ESP Learners Research Articles

Effective strategies of learning ESP vocabulary for technical students

Effective strategies of learning ESP vocabulary for technical students

The Contribution of E-Learning Platforms to Enhance Students’ English Skills in Learning ESP

In a pandemic situation, the students and teachers should adapt a new educational system required to implement online learning. The research aims to investigate the contribution of online platforms in enhancing students in learning of ESP. The study was conducted in SMK Nusa Dua Gerokgak. The study involved the students of SMK Nusa Dua Gerokgak. The observation and interview were done to collect the data. The results revealed that some online platforms use to help them in learning ESP. However, WhatsApp is the most frequent platform used since it is easier to use, and students are familiar with it.

항공 기종 별 영어 다빈도 어휘리스트 Corpus 구축: Boeing 기종 Narrow body B737과 Wide body B777의 비교를 중심으로

The purpose of this research is to suggest the implications to ESP learners based on Corpus data by constructing the text and analyzing the Boeing’s Signature aircraft types which are B737 & B777. Linguistic corpus for ESP study has been frequently conducted since s it was often applied to English education. It is essential for ESP learners to list the high-frequency vocabulary as it will be an efficient approach to provide contents for ESP-related lectures. It has been analyzed by corpus program called AntConc 3.5.8. The whole number of word types from own text was 7249 with 318,324 token numbers for B737, while B777 showed 7279 word type with token number of 311,770. First, Top 25 high frequent vocabulary list was made according to the order of wordlist. Second, the list of lexical bundle was extracted with 2 and 3 words. Lastly, the concordance lists of vocabulary ‘risk’ and ‘safety’ were found. The results of this research developed some lists that could be used as an useful material for those who are majored in airline service at college in the ESP classes or who is under the training at Airlines industry. Meanwhile this study made a list of frequent vocabulary up based on a computerized data analysis program which is very reliable and useful.

Action research as a tool of teaching ESP in a flipped learning environment

This study aims to contextualize a flipped learning environment for ESP learners at a faculty of pharmacy, considering learners’ suggestions and the teacher-researcher’s field notes and benefitting from the collaboratively problem-solving processes of action research. Thus, the study was designed as first-person action research, where the teacher-researcher collaborated with the 38 pharmacy students taking an EOP course in their third year of study at a university in Turkey. The flipped learning instruction was evaluated, firstly, during implementation via video-recording 12 weekly three-class-hour courses, collecting learners’ reflective journals and keeping field notes; and secondly, after finishing the implementation by holding focus group interviews with the students. The data were analyzed by inductive content analysis. The findings of the study indicate that the flipped learning strategy ensured many advantages, including the efficient use of class time, differentiation and peer interaction as well as bringing adoption problems derived from teacher dependence and established learning habits. Conducting action research not only improved the teacher-researcher’s relationships with the students but also contributed to her professional identity as an ESP practitioner. Considering the findings of the study, practical implications for professional practice as well as suggestions for further research were presented.

Teaching and learning ESP courses: The perceptions of teachers and students

Teaching and learning ESP courses: The perceptions of teachers and students

Translation Practice – A Means for Enhancing Student Employability

Recent studies on employers’ expectations regarding the language skills of their employees, as well as the language-related tasks the latter are expected to perform, show that translation activities are essential for everyday business operations. With this in mind, the paper aims to explore the benefits of using translation activities in developing ESP learners’ language skills, as well as domain-specific knowledge, so as to meet the demands on the labour market. The case study describes the following steps: student exposure to minimal training in translation steps and strategies, classroom practice on excerpts from economic articles, home translations of full-length economic articles. Feedback exchange on classwork and homework points to the relevance of such activities embedded in Business English lessons: on the one hand, students increase their awareness of language and employabilityrelated aspects; on the other hand, the teacher identifies best practice examples, apart from needs regarding remedial work.

QRCV APPROACH TO ENHANCING CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS IN ESP LEARNING

The term ‘Critical Thinking’ increasingly appears in education and language teaching. It would be among key skills for any 21st century learner (Hughes, 2014). Recently, considerable attention has been paid to critical teaching approaches in studying foreign languages. It is usually difficult for students to acquire financial knowledge in English even though they have already passed a basic English course in non-English speaking countries. We introduce the QRCV approach for enhancing learners’ CT skills so that learners can overcome challenges in ESP learning. The main principle of the QRCV approach is heuristic Questioning, Reasoning, Considering the issues from different angles, and Visualizing in learning ESP. Our study aims at validating the QRCV approach in enhancing learners’ CT skills in ESP learning. Participants were 72 students learning finance in English. During a semester, the experimental group (n=36) took the financial English course through the QRCV approach while the control group took it in a conventional approach. The self-developed instrument, Critical Thinking Skills Test for Financial English (CTSTFE) was used as a pretest and posttest, and their results were scored by instructors in accordance with relevant criteria for CT skills. The findings indicate that the experimental group outperformed the control group in the course achievement, especially in the dimension of Considering from multiple-perspectives. Implications for applying QRCV to other ESP courses in general are suggested.

