Language Skills and Communication Strategies of Hungarian Health Visitors Working with Multicultural Families – Implications for ESP Material Design

This study explores the challenges faced by undergraduate English Education students in designing English for Specific Purposes (ESP) materials. ESP material design requires the integration of field-specific content with general language skills that are contextually relevant. Using a qualitative descriptive approach, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with five students who have experience in designing ESP materials. Thematic analysis revealed that students face challenges in needs analysis, content selection, and technology integration. Limited resources, such as time and technological infrastructure, also posed significant obstacles. Strategies employed to overcome these challenges include collaboration with peers and lecturers, adaptation of existing materials, and utilizing online resources. This study highlights the importance of language simplification and feedback-based evaluation to ensure the relevance and effectiveness of ESP materials. The findings contribute to curriculum development and ESP teaching practices by emphasizing collaborative approaches and strategic use of technology.

The objective of this study is to explore teachers’ decision-making processes and the factors that influence their decisions when designing English for Specific Purposes (ESP) materials. We seek to analyze not only the decisions made by language teachers when designing materials, but also the reasons that support such decisions. This research focuses on teachers' perspectives regarding foreign language education and material design, and the motivations for their pedagogical choices. In this sense, this work may contribute to fill the gap in the literature pointed out by Tomlinson (2012) about the need for studies that investigate material development. The methodology of this study is qualitative and interpretative. Participants are teachers who work in the Languages without Program (LwB) at UFES. Data was collected through interviews with teachers who are also material developers. Based on the results of this study, we highlight the challenges involved in designing materials for teachers who are in an undergraduate course, and the implications of the findings for implementing appropriate ESP materials in the program LwB at UFES. The findings also help us reflect on the effectiveness of the program’s policy of teacher education in the context of ESP.

The alignment of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) materials with the needs of students and the culinary industry is crucial for preparing graduates to excel in the competitive fields of tourism and hospitality. In particular, essential English language skills such as culinary terminology, effective communication in professional kitchen environments, and writing recipes or menus in English should be addressed more in existing curricula. This study aimed to assess the relevance and practicality of current ESP materials within the context of culinary education at an Indonesian university. Using a qualitative descriptive approach, the research involved 40 second-semester students who had completed a course in Professional English, along with 11 waitstaff from hotels and restaurants in West and North Sumatra. The findings revealed significant gaps in the current materials, particularly in areas critical for international customer service and multicultural teamwork, such as food presentation, customer interaction, and sanitation practices. The study concludes that English learning materials must be tailored to meet the general needs of English learners and the specialized demands of the culinary industry. Incorporating relevant terminology, practical communication skills and industry-specific content is essential for better preparing students for professional roles in catering and hospitality. The research suggests that focused classroom techniques on communication and specialized vocabulary can guide educators in developing more effective ESP materials for the culinary field.

The intrigue surrounding microlearning's potential in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has motivated this research, aiming to delve into its applications and challenges in ESP and its materials design. This study explores the potential and impediments of employing microlearning in ESP, focusing on its material design and instructional methodology. Through a systematic literature review, five pertinent articles from 2016-2022 were selected and analyzed using platforms like Publish or Perish and Google Scholar. The findings reveal a limited yet impactful application of microlearning in ESP, highlighting its capacity to enhance learning through the facilitation of digital materials, bite-sized and self-paced learning, and student empowerment, among other benefits. In ESP materials design, microlearning stimulates learning and underscores the importance of integrating multimedia into the learning process. However, challenges such as the need for appropriate technology, poor learning initiative, creation of a new learning culture, students’ time constraints, teachers’ unfamiliarity with technology, and the need for adaptive material design based on microlearning principles, material development, and ESP materials, emerge as significant hurdles. This research implies a valuable pathway for future studies and practical applications, offering insights into navigating through these challenges and optimizing the application of microlearning in ESP and its material design, thereby contributing to the field's pedagogical development.

