Designing the Vocabulary Component for an EFL Cross- Cultural Communication Class

Accepted Jan 02, 2018 A systematic course design is essential in order to achieve an optimal outcome for EFL learners. I will describe the course design of vocabulary components in a Cross-Cultural Communication class in a Japanese university. This course was designed according to the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) model, in which language learners learn the target language and content at the same time, rather than learning the target language, per se. In CrossCultural Communication classes of the CLIL model, learners’ English vocabulary develops as well as other language skills while they increase their knowledge of Cross-Cultural Communication. Some of the problems with this approach in Japan seem to lie in the students’ insufficient English skills and their English learning backgrounds. I have attempted to design the course in order to solve these problems. I have mainly considered how to “fill the gap” between what is needed to conduct the class and what the students lack, while focusing on vocabulary development of the university students in my class. I have employed two frameworks, the Curriculum Development Process (Nation & Macalister, 2010) and the four strands (Nation, 1996), and I have adapted them to suit my teaching situation. Curriculum Development Process consists of comprehensive factors necessary for curriculum development and has allowed me to analyze my present situation. On the other hand, the four strands approach is a well-balanced principle for vocabulary learning. It is supported by Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theories and has four components: meaning-focused input, meaningfocused output, language-focused learning, and fluency development. Although the Curriculum Development Process and the four strands approach mentioned here can be effectively applied to various foreign and second language learning situations, I found it crucial to analyze my teaching situation as much as possible, and to adapt these frameworks accordingly. This paper explains how a course can be designed with partial analysis of one's present teaching situation, in hope that this could offer some guidance to those who need to develop or improve their own course based on their best analysis under limited time.


INTRODUCTION
Vocabulary learning is an essential part of foreign and second language learning. In any of the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, vocabulary knowledge plays a significant role. To exemplify, vocabulary knowledge test results predict half of the variance in listening comprehension (Staehr, 2009). Considering the strong relationship between vocabulary knowledge and English proficiency, it is important for teaching professionals to make efforts to increase their students' vocabulary knowledge. I am persuaded that one of the efficient ways to facilitate vocabulary learning is Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). While learning content, such as learning about another culture, language learners develop vocabulary and knowledge of specific areas. I have been teaching a Cross-Cultural Communication class where I teach In order to bring about effective vocabulary development, systematic curriculum development with researchsupported language teaching methods must be planned. In this paper, I attempt to develop a course design for the vocabulary component in the Cross-Cultural Communication class. A model of language curriculum design by Nation and Macalister (2010) is applied as it consists of all the detailed factors needed for curriculum development and helps to develop a curriculum for vocabulary development in a systematic manner. As for research supported teaching principles to teach vocabulary, the four strands model is considered a principle as it is supported by well-accepted theories in second language acquisition. By considering student needs, environment, and principles, rather than classroom practices, I explore what should be done. In this article, the terms curriculum development and course design are sometimes used interchangeably because they are closely related and they go through similar processes so as to develop course design. Likewise, curriculum developers and course designers are used interchangeably in this paper. This paper describes my insight into course design based on partial analysis according to the curriculum development framework and language teaching principles, including what I believe should be done. This serves three purposes. First, I introduce a systematic way of analyzing factors, developing and improving the curriculum in a comprehensive manner in light of vocabulary development and principles of vocabulary learning supported by second language acquisition. The second purpose is that teachers and curriculum developers can see concrete examples of curriculum development using frameworks as I adopt Nation's and Macalister's curriculum design and Nation's (1996) four strands. In addition, related to the second purpose, teachers can see what can be done in actual teaching situations. The last and the most important purpose is to show how to adapt the model and principles according to each teacher's teaching environment. It is hoped that this exploration of the possibilities offered by Macalister's and Nation's framework and Nation's four strands model will be of help in improving curriculum design and developing an English program in other educational settings with learners of various backgrounds. I believe that by following these guidelines, teachers and curriculum developers could start thinking about how to improve their classes, despite the limited time they may have.

