A case study evaluating an innovative ESP intervention curriculum

This case study is an evaluation of an innovative ESP intervention curriculum designed to improve the job-interview program in the ESP syllabus in an English medium university. The intervention curriculum was a pedagogic process tailored to the situated small culture of the Lebanese ESP class. Five ESP students attending a business communication course participated. The case study arrived at four general conclusions. First it was found that the participants actively engaged in different structures of learning across the stages of the intervention curriculum, which included an enriched ESP learning session, simulation in the classroom context, the group interview, and simulation in the job-interview context. Second, it was found that the participants' job-interview performance improved when comparing their audio-visually recorded simulation in the classroom context to that held in the authentic job-interview context. Third, the participants perceived that their job-interview performance improved because they were better able to address the job-interview context and content. Fourth, the practitioner-researcher drawing on triangulated sources and methods of investigations posited that the intervention curriculum was a relatively effective pedagogic process since the three pedagogic tools of informal cooperative learning, simulating, and the impact of audiovisual recording seem to have been positively perceived and were integrated into the participants' effort towards professional improvement. In implementing the intervention curriculum as pedagogy, shortcomings were found. Participants did not interact freely amongst each other, their classmates, and their lecturer. In addition, some students exhibited weaknesses in communicative skills. Recommendations were made to amend the intervention curriculum and change the research design.