ESP Classes Research Articles

Development of Students’ Metacognitive Skills by Means of Educational Technologies in ESP Instruction at University

Metacognitive skills which provide regulation and management of students’ intellectual activity in the process of their self-education are of great importance, especially in the context of the learner-centered education paradigm in the global information space, with its focus on the self-study and self-development of an individual. In this regard, the article aimed to analyze the development of metacognitive skills in first year students by means of educational technologies in ESP classes at technical university in Ukraine. As shown by the results of the study, educational technologies can be successfully used for the development of such metacognitive skills as self-directed learning skills, collaboration skills, self-management skills, self-reflection skills in first year students studying ESP at university level. The educational technologies used in our study – the Moodle platform, WebQuest, blogs and wikis, Google Classroom, Quizlet – confirmed their efficiency as a useful tool for the development of metacognition since they provide the learning environment which makes it possible for students to organize and control their learning, make decisions, reflect on the results of their learning experience and make necessary changes and adjustments if necessary.

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT VS SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT: A CASE STUDY OF ESP LECTURERS IN UNIVERSITY IN INDONESIA AND THAILAND

Providing an assessment and feedbacks are crucial parts for teaching and learning phase as well as for continued growth in the education system. In general, assessing the students’ progress and giving feedbacks as reflections of progress can be done in a variety of ways. The recent research is primarily concerned with how the formative assessment, as the most advantageous and beneficial kind of evaluation can be considered as a sufficient contributor to the instruction process, particularly once followed by genuine constructive feedbacks. This research's findings claimed that the formative assessment and feedbacks have a significant impact on what the learners perform and how the instructors teach. This research explored how formative assessment is implemented in ESP classes, particularly in Business English classes at universities in Indonesia and Thailand.

Digital storytelling as practice-based participatory pedagogy for English for specific purposes

Abstract English for Specific Purposes (ESP) teachers in Higher Education struggle with introducing variation and meaning into courses, while addressing 21st century skills development for global employment markets. Digital storytelling in its many forms constitutes fertile ground for engaging students while learning the specific academic and professional languages for their fields of knowledge, through using English as a lingua franca (ELF). The article presents and discusses a pedagogical framework for digital storytelling (DST) that promotes purposeful learning through EFL in two different contexts, in Portugal and Finland. The framework consists of five storytelling steps: (1) research and audience insight; (2) concept design; (3) scripting and storyboarding; (4) digital production; and (5) publication and engagement. The framework was piloted during the 2021–22 academic year with two first-year Business English classes in Office Management and one second-year ESP class in Tourism Management in a Portuguese Polytechnic as well as with an advanced-level ELF class in International Marketing and Communication in a Finnish University of Applied Sciences. Learning through DST provided students with rich opportunities for engagement and interaction, while also developing their skills in language and communication, storytelling, teamwork, digital literacy, and critical thinking. The DST framework has the potential to promote purposeful learning and empower students as active participants in media culture.

Students’ Perception of the Use of TalkEnglish.com in Teaching Speaking for ESP Class

The field of education has greatly benefited from the advancements in technology, resulting in more efficacious, interactive, comprehensive, and non-classroom-bound learning experiences. One such application is web-based learning, which employs the Internet as a means to facilitate the educational process. This modality of instruction addresses various challenges that are inherent in traditional pedagogical approaches, such as the limited time allocated for lecturers and students in classroom settings. Despite an abundance of literature that has investigated the incorporation of technology in the teaching of spoken English, there is a scarcity of studies that specifically examine the utilization of the website, TalkEnglish.com.Specifically, in the context of teaching English for Business, which necessitates students to develop proficient and precise oral proficiency in the language, the present study aims to investigate the students' perception of the efficacy of TalkEnglish.com in honing their speaking skills. This study employed a descriptive qualitative design, where ten students from the Economic Faculty at Universitas Pandanaran were selected as participants. These participants utilized the website TalkEnglish.com to improve their speaking skills. Data was collected through a semi-interview approach and documentation method. The findings of the study indicate that the majority of the participants held a positive perception of TalkEnglish.com.

