engleski

Coping with Long Texts in ESP Classes: Using Notes in Content Visualisation

In the age of acceleration, claims Thomas Friedman (2016), 'everything important can only be done slowly..., the old-fashioned way'. Friedman's statement is of significance for college-level ESP, especially in business schools. Indeed, our age is characterised by a non-linear increase in the amount of data to be processed in less and less time. Consequently, structured communication is top priority for today's professionals, including the business community which uses different formats of content structuring and data visualisation to accelerate decision making (e.g. Minto 2002). Can knowledge making through content visualisation be effectively applied in ESP classes? We argue that this can be practiced as a note-making exercise in combination with slow, ‘old-style’ careful reading (Weir & Khalifa 2008). We present a preliminary study of college students taking notes on texts in a course in Business English. While reading Text 1 the students were instructed that the notes 'should clearly convey the main ideas of the text to a third person who did not read the text '. In Text 2, the students were additionally required to make notes 'whose graphic organization will reflect the logical structure of the text'. Notes 1 were fragmented and with little graphic organization, while more visual structuring and more content integration was identified in Notes 2. We argue for the role of ESP teachers as content management facilitators and motivators who encourage students to put effort into careful reading leading to knowledge making.

ESP, content visualisation, note-taking, careful reading, deep comprehension

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