Stage 3 – Planning Future Books – Materials Design Training in Tashkent

stage3 The ESP Materials Design Partnership Project is nearing completion. The project specialist will be leaving the country soon and it is time now for the project’s trained designers to take over. On 9-10 March 2016, designers gathered at the new campus of University of World Languages to plan how they would use the model book, B2 Ready, to create their own books in the coming year. During the two days, designers discussed how to keep the effective principle-based design of B2 Ready while adding new elements to their own books. By the end of the seminar, designers had submitted plans for 22 new books at serving students at various levels and in various fields of study.

ESP Materials Design Partnership Project

This project was a joint effort of the Republican Scientific-Practical Center for Developing Innovative Methods for Teaching Foreign Languages under the Uzbek State University of World Languages and the U.S. English Language Specialist Program in 2015-2016. The project, based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, offered intensive training in ESP materials design.

The project aimed to train all interested educators in the fundamentals of materials design for second language acquisition in 3 stages:

1. Foundational training in materials design with input regarding conditions and cultural constraints from Uzbekistan's educators.

2. Intensive workshops with stage 1 trained designers to culminate in a working draft of an ESP textbook that now serves as a template for independent designers.

3. Support for independent designers in using the template to produce ESP textbooks in their own fields.

Our goal was to train materials designers to produce textbooks that effectively raise the English language proficiency of entering university students to levels that allow them to access materials and lessons already published in English in their chosen fields of study.