Critico-analytic Study of ESP Final Exam Tests for Students of Accounting in Iranian Universities

Abstract

Assessing learners has constantly played a considerable role in teaching and learning process. This significance is obviously observed in teaching foreign languages in general and teaching English for specific purposes (ESP) in particular. Since in the global community, English language is considered as the major medium in techno- scientific communications and interactions, the demand for academic considerations for teaching and developing ESP as a central interdisciplinary course is increasingly growing. This growing tendency has created opportunities for designing and developing various technical and special course materials around the globe. In Iran, as well as the other countries, this movement has been with the main objective of promoting the quality of teaching reading comprehension skills along with translation techniques into the native language and developing relevant technical terminologies in every major. However, still a sort of inconsistency among teaching ESP, publishing ESP materials, and developing final exam ESP tests exists. This inconsistency emerged as the role of ELT specialists in each of the above mentioned activities disqualified the educational values of teaching and learning ESP. Although the administrators and authorities have allocated great amount of budget to designing, developing and holding courses, as well as ESP instructors' payments, still the quality and the efficiency is not as high as expected. Thus, considering the existing gap, the researchers in the present study have attempted to critically study and analyze the final exam tests of ESP for students of accounting in Islamic Azad University, Shahr-e- Rey branch, in Tehran in order to highlight the current problems and propose practical solutions in this regard.