A Model of Language Curriculum Design
I adopt the Language Curriculum Design model by Macalister and Nation (2010) (see Figure 1). Their model consists of necessary factors of the language learning curriculum, which serve as yardsticks of curriculum development and improvement. It should be noted that their book lists examples of each factor. The model of curriculum development should not appear overwhelming to teachers who do not have special training in language curriculum development as they can look at the book and choose factors that are easy to start working on and which they think are a priority in curriculum development. In addition, principles, one of three factors that determine the curriculum in the outer circle, can include different perspectives such as teachers' beliefs and teaching philosophy as well as second language acquisition (SLA) theories and practices, such as motivation, teaching method, and assessment. Therefore, they clarify teachers' professional thoughts, knowledge, and experiences, and they bring about smooth curriculum development in a professional manner. Another strength of Nation and Macalister's (2010) language curriculum design model is that there are three circles or layers of the curriculum developmental factors and steps: Evaluation for the largest circle, needs, environment, and principles for the outer circles, and the three categories of content and sequencing, format and presentation, and monitoring and assessing with the goals as the third and smallest circle. I believe that the three outer circles represent ideas and thoughts and the inmost circle represents classroom practices. Thus, the language curriculum design divides the curriculum design into evaluation, ideas, thought, and theories, and practices. This prevents curriculum designers from confusing ideas and theories with practice, but also it reminds them of the necessity of constant evaluation of each factor in the curriculum.
Let us examine the inner circle and outer circle for more details. The inner circle deals with the syllabus, which involves concrete classroom practices. The goals are in the very center of the circle, and classes should be planned considering content and sequencing, monitoring and assessing, and format and presentation, based on the goals in the very center. These three factors help teachers plan and analyze their teaching. On the other hand, the outer circles consist of factors which determine curriculum; that is to say, needs (lacks, wants, and necessities), environment (learners, teachers, and situations), and principles. According to Macalister and Nation (2011), the outer circles provide "practical and theoretical considerations that will have a major effect in guiding the actual process of course production" (p. 2). As in the syllabus component in the inner circle, the principle factors consist of content and sequencing, monitoring and assessing, and format and presentation. The largest circle is evaluation (Macalister & Nation, 2011). The course designers could analyze needs and environment and include the principles rather in theoretical perspectives, and they can think of the actual classroom before and while considering the actual classroom practices. To be noted, this model reminds curriculum developers and teachers of evaluation in each area of the two circles of curriculum and syllabus. Indeed, this model facilitates comprehensive curriculum development in a systematic way with necessary factors.