ESP Student Feedback –A Tool to Develop both Students’ and Teachers’ Competences

The current paper investigates how ESP teachers and learners may benefit from feedback exchange during the learning process. The article is a qualitative analysis of student feedback provided for ESP classes by learners from a Romanian economic university – i.e. the Bucharest University of Economic Studies. Responses refer to: the development of (general and business) English skills, enhancing self- and peer awareness, benefits of peer cooperation. The analysis is undertaken by an interdisciplinary team comprising an English teacher and a psychologist and discusses the relevance of such assignments for the development of students’ and teachers’ competences. We place our analysis against the background of research on (language) teacher competences and (language) learner competences in professional frameworks developed in Europe, Asia, Australia, North America, highlighting the complex teacher and learner/ graduate profiles required across the world, as well as the contribution of feedback exchange skills to this profile.

Affordances and Challenges of Mixed- Methods Needs Analysis for the Development of ESP Courses

This paper addresses the conceptions of needs analysis and mixed-methods research, and the affordances and challenges of mixed methods needs analysis in implementing ESP courses. Language researchers and educators maintain that a lack of identifying students’ needs hampers the development and improvement of English language education in ESP. ESP teachers and educators may not be cognizant of utilizing needs analysis effectively in their classrooms. Hence, the purpose of the paper is to characterize mixed-methods needs analysis and recognize affordances and challenges of using needs analysis with the considerations of mixed methods in research on foreign and second language education. A systematic mixed-methods learner needs analysis can increase the rigour of course design, materials development, and the enhancement of curriculum and instruction. This paper also informs ESP educators, teachers, professionals, and researchers of the usefulness and practicality of mixed methods approaches in conducting needs analysis for ESP learners in the educational context.

On the Use of Video Description in an Online Collaborative Writing Project with ESP Learners of Tourism Studies

This paper shows the results of a teaching innovation project, which consisted in providing students with a video description task, by which they could practise their written skills in a collaborative fashion in their English for Tourism university studies ― which enables them to obtain a B2 level. A total of 35 adult volunteers participated in this two-month project. Following a task-based approach, and by taking techniques from of audio description, students had to write, in pairs, the script of a touristic promotion clip of Iceland, providing an attractive and accurate description of the images that appeared on the screen, that is, situations proper of the tourism industry. In the second phase of peer review, students had to assess the other pairs’ descriptions, and, finally, once revised by themselves and by the teachers, they had to vote for the best ones, with the aid of a rubric that helped them identify the main landmarks to take into account (lexicon, accuracy, etc.). The results show that the students not only enjoyed the task, which increased their motivation for writing in English, but they also obtained better results in the final exam tests than those who did not participate in this collaborative task.

DEVELOPING INTERCULTURAL BUSINESS COMPETENCE VIA TEAM LEARNING IN POST-PANDEMIC ERA

To become successfully competitive in the globalised post-COVID 19 virtual business world, the engineering students, besides learning the English language for Specific Purposes as stipulated by the existing Syllabi, require purposed efforts for the formation of intercultural business communication competencies. This research, conducted successively in the USA and Ukraine combining observational and experimental methodology, aimed at studying the influence of team learning on the development of intercultural business competencies and skills highly desired and valued by employers, such as team building and teamwork, critical thinking, decision making, conflict prevention, and resolution, etc. The results were processed by combining qualitative and quantitative methods. Spanning in time from 2013 to 2020, the study proved the effectiveness of project work in learning teams for the development of intercultural competence and business communication skills. Team learning in virtual teams based on andragogical principles and methodology adapted by the authors to the needs of Ukrainian engineering students resulted in developing team building, teamwork, leadership, goal setting, planning, decision making, time management, creative and critical thinking, problem solving, conflict prevention and resolution, interpersonal and group communication and collaboration skills and competences, necessary for successful integration into the global workforce marketplace. Besides significant enhancement of intercultural business communication competencies, team learning resulted in raising Ukrainian undergraduate engineering students’ motivation towards learning ESP, engagement in group and classwork, persistence towards successful graduation and gainful employment, and overall positive learning experiences.