Designing language-learning materials that target the needs of specific groups of students can be a challenge because students' needs vary. There is a research gap in identifying learning materials that meet the needs of a specific group of students. The study objective is to utilize open educational resources to design English for specific purposes (ESP) materials. The study implements a corpus linguistics method by using the Google Books Corpus (GBC) to develop language-learning materials for engineering students. The application analyzed the corpora by frequency that was the default analysis procedure in GBC. The findings show the procedures to create English grammar materials for engineering students and engineers who need to improve their knowledge about the commonly used grammar structures in engineering texts. The results of analyzing GBC present five chapters: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions that are commonly used in engineering texts using authentic examples. The findings demonstrate the importance of corpus technologies such as GBC in language learning classrooms. The implication is that language educators should utilize open educational resources such as GBC to provide students with learning materials that have authentic examples, commonly used words, and widely used grammar structures in the students' academic majors.

English can be due to demand of Indonesian in the field of business, technology, education, and research. The implementation of ESP has revealed some factors, such as students, teachers, and ESP materials that have significant influences on the quality of teaching and learning ESP. These factors require serious attention from stakeholders and ESP practitioners to improve the quality of ESP instruction. The government language policy might emphasize the curricula of formal schools and teachers training for ESP instruction. The quality of teacher of ESP is high contributing to accommodate the teaching and learning ESP course. Besides that, the materials of ESP should be formulated by practitioners of ESP who had knowledge of ESP instruction and the aim of ESP might concern on the improvements in students' proficiency in English. Thus, the students are being better in academic and professional in the work domain. English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is one of the predominant approaches to language teaching in tertiary education, as it is directed towards the specific needs of the particular specialty students. The paper deals with the role of needs analysis and materials evaluation adjusting ESP courses to the needs of students in tertiary education. Students’ needs analysis is a reference base for both the development of a new ESP course and alterations of an existing ESP course in the changing environment and demands for English language skills. Teaching materials determine the content of the course and affect teaching methods, students’ motivation, vocabulary and language functions taught. The evaluation of teaching materials allows the teacher to constantly improve the ESP course, to better adjust it to the changing needs of students. The theoretical considerations are supported by a survey of students’ needs and their evaluation of teaching materials. The results of the survey reveal whether the students’ needs are met in the ESP course they have attended. The implication of the survey results is that the most topical students’ needs, such as the development of productive skills, and especially speaking skills, do not change over time. Students’ evaluation of the tailor-made ESP course books is also presented, as well as some suggestions to make the ESP courses more attuned to students ‘needs.

This study examined the challenges both teachers and students in implementation of teaching and learning ESP. It focuses on mastering English in students’ needs relating to the specific fields. This used a qualitative study obtaining data from questionnaires and interviews. The findings showed that the students’ vocabulary mastery was an obstacle during learning ESP. It made the students felt difficult to comprehend the materials. Moreover, the teachers are supposed to prepare the ESP materials from textbooks and articles relating to the specific fields although there were lack of sources. However, learning ESP applied the students-centered activities and built an interaction between teachers and students during discussing and practicing the ESP materials. It encouraged the students to be active for their speaking skill improvement. It also assisted the students to enhance new vocabularies relating to the specific fields. Therefore, to achieve students’ comprehension in ESP, the teachers should develop ESP materials and method of teaching in order to deliver optimally the ESP contents.

In this article, we explore the journeys through which English for Specific Purposes (ESP)  teachers can go while designing and employing ESP materials in their classrooms. The research implements a case study approach to track the terrains of the experience of one ESP teacher through the observation and documentary analysis of the design and application of ESP materials in her courses at a vocational institution in Kuwait, the Public Authority of Applied Education and Training. This analysis was accompanied by a series of semistructured interviews to gain an idea of what the teacher’s thoughts and feelings were during the experience. The research has uncovered valuable insights into the events that ESP teachers encounter while venturing into a field in which they might not be highly experienced. Recommendations revolved around reinforcing the value of teamwork in the design, development, and implementation of ESP materials in the institution, both internally within the department and externally with the scientific disciplines. The study similarly suggests an urgent need for teacher education and professional development programs to raise the awareness of novice and in-service teachers on the experiences of teachers in this realm and the anticipated pitfalls, urging them to think creatively about how to overcome such struggles and achieve successful outcomes.