Four Strands for Principles of Language Curriculum Development
Language curriculum design principles should be based on solid SLA research and theories. For the current vocabulary component in the course, I chose the four strands (Nation, 1996), in that the four strands include well-accepted SLA theories and practices for vocabulary development. They are meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning, and fluency development (see Table 1). Meaningfocused input, as an example of SLA research, comes from Krashen's (1985) input hypothesis. Krashen asserted that understanding the message in spoken words and written words in L2 leads to language acquisition. Meaning-focused output is related to the output hypothesis (Swain, 1985、1995), which posits that forcing L2 language learners to speak and write leads to the acquisition of L2.
The four strands consist of effective language learning activities. Let me explain each strand using Nation's (1996Nation's ( , 2001 explanations. Students try to understand spoken or written messages. They focus on the message in what is listened to or written, not on what individual words were listened to or written, so they learn words incidentally (Nation & Yamamoto, 2012). On the other hand, through meaning-focused output, learners say or write words to communicate. In both types of activities, students pay attention to unfamiliar vocabulary items in order to understand or produce spoken or written texts. When learners communicate smoothly and quickly with all the words which are known to the learners, for input and output, the activity is called fluency development. Unlike these three types of activities, language-focused learning is learning language explicitly. Nation & Yamamoto states that language focused learning is "deliberate attention to language feature, including spelling. pronunciation, vocabulary, multiword units, grammar, and discourse" (p. 167). The examples would be to learn grammatical knowledge concerning target words and frequently used word parts based on a corpus. The Grammar Translation Method, a very popular method of teaching English in Japan, belongs to this category, and students' L1 should be used effectively to smoothen their understanding. What should be noted are the conditions required for each strand. Teachers must pay attention to the coverage of the vocabulary used. For fluency training, 99 % of words should be familiar to language learners and the same words have to be repeatedly used. As for meaning-focused input and meaning-focused output, 95 % coverage of familiar words is necessary. Teachers are recommended to choose frequent vocabulary and to teach vocabulary learning strategies for language-focused learning.
The four strands approach helps teachers realize what they are doing and encourages them to teach with a variety of teaching activities. Nation (1996) stresses the importance of a teacher's awareness of principles rather than adherence to one method. He also mentions that a teacher should "apply these [principles] in ways that suit the learners, the teaching conditions and the skills of the teacher" (p. 7). I am persuaded that the four strands can serve as useful principles to categorize learning activities into four groups, considering the four strands. In Japan, many teachers teach English with the Grammar-Translation Method, and activities using the method can serve as language-focused learning. Likewise, activities for reading graded readers and talking about the weekend are categorized as meaning-focused input and meaning-focused output, respectively.
Teachers should give approximately the same amount of time to each of the four strands, according to Nation (1996); 25 % of each class session should be devoted to one strand. This has been criticized by some researchers in Japan, as there is no evidence to support this assertion. In fact, some researchers say that input is more important in Japanese English education in the earlier stage. I will mention my belief about the proportion of the four strands in the later section.

Background of the Cross-Cultural Communication Class
The Cross-Cultural Communication Class is offered at my university, and the purpose of the class is to teach Japanese students so that the students acquire knowledge for cross-cultural communication and they can associate with people from other cultures in English. This class follows the content and language integrated learning framework (CLIL). It is defined as "any dual-focused educational context in which an additional language, thus not usually the first language of the learners involved, is used as a medium in the teaching and learning of non-language content. It is dual-focused because whereas attention may be predominantly on either subject-specific content or language, both are always accommodated" (Marsh, 2003). Another factor to pay attention to is the characteristics of students (see more details in the analysis). Although the students are English majors, their English skills are relatively low. In fact, some of them do not know basic structures of the English language and have a hard time in basic English conversation, while others can function sufficiently in an English-medium class. It is a challenging task for a teacher to teach English and Crosscultural communication to students of a variety of English skill levels.

ANALYSIS OF THE OUTER CIRCLES
Out of the factors in the curriculum design process (Nation, and Macalister, 2010), this paper mostly explores factors of ideas and principle in the outer circles. As shown in Figure 1, the outer circles consist of three areas: environment, needs, principles. In the Cross-Cultural Communication class with CLIL approach, both language skills and the content of cross-cultural communication including cultural knowledge from many areas have to be developed. For this analysis, the areas of English skills are mentioned first and that of content are explained. Note that the three factors in the outer circles deal with curriculum development rather than classroom matters, which are delineated in the innermost circle, and the results of the analysis here serve as a guideline for the actual classroom practices in the innermost circle. In this section, situation, student, and teacher are explored in an environmental analysis, which involves analysis of the situational factors. This process reveals constraints and possibilities. The factors of the students are described more in the section on needs analysis.

