A study on the maker education based English-career convergence lesson for middle school students

Abstract

The current secondary English education is still not out of the previous framework of focusing on the college entrance exam. Therefore, the study aimed at helping middle school students’ career development, and improving English abilities and interests through English classes by incorporating English and career education. Specifically, this study suggests the English-career convergence maker lesson by linking the “English” and “career and occupation” curriculum. The English-career convergence maker lessons were developed to reflect the capabilities of the revised curriculum, which was revealed in the middle school’s “English” and “career and occupation” curriculum, as much as possible. In the lesson, students are divided into six groups of occupational interests – realistic, explorative, artistic, social, progressive, and conventional – and engaged in planning, creating, presenting, and sharing tasks related to each occupation group. A total of 30 maker activities were developed, five per occupation group, and each maker activity has five stages: introduction and preparation, inquiry, design, making, completion and sharing. We expect that the English-career convergence maker lesson could provide students with a practical approach and make concrete career experience-type English classes and help them improve their English abilities and interest in English.