The role of ESP courses in general English proficiency

Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is the study of the interaction between learning English for Specific Purposes (ESP), in particular, English for the Financial Sector, and general English proficiency. The research examines the effects of an ESP course being taught for a year on the students' general English proficiency.Two sets of tests were prepared for that purpose and administered to 30 first-year students of finance and law. The students took the placement test twice, at the beginning and at the end of the school year. To monitor test performance over a research period, a parallel form measuring the same competences was administered at the beginning of the second semester. In the test development process a special consideration has been paid to the level of difficulty and its relation to the students' prior educational context. Drawing on the National State Matura exams the test is set at Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) Level B2. As regards its content the test is comprised of reading comprehension tasks (multiple matching, multiple-choice cloze, gapped text) and grammar tasks aiming to examine lexical and grammatical competence.There were two major assumptions in this study: 1) Learning ESP can improve students' general English proficiency, and 2) There is a more substantial improvement in lexical competence as compared to the improvement in grammatical competence.There is strong evidence in support of the first hypothesis, whereas for the second one the results were ambiguous. After major findings are presented and discussed, implications for ESP teaching are given in closing.