Situational analysis
The Cross-Cultural Communication class is offered as an elective class for English majors who are enrolled at my university a year or longer who major in English. As this class takes the CLIL approach, both content as cross-cultural communication and English are taught. There are no prerequisites, so a variety of students take this course. Some of them might have a difficult time dealing with higher-level English than they learned in general English classes. They may take this class in only the spring or fall term, or in both terms.
The learners read about the content areas with their academic English skills. Two kinds of content should be taught. One is about cross-cultural communication, such as the concept of verbal communication and nonverbal communication. For example, students learn the concept of conversational distance between speakers (the physical distance between two speakers). It is influenced by culture, and the differences might affect the impression of people. (When it is longer than the usual conversational distance in their own culture, people might feel the other person is cold because of subtle differences. Japanese students might make Americans feel unconformable when the distance between them and an American conversational partner is only a little further than they normally have.) The other kind of content is cultural studies. The students learn about cultures in the world with the topic such as marriage of Masai tribe in Africa, as an example. Students have to deal with the content in English, regardless of their English abilities. As a result, a teacher needs to attend to the differences and develop the English skills of the students with lower English proficiency.

Analysis of learners
Many students enrolled in the Cross-Cultural Communication class enrolled in this class do not have sufficient English proficiency to deal with much of materials for this class. They can be sophomores, juniors, or seniors. During their freshman and sophomore year, they have studied English at my university from one year to three-and-a-half years. Students are required to take five 90-minute English classes (listening and speaking, writing, grammar and vocabulary, reading) a week for 15 weeks in the spring and fall terms. In those classes, students are streamed according to their Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) scores. The test is produced and administered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), and the purpose of the test is to measure English abilities for business purposes. Although the test is the most popular English proficiency test for university students in Japan, I believe that their placement has problems due to the nature of the test. In the Cross-Cultural Communication class, the students' levels of English skills based on the placement results are usually the highest to the lowest. That is, some students are fluent and function in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) while some cannot write simple English sentences. Not only that, because English is not spoken outside of class, the less proficient students do not have opportunities to improve their English. The students need to use a dictionary to understand content material written in higher levels of English. They can try to guess the meanings with their knowledge of the world and common sense, but it takes too much time and this does not happen often. They generally have a hard time listening to the same materials. In fact, writing and speaking are far more difficult than listening.
The learners have acquired very basic knowledge of cross-cultural communication in Introduction to Communication class, a class taught in Japanese as a required subject for fifteen weeks in the freshman year. So, the class materials have helped them to gain some knowledge. When it comes to cultures in the world, they show their interest. I suppose that they know about some western cultures due to information in media, but they have very little knowledge of non-western cultures. I am persuaded that, the students must learn about other Asian cultures, especially because information from the media is not only insufficient but also biased.

Factor of teachers
The teacher is specialized in teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), and she has been teaching English in Japanese university settings for more than 15 years. She has learned English during her stay in the United States as a university student. When she started teaching this class fourteen years ago, the students' English levels were much higher. She does not have an M.A. in cross-cultural communication or cultural studies, yet she has acquired the knowledge.
She was able to teach this content in English, but now she has struggles teaching this content area to lower proficiency learners. However, she has had more success in teaching them through CLIL. She has knowledge of cross-cultural communication and cultural knowledge.

Need Analysis: Wants, Lacks, and Necessities
As for the wants of the students, the language learners want to improve both in basic and academic English skills as they lack those abilities. Their highest priority seems to be the improvement of Basic English for daily conversation about topics like what they did on the weekend. However, many of them would also like to communicate using academic English, and, in fact, some of them feel embarrassed by not being able to talk about content that they can easily discuss in the Japanese language. Moreover, they want to learn a subject area, and they want to communicate (listen, speak, read and write), even with some or much difficulty.
Speaking of vocabulary development, students often memorize the meanings of words frequently seen in entrance exams, and they do not pay attention to other vocabulary knowledge, such as connotation. They buy books with lists of words. Those books have CDs to show how to pronounce those target words, but students are usually not interested in how they sound probably because that does not help them to pass the entrance examinations to high schools and universities. That is, the students learn words so that they recognize the meaning when they see them in a passage. After all, it appears that they learned words in order to study English through the Grammar -Translation Method and to pass the entrance exams to high schools or universities when they are junior and senior high school students.
The influence of entrance examinations is so strong that they have spent a lot of time studying reading and grammar and they did not have chances to develop communications skills till they pass entrance examination. Therefore, teachers have to provide students opportunities to develop skills for actual communications for basic and academic conversations. It is true that the Ministry of Education is trying to change the English teaching education, but grammar-translation is still the main English educational method. Although they are enrolled as university students, their belief about vocabulary learning has not changed. Therefore, they have to learn a variety of vocabulary learning strategies and the existence of word lists for other than entrance exams. Additionally, the teacher has to teach many kinds of vocabulary knowledge such as pronunciation, which the students usually do not pay attention to. The four strands will also be a useful asset to the students if the teacher can teach them how language should be learned to help them to learn English in class and on their own as independent learners.
When it comes to the content area of cross-cultural communication and cultural studies in the Cross-Cultural Communication class, the students lack knowledge and they are interested in acquiring it. They seem to want to learn about the culture of English speaking countries. However, when non-western cultures are introduced, their interests broaden. When I introduced marriage among the Masai, the students expressed their interest. Their limited English proficiency demotivates students when they have to use English all the time in class, so they should learn the content area with both English and Japanese. The Japanese language has to be used to bring about their motivation and avoid miscommunication, provided that it is used appropriately.

