(992)INNOVATIONS IN CURRICULUM DESIGN: A MULTI-DISCIPLINARYAPPROACH TO TEACHING ENGLISH TO UNDERGRADUATESTUDENTS

摘要

Nowadays English language is relevant to students and practitioners whose first language is Spanish.For instance, English has been increasingly taught as a second language and presently, it isconsidered as a second language in the undergraduate program of the architectural curriculum at theJuarez Autonomous University of Tabasco, Mexico. For this reason, it is frequent for architecturalundergraduate students to dislike and under-perform in English language. The objective of thisresearch was to address these issues by redesigning the way that English language is taught. Thestudy brought together English language, architectural background and education experts to reconceptualizethe syllabus, and focused on developing different methods of delivery. In order to reachthe objectives, new teaching materials including videos, animations and contextualized workbookswere properly designed and produced. A great emphasis on applying English language andinterpreting data was performed. There were six groups of English language in the academic period ofFebruary-July in 2010 in the Juarez Autonomous University of Tabasco. Two of these six groups werefor Architecture students;;therefore, these two cohorts of students were taken as a sample and wereevaluated under two treatments: old style teaching and new style teaching. Both groups were similarwith respect to gender, age and previous level of English language knowledge. The research wasexploratory and data through observation, open interview and a questionnaire was obtained. Theresults showed that from the 100% of students that were taught using the new approach, the majoritycould better define basic and low-intermediate English language concepts (76%). They were morelikely to regard English language as integral to architectural practice (84%), and to expect to use it intheir architectural career (95%). There was no significant difference in the numbers who thought thatEnglish language was essential to understand literature (97%) and those who felt comfortable with thebasics of English language (90%). More than half the students in both cohorts felt that they werecomfortable with the basics of English language. Using a variety of media and placing emphasis oninterpretation can help make teaching, learning and understanding of English language more peoplecenteredand relevant, resulting in better outcomes for students.