The focus of this research is Vocational Education (VE) of secondary level and English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Research shows that despite the significance placed on VE (UNESCO 2012), a number of discrepancies are found regarding its link with the employment market worldwide, mainly attributed to the appropriateness of the material. Against this background, this study investigated the link between the English language needs of businesses in Greece and the English language skills VE schools offer at present. The study employed a mixed methods research methodology. It consisted of business English language needs questionnaires with businesses (N=136), interviews with teachers (N=10), and a focus group discussion with learners (N=8) as data collection tools. Additionally, an evaluation of the “English for Economics and Administration” VE textbook was conducted and the impact of newly designed ESP material on learners was examined through pre-post-tests. The findings of the businesses survey revealed the need for more emphasis on speaking and listening skills than writing or reading. The evaluation of the target textbook suggested a lack of these skills and lack of authenticity, interactivity, motivation, contemporary content and communicative tasks required by the workplace. To address this gap some new ESP materials were designed to supplement part of the target textbook. The findings show that both learners and teachers found these materials communicative, contemporary, authentic and relevant to learners’ future working needs. In the Greek context this research is unique in that it investigates the link between VE of secondary level and workplace, which has not been addressed in the Greek literature so far. The research has implications for practitioners who could participate in materials design, and for policy makers who should base ESP materials design on learners’, and workplace needs analysis.

ESP or English for special purposes, emerged in the 1960s to cater to the specific linguistic requirements of learners in scientific fields and professional environments (Negro Alousque, 2016). Dudley Evans and St John (1998) assert that ESP is part of a broader trend in language instruction for specific goals. ESP textbooks are the primary and most important resources used for teaching English in academic settings in Iran. Assessing these resources can uncover their merits and drawbacks, thereby enhancing their overall quality. The objective of this study was to assess the quality of pre-made English for Specific Purposes (ESP) textbooks published by the Organization for Researching and Composing University Textbooks in the Humanities (SAMT), as perceived by ESP instructors in Iran. In order to achieve this objective, a total of 42 English for Specific Purposes (ESP) professors from five universities in Iran were selected to participate in the study using purposive sampling. We administered a 20-item questionnaire on evaluating ESP textbooks, which was created by Vahdatnia and Salehi (2020), to collect data. The results indicate that the participants had a positive evaluation of ESP textbooks published by SAMT in terms of practical concerns, compatibility with course objectives, skills and strategies, and content. However, they had a negative evaluation in regards to linguistic issues, subject matter, and layout. Concurrently, the textbooks were assessed impartially in relation to the activities they contained. Given the sections that received bad evaluations, we have also provided practical suggestions for revising or creating ESP materials.

ESP (English for specific purposes) and the communicative approach are often thought to be closely related. However, the reality is somewhat different. Many of the principles and practices on which much current ESP is based are educationally unsound. In needs analysis, for example, the real views of the learners are seldom given due consideration. Traditional ESP course design has two major drawbacks: firstly, the development in the learner of a capacity to communicate is neglected, and secondly, there is a failure to analyse and take into account the realities of the ESP learning situation. A typical consequence of this is that ESP teachers are often put in the untenable position of having to teach from texts whose subject-matter they do not understand. Furthermore, in most ESP materials, the learner is presented with uninspiring content and language exercises which lack any clear communication focus. As a result, ESP is, at present, a rather un-communicative form of language teaching. In this paper, therefore, we will present our ideas for making ESP more learning-centred, and, thereby, more communicative.1

Nowadays, thanks to internationalization and globalization, university students have an opportunity to study abroad or work in multinational companies either abroad or in their home countries. This is also true for engineering students of the Faculty of Informatics and Management (FIM) of the University of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic. In order to help them succeed in their foreign studies and on the job market, teachers of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) try to meet their language needs. Although there exist a number of different ESP textbooks, most of these textbooks, however, due to the complexity of topics and grammar structures, cannot meet specific needs of these students. Therefore the purpose of this article is to discuss some of the issues of ESP materials development. These include methodological principles and approaches to the ESP materials development and a detailed exploration of ESP materials production.