Analysis of each of the four strands
Let me examine the general tendency of English education from three perspectives: 1) students' learning background in junior and senior high schools, 2) students' experience at my university, and 3) necessary factors for the Cross-Cultural Communication class from the perspective of the four strands by Nation (1996). Among the four strands, the most common practice that Japanese learners experience is languagefocused learning, as they have spent a lot of time learning grammar and vocabulary words and translating sentences in junior and senior high schools. In my university, it seems that students learn English through Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) more than the Grammar-Translation Method (GTM). Nonetheless, they need more types of language-focused learning. They need a lot of vocabulary learning strategies, for instance. For the Cross-cultural Communication class, learning word parts such as affixes and suffixes would be useful when they deal with academic vocabulary. Guessing from context is also an important skill for the students to acquire.
In Japan, the second-most common popular method of English teaching and learning can be categorized as meaning-focused input. Students read English a lot in junior and senior high school. The problem with this is that their reading texts are beyond their levels, so they have to look up words in a dictionary. To bring about meaning-focused learning, 95 %, or preferably 98 %, of words should be known to the language learners (Nation, 2001). That means texts with many unfamiliar words can be used for language-focused learning, but not for meaning-focused learning. The high number of unknown words makes their activity language-focused learning. The levels of the text should be a little higher than learners can handle if they are to benefit from ISSN: 2614-2684 56 meaning-focused input. I try to choose appropriate texts that I can use for meaning-focused learning and provide listening materials in which 95 % of the words are known to the learners.
The third strand, meaning-focused output, should be done by having learners practice conversations dealing with cultural communication and talking about cross-cultural communication. Students do not have enough such experiences in junior and senior high school. It is true that in my university the learners are required to write and speak in writing and speaking classes. It is important to provide the learners with tasks where they use target words in their speaking and writing activities. I try to keep in mind that supportive input for that is necessary, as Nation (2001) suggests.
Most importantly, the students should be taught to do as much fluency training as possible, for they haven't had chances for fluency training in junior and senior high school, or even at my university. In general, it has not occurred to both the learners and teachers that fluency training plays a significant part in language learning. As a matter of fact, the learners are not willing to listen, speak, read, and write with familiar items, and their teachers in general do not know the value of doing this. The students try to deal with more difficult materials than they can handle. Indeed, fluency training would lead to confidence and, as a result, would enhance students' ability to communicate smoothly. I strongly believe that the value of fluency training cannot be emphasized enough in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) environment. Nation (1996) asserts that an equal amount of time should be spent for each strand, yet it is not possible in my class. That is, it is reasonable to decide that language-focused learning and fluency training should receive more attention than meaning-focused input and output. The students' English proficiency is not sufficient to deal with the class content and their vocabulary knowledge is limited. Generally speaking, the materials for the content of the class include vocabulary words that are at a higher level than my students' present knowledge. This makes meaning-focused input and output difficult to deal with, as the learners need to be engaged in vocabulary learning strategies. The teacher should spend more time in the language-focused learning component bilingually. Not only that, providing time for fluency training regardless of the students' English skill is important to develop confidence. To exemplify, students learn what to say (i.e. "Thank you," when they receive a compliment). In Japanese culture, people tend to refuse the compliment that they received. In fact, they can practice simple English as a fluency training activity, as they use their knowledge in cross-cultural communication. Some reading materials have a lot of difficult vocabulary for my students, and those materials should be used for language-focused learning. However, students can speak and write with easy words like this in the fluency training activities.

