Bridging content and EFL: a one-day ESP workshop for flight instructors

Authors

  • Dorothy Turner Moncton Flight College

Keywords:

Aviation English, flight instruction, English for Specific Purposes

Abstract

This workshop allows an ESP provider with limited specialized knowledge in the field of aviation to train English-speaking flight instructors in basic EFL communication strategies. While the present workshop is based on a Canadian model of flight instruction, it can be easily adapted to other jurisdictions.

Author Biography

Dorothy Turner, Moncton Flight College

I was hired in 1997 to teach ESP to hundreds of Chinese-first-language pilot candidates at a flight training unit with fifty flight instructors.  ESP teachers “often have to deal with areas of knowledge with which they are not completely familiar. This is what we call ESP teachers’ subject knowledge dilemma”(Wu & Badger 2009).  This subject knowledge dilemma, along with the paucity of relevant and authentic teaching materials, prompted me to earn a private pilot’s license; and I still continuously face the limitations of my own subject-matter knowledge.  On the other hand, my experience with flight instructors and others in the aviation training industry confirms my sense of the need for language training specialists to ‘train the trainers’.

 

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Published

2011-09-21

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 1 (2011): New perspectives for aviation

Section

Classroom Activities

License

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