Translation as a Vocabulary Teaching Aid in ESP

This article represents a part of the more extensive research started in 2018 from the premise that translation activities are in fact very useful in ESP classes when used as language learning technique, as argued with evidence, and continues the previous series of articles that studied this topic. This installment deals with the benefits translation activities have on vocabulary acquisition in ESP when properly implemented in the classroom. The conclusions are based on empirical observations and on the previous research which included a case study regarding learners’ attitudes towards this type of activity.

The Role of Listening in ESP Classes

In today’s society, good communication skills are becoming increasingly important. In the workplace, the ability to communicate clearly and effectively with superiors, coworkers and customers is essential, no matter what industry you work in. A good communicator is able to express their thoughts and opinions, but also to listen to other people. At first sight, listening seems to be a simple concept, but, in reality, few people are adept at listening. Although it was neglected in the past, the teaching of listening skills currently plays an important role in the language classroom.

Considerations on the Use of Skills Centred Course Design in ESP Classes at Higher Education Level

An appropriately designed course of ESP at higher education level might prove to be a valuable resource in the process of training future professionals, regardless of their specialization. From among the different types of approaches that may be used in designing a course at higher education level, we believe that the skills-centred one offers outstanding advantages to the trainees and effective teaching tools to the trainer. The present paper discusses the advantages as well as shortcomings of the skills centred course design in relationship to the other course design approaches as well as in relationship to the specialized types of discourse to be taught.

TED LECTURES FOR ESP: BEST PRACTICES META-ANALYSIS

The study aims at investigating incorporation of TED talks (TTs) in ESP classes with a specific focus on abundant opportunities TTs provide for teaching intensive and extensive listening. Although the importance of listening comprehension is widely admitted, a few scholars still claim that it remains the most neglected micro-skill of all, a “Cinderella of communication strategies”. This misbalance can be partly put down to lack of graded listening materials of appealing content for lower proficiency students and TTs might serve as a potential remedy for ESP learners. The nature of TTs (with TED standing for Technology, Entertainment and Design) is of great interest for learners due to engaging topics, motivating speakers, easy access and overall user friendliness. Therefore a few SLA instructors have been attempting to utilize TTs in various ways, which include, but are not limited to vocabulary development and retention, listening comprehension, translation skills, speaking assignments varying from guided discussions to oral presentations, reading comprehension skills, writing and summation, EAP, etc. A few integration models have been suggested and evaluated in past literature. The author attempts to draw on those and suggest a detailed account of advances that refer to teaching extensive and intensive listening comprehension.

The Role and Function of English Language in ESP Classes

The Role and Function of English Language in ESP Classes

Challenges and Suggestions in the Education of Medical Terminology

The more proficient in English medical terminology, the more professional healthcare staff can become in more and more global working environment. They need medical terminology during their academic studies as well as in their professional settings to connect and collaborate with practitioners and researchers throughout the world. The study investigated the problems faced by doctors-to-be in learning and using medical terms at academic level in survey based research. The data was collected, analyzed and interpreted quantitatively by administering questionnaire among 97 mainstream medical students, in-service medical students and post grad students in ESP classes at University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. The findings revealed that the majority of the subjects had difficulties with Greek and Latin borrowing word parts, difficult term-structure and lack of opportunities to practice in medical context. Based on the findings, some strategies can be suggested to solve the problems by pursuing self-learning via online learning tools and peer learning. Keywords: English medical terminology, word parts, online learning tools, peer learning DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/96-03 Publication date: February 28 th 2023

Improving university students' cooperation skills through portfolio projects: A pilot study

