Developing an ESP Module for English Course Participants at Unars: A Bridge to Creating Powerful Speakers

Abstract

University of Abdurachman Saleh Situbondo (UNARS) through its Language Center holds a General English (GE) course every semester for its lecturers. However, the lecturers as the course participants are not satisfied with the course. They claim that an ESP course is more suitable for them because they want to develop skills to be a good speaker in international seminars. Many lecturers at UNARS have never attended any international seminars because they feel unconfident to speak in English. They say that their public speaking skills are not enough to help them speak confidently. Essentially, English learning that is suitable for these lecturers is English for Specific Purposes (ESP). The Language Center of UNARS has never held any ESP course that focuses on becoming a presenter in international seminars. This is because of the unavailability of the suitable modules that really suit the participants’ background and culture. Existing commercial books cannot be used as learning resources because of the gaps between participants’ background and culture in the context and the content commercial books offer. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop an ESP module for the English course participants at the Language Center of UNARS. The module covers materials on basic principles of public speaking, how to create powerful power point presentation, and how to become a good speaker. With the development of this module, it is expected that the course participants, in this case UNARS lecturers, will have good presentation skills to present in international seminars.
 
 Keywords: ESP, module, presentation skills, UNARS’ lecturers