“To Put it Simply”–Teaching through and about Simplicity.pdfVIP

“To Put it Simply” – Teaching through and about Simplicity Martina König FH JOANNEUM - University of Applied Sciences (Austria) martina.koenig@fh-joanneum.at Abstract In this talk, I will present the outline of an ESP course for students of Information Design drawing upon John Maeda’s book The Laws of Simplicity, illustrating how a text can be used in a threefold manner, as a source for information and ideas, as an example of language usage, and as the basis for developing and/or selecting teaching materials. The combination seems particularly attractive to future information designers, judging from the anonymous evaluations by students, who described the course as the best and most practically applicable English course they had taken so far. The Laws of Simplicity suggests itself for an English course in information design as its author, a graphic designer and computer scientist, proposes ten laws for simplifying complex systems in business, life and product design. Not only is the subject matter of interest to students, it is also the unique correspondence of content and style of presentation that is appealing and also invites further investigation. My students were required to read the book as homework and during lessons we discussed the content and the language used. Concerning the tasks I concentrated on oral work, vocabulary and grammar, listening comprehensions as well as autonomous learning by having students do research on certain questions. The exercises methodologically also vary between different teaching and learning styles.