Research on English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has been attracting a great deal of attention in English language education over the past two decades. However, most studies focus on ESP learners at the university or in the workplace, while little attention has been paid to secondary school learners. In Taiwan, vocational high school (VHS) students have long been considered low achievers in English, lacking basic English proficiency and motivation for learning English. This situation suggests that more attention needs to be paid to English for general purposes (EGP), in order to enhance VHS students’ ability in the four language skills. In contrast to this dominant EGP approach, can an ESP program that integrates English with the knowledge and skills of VHS students’ professional field help solve the problem facing VHS English education in Taiwan? Implemented through a school-university partnership, the purpose of this case study was to examine the effectiveness of an ESP program on 33 VHS students of tourism. The results of the study indicate that an ESP program characterized by (1) rich and multiple inputs, (2) need-based content, (3) practical use of English, and (4) meaningful tasks creates excellent opportunities for learning, via both EGP and ESP. Not only can the VHS students consolidate their knowledge and skills through learning ESP, they also increase their overall English proficiency. Most significantly, their motivation for learning English is increased. The study concludes with both theoretical and pedagogical implications for ESP education for VHS students.

The crucial role of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) textbooks, especially in situations where English is taught as a foreign language (EFL), and also their role as almost the only source of English language seem undeniable. In Dudley-Evans and St. John's (1998) words, considering such situations where learners need to extract their information from English-medium subject textbooks, a reading-only course could be suitable, but such textbooks should be developed in a way to maximize learners' exposure to language, to meet their needs, to increase their motivations and to facilitate their learning and recall of information. Therefore, in ESP materials development, graphic organizers, defined as visual displays in which the information is converted into a diagrammatic representation of important key words and concepts associated with the main study topic, could be used as an innovative technique to provide better learning opportunities and facilitate students' learning processes. Thus, this paper is an attempt to present the advantages of using graphic organizers as an advantageous technique in developing ESP textbooks as well as to report the personal observations and experiences of the researchers in teaching ESP through graphic organizers and also to give some useful recommendations to ESP teachers, textbooks designers and materials developers to resort to this efficient technique.

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) being separate branch of the English Language requires specific approach during the process of teaching. Application of right methodology of teaching is very important for successful ESP teaching, therefore correct selection and combination of different foreign language teaching methods are crucial to ensure that the required results are achieved in the ESP classroom. When working in the ESP classroom ESP teachers base their teaching approach on the principle: “English for Specialty” rather than on the principle: “Specialty in English” the approach characteristic of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). In our paper we are going to discuss the ways of efficient combination of Grammar-Translation method and Audio-Lingual method using ESP textbooks and materials and also development of listening and speaking skills of ESP learners through different subject videos selected on the basis of linguistic abilities and knowledge of specific terminology by ESP learners. Some of these videos are available on YouTube and other internet platforms. Elements of CLIL approach that imply complete immersion into language and subject matter can be applied in ESP classroom. Their combination with the above-mentioned foreign language teaching methods is possible, especially in those groups of ESP learners whose level of General English is B2 and higher. The parallel can be made between CLIL in ESP teaching environment and Direct method of foreign language teaching in General English teaching environment. In this way we compare partial application of CLIL approach in the ESP classroom to the Direct method of foreign language teaching when it refers to teaching of General English. The main aim of our paper is to consider combination of the following foreign language teaching methods and the methodology of CLIL as the most suitable and efficient way of teaching English for Specific Purposes in the classroom:1) Grammar-Translation method;2) Audio-Lingual method;3) Direct method with elements of CLIL approach when applied in the ESP classroom.