Exploration of the Second Time Development of ESP Materials: Classroom Practice and Teachers’ Roles

This study investigates teachers’ second time development of ESP materials in the context of ESP curriculum reform in a Chinese university where a newly published series of textbooks are used. Data collected from classroom observations were analyzed to reveal teachers’ practice in the second time development of materials. Semi-structured interviews with ESP teachers were conducted to disclose the hidden agendas of teachers by a thorough thematic analysis. Results show that teachers’ second time development techniques mainly include omitting the “Researching Task” part, supplementing more “critical thinking” tasks, glancing through the “Reading Strategies” and simplifying the interpretation of discipline-related content. More advanced development strategies such as adding more discipline-related knowledge, changing the instructional sequence, reconstructing or creating certain contents are seldom used. The overall second time development practice indicates that teachers would rather simplify the teaching process than make it meaningful. Inability, laziness, the lack of awareness, and fear of making mistakes are the main causes of teachers’ rudimentary development practice. This study then suggests that institutions and teacher educators should offer special programs that can improve teachers’ skills in the second time development of teaching materials, take measures to enhance ESP teachers’ disciplinary/content knowledge, and enforce rigorous management so as to make the second development of ESP materials more effective and thus improve the quality and efficiency of ESP teaching and learning.

IMPLEMENTING THE FLIPPED CLASSROOM: A CASE STUDY OF TEACHING ESP TO THE BACHELORS IN AUTOMATION AND COMPUTER-INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES

The paper describes the experience of flipped classroom application in teaching ESP. The study was held at the National Aviation University and involved 46 undergraduate students majoring in “Automation and Computer-Integrated Technologies”. In-class learning was organized according to the university schedule and out-of-class activities were conducted by using Google Classroom and a set of digital learning tools. Our observations during teaching with their further analysis and a designed questionnaire were used to reveal the benefits and drawbacks of the flipped classroom. The analysis of the students’ responses has shown that it allows students to study at their own pace, meet their needs, develop their organizational, communication and time management skills and increase their independence and creativity. The paper specifies three main phases of the flipped classroom and determines what skills are developed at each of them. Remembering and understanding are developed at the first phase and the freed classroom time is devoted to developing the skills of applying and analyzing. The higher-order thinking skills of evaluating and creating can be formed both in the classroom and during the post-class phase. The authors have selected digital learning tools which can be recommended for learning ESP in order to facilitate students’ out-of-class activities. Their use can help to shift the emphasis from the teacher to the student, increase students’ engagement in learning and make the course versatile and appropriate to students’ needs. A student survey was conducted at the end of the academic year, and the analysis of students’ responses revealed that they had a positive attitude to implementing the flipped classroom in teaching ESP. As shown by the results of the study, the use of the flipped classroom for teaching ESP is effective as it saves much in-class time for communicative tasks enhancing the development of higher-order thinking skills, unites in-class and out-of-class learning, controls students’ achievement not only in the classroom but outside it and makes the learning process more engaging.

Developing Digital English Materials Based on Contextual Teaching Learning for Economics Students

This study refers to the problem study of the teaching and learning needs which requires English learning resources in order to meet the expectations of students during the ESP pandemic teaching and learning process. The fundamental goal of this research is to create effective digital English learning resources for students at the University of Serang Raya's Economics faculty. The main goals of creating a digital English coursebook based on contextual teaching-learning are to help Economics students enhance their English language skills and to meet their learning demands. This research was carried out using the PSDD model as a research and development method (Preliminary Study, Design, and Develop). The information is gathered using a questionnaire and a speech assessment form.

Tailoring Potent Courses for ESP Learners: A Way to Better Fulfil their Demands

In this day and age, it is absolutely indispensable for acquiring competence in English to grapple with the real impediments and huge challenges of the modern epoch. The emergence of English as a global language is among the factors that could explicate its vitality and its expansion. The basic burden of making language courses more relevant to learners’ needs resulted in the advent of languages for specific purposes movement, known in English Language Teaching circles as English for Specific Purposes. ESP then, has since its inception in the early 1960s become one of the most dynamic branches of applied linguistics in general, and of Teaching English as a Foreign Language in particular. To amass relevant data, a case study was conducted through a combination of a questionnaire, classroom observation, and informal interviews with language teachers and subject specialists. The main aim of this present paper is to precisely delineate the teaching/learning process of ESP in the department of Computer Sciences at the University of ORAN1 in Algeria, and the learners’ attitudes towards this teaching. For this purpose, it is necessary to explore the utility of ESP as perceived by learners, and to address problems faced by instructors. The results indicate that the students have a positive attitude towards ESP and that their poor achievement was due to multiple reasons. This digest concludes by offering some suggestions and implications as remedial actions to the major confronted concerns.