AbstractIn the autumn semester of the academic year 2019/2020, a portfolio approach was introduced and piloted in one of the ESP courses offered by Budapest Business School's Faculty of Finance and Accountancy. Besides developing ESP skills, the portfolio tasks developed for the purpose of this research and introduced during the research project reported herein were intended to improve students' cooperation skills, which are essential in the job market. At the beginning of the same semester in order to forecast how successful this portfolio approach could be, we intended to obtain insights into our students' initial attitudes towards cooperation with peers and wished to look into the likelihood of participants' positive reception of cooperation-purpose portfolio tasks. To this end, a quantitative questionnaire study was carried out through an online platform amongst 49 Hungarian university students. This paper presents the results of this study. First, the relevant theoretical background is presented, namely, cooperation as a soft skill and its subskills. Then the possibilities and opportunities of improving cooperation skills during ESP classes are discussed: in the scope of our study, relying on the methodological approach offered by of the European Language Portfolio, cooperation skills were developed through cooperation-purpose portfolio tasks. Next, our study describes the quantitative questionnaire study, its administration and the resulting data. Our results show that students have a positive initial attitude towards cooperation with peers and cooperation-purpose portfolio tasks, and it has been found that the portfolio approach used in this research project seems to be a useful strategy for developing participants' cooperation skills.

The Relevance of Flipped Classrooms for ESP Courses in the Post COVID-19 Scenario

This study is the result of testing the concept of a flipped classroom (FC) in an ESP class in the aftermath of COVID-19 scenario at a private university in Oman. The recent shift from online classes to face-to-face classes in the university exposed a significant knowledge gap that existed in the learners of English for ESP courses. To address this challenge, the authors decided to experiment on the concept of the FC in an ESP class for business administration students. As a result, instead of a classroom lecture, the simplified summary of prescribed lessons along with useful illustrations were posted online for the students to read at home before coming to the class. Consequently, the class-time was mainly used for solving application questions individually or in groups of mixed ability students. Additionally, special attention was given to slow learners during the experiment. This experiment proved to be very beneficial for the students as there was significant improvement in their grades for both ongoing and final assessments compared to the grades of students in another section of the same course that followed the traditional lecture method. The focus of the experimental class was on making students solve critical homework tasks during the class-time with appropriate teacher intervention. The first part of this paper describes the important FC concepts and their implementation in an ESP classroom and the second part analyses the final grades of both FC and traditional classes to understand the relevance of the FC model for ESP students. Therefore, the research goal of this study is to determine the effectiveness of the Flipped Classroom methodology by critically evaluating its pros and cons compared to the traditional lecture method. The novelty of this study consists in recommending complete inversion of the role of the traditional lecture method and homework tasks. In other words, FC believes that traditional lectures should be replaced with critical home-work tasks during the class-time to achieve the goal of education. The revolutionary concept of solving critical home-work tasks and exploring the practical applications of fundamental theories during the class-time can empower students to reconstruct and apply knowledge in practical and personally meaningful ways instead of spending their time listening passively to lectures. Therefore, implementing Flipped Classroom methodology in ESP classes can enhance the critical and cognitive skills of learners effectively. Keywords: critical thinking, ESP course, flipped classroom, problem-solving, traditional class. DOI: https://doi.org/10.55463/hkjss.issn.1021-3619.60.39

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF AUTHENTIC MATERIALS IN ESP CLASSES FOR STUDENTS MAJORING IN HISTORY

The given article is devoted to the question of the application of authentic materials in ESP classes for students majoring in History. This paper represents the results of the effective use of authentic materials through their integration of lexical, grammatical, conversational, and business writing perspectives of ESP studying. The results of our investigations suggest that the levels of student knowledge in ESP, the effective use of all skills, and motivation for further studying ESP can be achieved by the students in an authentic context. The main approaches, guiding principles, and Bloom’s taxonomy for designing and applying tasks for conducting ESP classes are viewed as core things to use for effective ESP classes with future perspectives of the creation of highly qualified specialists in History. Also, we focus on ways of using the given materials as the mean of realization of the blended learning model and the development of soft and hard skills in students. Key words: ESP, authentic materials, competencies, motivation, effective language use, the field of study, learners, history, future career.

