 skills (video, audio) - speaking about it in class

• Reflection - what can I do with information

• Actual product might not reveal time spent on it

Sample• 22 students, 18 - 30,

• 10 male, 12 female

• 1 Erasmus

• "Business English I", B2+

• Business, Social Economics, Cultural studies, Business and Education

1 2 3 4 50

2

4

6

8

10

Data set

• 21 student interviews

• 21 self-evaluations

Interviews - results• Difficult to find article (14)

• Liked free topic choice (18) and enjoyed doing it (18)

• Creative (19)

• Openness of talks ("we could do whatever we wanted")

• Finding a role

• Vocabulary (14)

I think the vocabulary tests helped me more because there I had to learn the vocabulary. And

for the research package is just ... search for the German translation and maybe some synonyms. But I never learned them to remember

them in the future. (17f)

Roles• Same role, different companies (9)

• "All my texts are memos", "all my writings are emails"

• Different roles and companies in all 5 "entries" (8)

• "I tried to write all [text] types..."

• No roles (3)

I tried to ... act in different roles. Once I was a research manager,

then a sales manager and ... human resource manager and once I was an assistant ... and

wrote to a shareholder. I tried to mix it up. (10m)

What is a good Learner?

• Gets good grades from start?

• Struggles at beginning and succeeds in passing course?

• Look at both ends of spectrum

Focus on

• 2 learners who finished with "Sehr gut"

• 2 learners who struggled and passed with "Genügend"

• Strongly expressed need to get better

Self-evaluation • I could practice and

further improve

• I trained especially my speaking and writing skills

• I am convinced that my vocabulary actually improved quite a lot. (1m)

• Every beginning is difficult

• At the beginning of this semester it was really hard to speak the language

• My skills slowly improved step by step

• My pronunciation and my English skills in general are improvable (5m)

Self-evaluation 2• I had the feeling that this

course would be a lot of work

• The longer the semester lasted, the more I enjoyed the course

• The work we had to do ... was very enriching

• [it] was really helpful to stay organized during the semester

• At the beginning of this course my mind searched desperately for words..

• After the first homework I realized that I would have to study a lot.

• It took me hours to catch the content and the key facts of the A&F article.

Strategies

• Metacognitive

• Stay organized

• Evaluate activities

• Social

• Good teamwork motivated

• Social

• Talk English with friend

• Get help from student union

• Attend summer course

• Self-study

• Listen to CD, watch TV, read books

Teachers• Organization

• Deadlines, finding texts

• Feedback and encouragement

• Immediate, oral and written

• Point out possibilities around course

• Tandem learning, AISEC/IAESTE, self-access centre

Finally, I have to say that I'm proud of myself that I finished

the course. I didn't give up although I sometimes was close to it. I definitely developed my

English skills. (22f)