Digital multimodal composing as authentic assessment in discipline‐specific English courses: Insights from ESP learners

In recent years, the advent of educational technology has made digital multimodal composing (DMMC) increasingly common among tertiary students. The current small‐scale study explored the perceptions of DMMC of 12 undergraduate students enrolled in a discipline‐specific English course at an English‐medium university in Hong Kong. In particular, the study focussed on the use of infographics as a digital reflective assessment to communicate the students’ learning process. Using semistructured interviews to explore students’ perceptions, the study found the infographics motivating and helpful in enabling them to feel more confident while communicating with peers and clients in their fields. Participants also indicated that infographics empowered them to demonstrate their discipline‐specific language skills and facilitated communication of their learning processes. This study highlights pedagogical directions for future discipline‐specific courses to move with the advancement of technology and incorporate DMMC to prepare students for their professions.

STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TEACHING ESP FOR SOCIAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCE PROGRAM

This study investigates ESP students' perception of ESP teaching effectiveness for Social and Political Science from the non-English Department. Data were collected from forty-six participants from three Social and Political Science Program Departments, Darul 'Ulum University. To obtain the data, questionnaires and interviews were employed as the instruments. Furthermore, the data were analyzed using descriptive analysis into four categories; material, teaching method, learning motivation, and classroom management. The findings showed that some students were dissatisfied with the ESP materials given. However, the students perceived that they need to take the ESP materials to have professional communication skills for future careers. Additionally, it was also found that the roles of lectures' guidance in learning ESP were important. Finally, the interview results reveal the difficulties the students face in learning ESP, including vocabulary, pronunciation, reading comprehension, and grammatical structure.

Overcoming non-linguistic barriers to effective speaking in Russian adult ESP classroom

The problem of teaching speaking in the adult ESP classroom has not been sufficiently studied in Russia, although the challenges it poses differ significantly from those that traditional research on pedagogy can address. One of these challenges is that some Russian adult ESP students do not feel comfortable speaking English in front of their teacher and classmates, which leads to communication barriers. The review of the literature on andragogy, our observations, and the anonymous survey conducted among Russian adult ESP learners have revealed that this discomfort may be caused or compounded by such socio-cultural and psychological factors as the fear of appearing incompetent and difficulty assuming the subordinate role of a student. The given study explores these factors and suggests creating a number of conditions maximizing the benefits of speaking activities for adult ESP audiences. The first condition is a flexible class organization, in which students are mostly encouraged to interact with equals in respect of their social characteristics and language proficiency. It creates a favorable anxiety-reduced classroom atmosphere in which all learners are given an opportunity to demonstrate their strengths. Another condition is the students exposure to relevant learning content with interactive speaking activities representing real-life communicative situations. It raises adult learners motivation and reduces the impact of psychological constraints. The third condition is the teaching style of a facilitator rather than a superior, which involves recognizing that both the teacher and the adult learners are competent in their respective fields of expertise and therefore equal in status. This setting proves to foster the development of speaking skills in Russian adult ESP classrooms and thus may be recommended for this audience. Further research into the topic may reveal more factors underlying verbal interactions in adult ESP classroom.

Investigating the English needs of law department students in English for specific purposes

This present study aims at investigating the students’ target needs in learning ESP Speaking of Law department students. The adapted version of Aliakbari & Boghayeri’s (2014) and Alsamadani’s (2017) questionnaire was used as the main instrument of this study to understand the 45 students’ perception about their needs in learning ESP speaking course. A mixed-method research design was implemented in this present research. Students’ responses were analyzed statistically using SPSS 16.0 by calculating the mean, frequency and percentage. To elicit more understanding on the topic, interview was implemented to senior students in order to get deeper investigation about students’ target needs. The interview data were then analyzed using NVivo 12 Plus. This study reveals that most of the students’ needs are concerned with their professional job in the future so they are able to use English in their fields. Thus, this study provides some highlighting points on what to include in course development. In such a notion, this study suggests lecturers provide specific materials related to law in order to face their professional life either in short- or long-term future needs.
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 HIGHLIGHTS:
 
 This study pinpoints the result of Law students measurement on their self-rating towards their English competences.
 This study highlights on materials related to Law department that are perceived to be strongly needed and less needed.
 This study also reveals that according to students’ interview transcript, their needs in learning ESP are found to attain long-term goal compared to the short-term one.

ASPECTS OF ESP LEARNING MOTIVATION IN TERTIARY EDUCATION

Motivation has long been identified as one of the main factors affecting the English language learning. The study examines the type and level of ESP learning motivation (extrinsic and intrinsic) of 148 first-year undergraduate students of Klaipeda University as well as their attitudes towards learning the English language. Identification of the kind of students’ motivation and their attitudes to learning will help to formulate measures for the improvement of students’ learning motivation and the subject learning quality.