TESOL, STEM and Needs Assessments.

Coming up on the Summer Language School season, students eager to learn or improve their English Language skills are spoilt for choice. However, in the effort to provide more and more novel courses, some TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) schools may be trying to deliver too much.

There are many different schools where students can brush up on their English Language Skills. This can range from improving English competencies for university entry exams or a new career or simply a case of educational tourism.

Most English language courses are based on different levels of ability such as beginners, intermediate and advanced, all of course having levels and sub-levels of proficiency. There are courses for college entry exams and specialist courses for people entering certain careers such as business or other professions. This prepares the learner for any new vocabulary or grammar they may encounter in their new roles. All these schools test their students’ proficiency in English and the school would have an accurate needs assessment. This general rule stands for most Language schools.

However, there are other courses that may be overreaching and try to include additional subjects, such as STEM or STE(A)M (Science, Technology, Engineering, (Art), Math and Chemistry). Let’s be honest, some schools say Chemistry, but it is usually just cooking. So, for example in the morning the students would have their regular English language classes at an appropriate level, learn a little STEM vocabulary and in the afternoon, they have a separate class in a STEM subject in English.

On the outside, this seems fine, however, as they say, the devil is in the details. When the students enter these Language/STEM schools they have their aforementioned language needs assessments. So far, so good. However, what about the STEM part? How do these schools determine the needs of the students for the STEM subjects? Just because students have a certain level of English, doesn’t automatically give them an understanding of science, math, etc. There are many people who are highly educated and fluent in English, who have Masters, Doctorates and even leaders, writers and documentary makers who can express very complex ideas. However, put some Geometry, Chemistry, or Website Coding before them and they will struggle to comprehend it.

In order for an English-STEM course to work, the schools have to prepare a needs assessment for the STEM subjects too. So, if a school is teaching Coding, this requires a needs assessment, Web Design – needs assessment, Chemistry – needs assessment. If the students are not needs assessed in the STEM subjects they may not understand the course. They have the language but not the STEM competencies.

This creates another problem. For every level of English there has to be a STEM class. Otherwise, the STEM classes will have students with different levels of language skills, and that would be a nightmare for the poor teacher. Let us assume a Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced class for English and a STEM class for each language level. Then the students have to be divided again, by their level of, say web design. So, the students will now be divided by language level and STEM level. There will have to be a class for every different level of web design appropriate to their level of English and Web design. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Some of these schools teach multiple STEM subjects. So that requires multiple needs assessments in multiple STEM subjects which have to fit around multiple levels of English language skills.

What to do with a student who is Intermediate level English, Advanced Level Web Design, Beginners level Chemistry? And then you have another student who is Beginner Level English, Intermediate Web Design and Advanced level Chemistry? Each level student would require one language class and then up to three or four different levels of STEM classes.

If a school is taking the STEM part of the TESOL course seriously they need different levels of language class, then different levels of STEM classes for each level of language skill. Then the STEM classes would have to be further divided into different levels of STEM skills; and remember these are ‘Summer schools’, so all this has to happen over a period of two to six weeks. The logistics of all of those needs assessments and class organization would probably take that much time in itself.

Learning English can be a great adventure, and if a course is run properly, it can benefit both the student’s career and their personal development. However, If a language school is offering a course that claims to have a joint STEM element, the STEM subjects have to be approached as separate subjects. This means full needs assessments for Science, Technology, Education and Mathematics. Otherwise, a summer educational trip to a Language School could discourage students from pursuing much needed STEM subjects in their Future Learning.

Dr. John Jennings is an Educational Theorist from Galway, he has a PhD in TESOL with research in Social-Media and Education. He has researched the perceptions that students have of Social-Media in Education and how it affects their interaction with the academic world. He is also an avid virtual runner. Links: https://linktr.ee/dr.johnjennings