Narrative medicine – a tool to reshape your ESP class

Narrative medicine has become an independent field of medical humanities, which applies the practical principles of analyzing literature in the context of interpreting patients’ personal narratives in order to improve patient-centered care and restore contemporarily fragile doctor-patient relationships. Although its practical application can already be observed in a growing number of doctor-oriented courses supported by many academic centers around the world, its didactic potential as an innovative approach to teaching English as a foreign language, especially to medical students, seems yet unnoticed. The aim of this article is to provide a broader insight into the main original concept of narrative medicine, yet with particular attention being drawn to its application as an innovative practical didactic tool to transform the ESP courses attended by Polish students of medical faculties.

Issues of Metaphoric Competence Formation at ESP Classes

Issues of Metaphoric Competence Formation at ESP Classes

ESP Exercises Building Strategies

"In the currently hyper-technologised world of information, unhindered access to limitless resources has made it possible for ESP teachers to easily retrieve ideas and inspiration for designing course activities that tackle students’ needs optimally. Nonetheless, the inspiration for ESP course activities can run dry at some point. Addionally, each new generation of students brings along newly emerging needs generated by a constantly changing world, hence the necessity of ESP exercises and activities to be constanly updated and customised. The current paper proposes a personal insight into how ESP activities can be conceived starting from a teachnical Reading text for the engineering field. We have sought to create a wide range of exercises derived from the technical reading texts, so that they incorporate an integrated skills approach into the ESP class, serving, perhaps, as a source of inspiration for other teachers in devising their course activities."

From Vocabulary to Lexis: Modern Methods of Approaching Terminology in Esp Classes

"Vocabulary is a major component in any foreign language course, its acquisition enabling learners to develop both their linguistic and communicative competences. The overall aim of this paper is to bring to the fore the vital role of specialised terminology in the process of teaching/learning ESP. We shall start by scrutinising theoretical considerations related to what ESP vocabulary to teach, and how to teach it. We shall then propose a range of creative methods and activities that teachers can use in Business English classes, in order to build their students’ knowledge of ‘specific’ or field-related vocabulary. "

Investigating the challenges of Iranian ESP teachers at medical schools: The role of video presentation on subject related critical incidents

English for Specific Purposes has become increasingly popular in college English courses in recent years, posing a significant challenge for all English teachers. As a result, it is critical to investigate the challenges that ESP teachers face. This mixed method study looked into teachers' perception toward pedagogical challenges and their effects on the quality of teaching ESP courses at Iranian medical universities as well as the role of video presentation on constituents' disturbance. As a result, this research was divided into two phases. In the first phase, which was a qualitative research, 10 ESP teachers were interviewed. In the second phase a questionnaire was used to conduct a quantitative and descriptive survey to investigate the impact of using video presentations on teachers' challenges. The participants of the second phase were 79 female and 29 male instructors with the age range of 31–40 years (M = 45.3) and the average teaching experience of 6–10 years in ESP courses. In the analysis of quantitative research findings, linear regression was conducted to determine their perception toward using video presentation in ESP classes. The questionnaire results revealed that using audio-visual tools to teach ESP courses is especially beneficial for both students and teachers. Appropriate video material can make students more interested in the subject, more engaged, and more confident in communicative language learning competencies. The study's findings can help policymakers and stakeholders understand how to provide funds and management support for ESP courses, as well as reform policy and regulations. Furthermore, ESP educators can take advantage of technological resources to help medical students solve problems with medical terminology and expressions and improve classroom efficiency. Future research should focus on learners' challenges in evaluating their perception of all language skills, as well as the implementation of various teaching methods.

Peculiarities of teaching vocabulary at esp classes

Peculiarities of teaching vocabulary at esp classes

Using Generative AI in ESP Classes to Teach Formal Style

Using Generative AI in ESP Classes to Teach Formal Style