Balance of each of the four strands
I suggest that, on the basis of my analysis, the time for each strand should not be allotted equally in the Cross Cultural communication class. Nation (1996) recommends the equal proportion of the four strands as in Figure 5. This could be ideal in the skill-based classes, especially when the students are in a second language environment with abundant language exposure or when they have higher proficiency in their target language. However, many of the materials used for the Cross Cultural Communication class include higher levels of grammar and vocabulary knowledge than the students can handle. Due to the reasons mentioned above, teachers should spend more time on languagefocused learning and fluency development than they should for meaning-focused input and meaning-focused output, as shown in Figure 6.

Determined Principles Based on Analysis: Language and Content
I determined on these principles of the Cross-Cultural Communication class, considering the analysis above as shown in Table 2. This includes the four strands and other principles.

Content
To learn content mostly in English and some Japanese Monitoring and assessing language To take the test of general vocabulary knowledge and vocabulary specialized in the content

Content
To take tests in the content mostly in English and some Japanese

Goal Settings and Adaptations of the Models
Based on all the analysis, I decided on these as general goals of the Cross-Cultural Communication class.
1. To be familiar with the knowledge of cross-cultural communication and cultural studies.

To improve English skills based on the four strands.
Note that more details should be added to these general goals along with more analysis of the outer and inner circles.
In order to set goals and think of classroom practices as in the syllabus, I have to change the models of Nation and Malicaster (2010) (see Figure 5). Environmental factors and needs factors influence goals, and principles determine both goals and syllabus. Principles are divided into the same three factors as in the syllabus (see Figure 1 & 2), so they should be closely related.
The four strands also have to be adjusted for effective learning in each learning and teaching environment (see Figure 7). It is true that Nation (1996) says that the four strands have to be equally assigned, but I found it impossible. The learners' needs and environmental analysis such as their experiences and English proficiency showed that much time should be assigned to language-focused learning, although this should be conducted using as much English as possible. The use of English for language-focused learning is ideal and it is different from the common practice in English educational settings in Japan. The English levels of the material are also a factor to determine that decision.

Conclusion
It is natural to conclude that the language curriculum development process (Nation & Macalister, 2010) and the four strands (Nation, 1996) are useful to improve our course design. At the same time, they were valuable in that they are easily adaptable in designing the Cross-Cultural Communication course in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) environment. Each factor is clear and easy to follow. Even though the analysis and curriculum development were partially done, they clarify the present situation and possibilities of the class. They are also great assets to further analyses and curriculum development. Even though language teachers have very limited time to go through similar processes, I recommend that language teachers analyze their classes and change their activities as much as they can by adopting and adapting using the curriculum development process and the four strands. Taking account of the usefulness of the models, I am persuaded that the two models have to be adapted according to the needs and environmental analysis, for any language teaching situation. That is because language teachers can see strengths as well as constraints of their language programs using the curriculum design process (Macalister & Nation, 2010) and the systematic and comprehensive curriculum design process model with the four strands (Nation, 1996) as a solid framework of vocabulary teaching. Moreover, this is especially true in an EFL environment due to the limited language proficiency of learners, and their insufficient contact with the target language along with cultural background. Further study with more exploration would demonstrate solid curriculum development with efficient learning results. It is hoped that the present study will be of some use to teachers, even if they do not share the same situation.