A New Understanding of Teacher’s Role in Determining Tasks during the Teaching of English for Specific Purposes (ESP)

Abstract

The development of communicative language teaching has had a great effect on the roles that teachers and learners are required to adopt. According to Breen and Candlin (1980) the teacher has three main roles in the communicative classroom. The first is to act as facilitator of the communicative process, the second is to act as a participant and the third is to act as an observer and learner.As in all other fields even in that of teaching English for Specific Purposes the development has been so rapid that updates concerning the teacher’s role in ESP classes are needed. In task-based language teaching the teacher can be regarded in many ways as the learner’s most privileged interlocutor. He is responsible not only for terminology teaching, but also for skills giving to use this terminology in specific contexts in different fields. Our experience in ESP teaching through a project realized with the students of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine shows that teachers can create powerful language learning environments by taking continuous care of catering for students’ motivation to invest mental energy in task performance and supporting them while doing so. In this way teaching becomes “more fun”, “ more varied” and