CURRICULUM INNOVATION: SHOULD ESP BE GIVEN AS AN ELECTIVE OR COMPULSORY COURSE? (A CASE IN INDONESIA)

Abstract

English Language Education Department (ELED) at the University of Muhammadiyah Malang (UMM) is educational department that has objectives to prepare competent future English teachers. Several elective courses are offered for sixth-semester students in order to equip its graduates with the skills that students may choose amongst Translation, Bussiness English, English for Young Learners, and American Studies. This issues are interesting especially the need for the ESP as an elective course arises from the inadequacy of ESP teachers’ professional skills, training, and experiences that may cause teachers lacking of ESP teaching capacity.The researcher used descriptive qualitative research in order to get in depth and detail information in the form of a description about the reasons of ELED UMM not providing ESP as an elective course. Three researcher have interviewed the Director of Language Center (LC) UMM, ESP lecturer, and Secretary of ELED UMM. The research finding showed that ELED UMM focuses on producing the English teachers for secondary education not at a tertiary level. To respond on the needs of professional ESP teachers, ELED UMM offers TEFL (Teaching English as Foreign Language) course as a compulsory course which ESP materials have been integrated.