Multimedia ESP

Do you think it is important for pilots to know aviation English? Yes? No?

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I have read an article "Utilising multimedia ESP programme in enhancing flight attendants’ safety knowledge and problem solving skills" by Bani-Salameh, Kabilan & Bani-Salameh (2011). The article remarkably presents the importance of the simulation-based environment with the multimedia tools to teach ESP for aviation personal especially flight attendants. It draws our attention to the limitations of the existing methods of teaching ESP for flight attendants and suggests that authentic real life context should be developed by utilizing technology and multimedia tools and students’ cognitive skills should be enhanced. The authors designed a program based on Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction to teach safety knowledge and problem-solving tasks through listening and reading comprehension and worked with 36 flight attendants. The result indicates that the designed ESP program has an observable effect on the flight attendants’ recall of safety knowledge and problem solving skills. Although the study is one of the recent publication that highlights the importance of the integration of multimedia tools in teaching ESP, it has some flaws. For example, the language skills is very limited (only listening and reading are measured) and an operational definition of problem-solving task related to aviation does not exist. Additionally, the relation between Gagne’s theory and the structure of the content is not clear. I think that instead of taking aside for every kind of technological innovations and regarding it better than the traditional method of teaching, it is safer to consider potentials for improvement as well as the integration of classroom-based and multimedia ESP.

Reference:

Bani-Salameh, Z. A., Kabilan, M. K. & Bani-Salalmeh, L. (2011). Utilising multimedia ESP programme in enhancing flight attendants' safety. British Journal of Educational Technology, 42(6), 1003–1015.