ESP Teaching Research Articles

English For Specific Purposes: English Language Needs in Hospitality and Travel Industry

This research is designed to identify English language needs in the hospitality and travel industry. The data was obtained from the General Manager of Garuda Indonesia Padang, the HRD Manager of Grand Zuri Hotel Padang, and 24 employees working in both those companies. The researchers used instruments; an interview and a questionnaire. Interviews were conducted with the two managers, while questionnaires were distributed to the employees of the companies. The interviews were transcribed and then analyzed using a descriptive approach. The questionnaires were analyzed Software SPSS for Windows release 22.0. This research reveals that, in the hospitality and travel industry, speaking (35%) and listening (33%) are the most needed of the four (4) language skills. These skills are primarily needed to greet customers (who are dominantly non-native speakers of English). In addition, the employees in the two companies are mostly required to serve customers whose English is basic. The findings of this research are expected to provide valuable information for ESP teachers and curriculum designers in organizing ESP syllabus and teaching materials

PARLAYING STUDENTS’ WORK EXPERIENCE INTO PRACTICE-ORIENTED ESP

Instructors of English for Special Purposes often describe the challenge of determining which specific content and competencies to address in their courses. After all, it is the focus on technical subject matter which students expect to differentiate engineering ESP from standard EFL. Yet ESP instructors, who frequently have a background in fields such as applied linguistics or education, often receive little input from technical specialists as to which specialist topics are most relevant to their target domain.Our research indicates that ESP instructors in higher education can leverage a valuable resource to enrich teaching effectiveness: students who have already gained professional experience. As part of a longitudinal study at two universities of applied sciences (UAS) in southern Germany, engineering students at the beginning of their first semester of compulsory technical English participate in an online survey. The course participants provide relevant biographical information such as work experience and evaluate the perceived importance of a selection of skills and applications for a Technical English course. The surveys, administered in October 2016 and October 2017 and encompassing nearly 1000 respondents, provide compelling insights. Analysis reveals conclusive correlations between the perceived importance of course components and students’ declared level of previous work experience. Listening comprehension, reading comprehension, process description, and test and measurement are topics whose importance correlates positively with work experience level. In addition, there are clear trends relating work experience level with the importance of the reading and writing of technical documents as well as communication and interaction.This data provides empirically-founded criteria for selecting the topics to include in the scope of a Technical English course for engineers, informed by the judgment of students with occupational experience. Additionally, recognizing that students with work experience have legitimate practitioner credibility allows instructors to identify and select relevant subject matter in concordance with experienced students’ learning objectives. ESP learners will profit greatly from cultivating skills with proven practical applicability.

ENGLISH FOR PHARMACY: AN ESP COURSE IN A CLIL CONTEXT

This article deals with an ESP course taught as an obligatory subject in a pharmacy undergraduate degree programme in Spain. The language course is only one of the contexts involving disciplinary English as the degree programme integrates English in several content subjects. The ESP course is an attempt to find the right balance between students’ language needs, pharmacy-specific language skills, and the language-related demands of pharmacy content subjects which integrate English. The co-existence of ESP and CLIL teaching is seen as an opportunity for a closer cooperation and coordination with disciplinary experts to make connections between disciplines and activities towards better learning outcomes. We propose a course aimed at raising students’ language awareness through focused tasks which will cater to student’s communicative needs related to the two main themes of the course: chemistry and pharmaceutical care.

THE THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING IN NON-LINGUISTIC SPECIALTIES IN HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS OF THE SLOVAK REPUBLIC, THE CZECH REPUBLIC AND POLAND

In the article the author researched the theoretical and methodological aspects of foreign language teaching in non-linguistic specialties in higher educational institutions of the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic and Poland. It was described the modern approaches of foreign language teaching in institutions of higher education of countries that the author studies. Having analyzed the recent works of the Slovak, the Czech and the Polish scholars, we outlined the following main problems of teaching: 1) e-learning in ESP; 2) quality of foreign language teaching and learning; 3) CLIL methodology; 4) ESP methodology; 5) ESP teacher training, his/her professional development. Taking into account the mentioned problems, we defined the peculiarities of theoretical and methodological aspects of foreign language teaching in higher educational institutions of the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic and Poland. It was made a review and given a description of the scientific papers, which made a certain contribution to each of the problems of teaching. The perspectives of further research were mentioned. The article is addressed to ESP teachers, scientists and researchers who are interested in the field of language education and comparative researches in higher education of such countries as the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic and Poland.

The Role of the ESP Teacher

The present paper will first of all focus on the literature which approaches issues such as the difference between a General English teacher and an ESP teacher, ESP materials, syllabus, course design and evaluation. Then, emphasis will be placed on the importance of a fruitful collaboration between the ESP and the specialist subject teachers. Next, there will be provided an example of the cooperation between the Maritime English teacher and the Seamanship fundamentals one in point of needs analysis, syllabus and course design. Mention will also be made as to the kind of specialist subject knowledge the ESP teacher is required to avail. Finally, we will conclude our paper with own opinion on the role of the ESP teacher.

Exposing ESP Teacher’s and Students’ Perception about Teaching Speaking for Tourism Program

This study was framed in English for Spesific Purposes to look into the teacher’s and students’ perception about teaching speaking for Tourism Program. To this end, ten male and female Tourism students and their English teacher in one of private Vocational High School in Surakarta were purposively selected as the participants in this study. They were invited to take part in semi-structured interview. The findings showed that English for Tourism emphasizes more in building students’ speaking skill. All participants shared their positive perceptions toward teaching speaking for Tourism Program. The students perceived that speaking was very crucial for them since it gave such impact to their future career. Nevertheless, there were several difficulties students faced in the learning process including grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, content. There were also some challenges such as lack of confidence, low motivation and limited learning material. However, both teacher and students were actively involved in overcoming those barriers. This study shed light on the importance of collaboration between teacher and students. It is suggested that they should work closely to improve the quality of ESP program.

TEACHERS’ PERSPECTIVE ON THE CHALLENGES OF TEACHING ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES IN INDONESIA

Many studies related to EFL investigate that a mismatch betweenteaching and learning styles cause learning failure, frustration, anddemotivation. The implementation of ESP in Indonesia mostly adoptsContent-Based Instruction which requires a lot of effort from the teacher.The teachers’ perspectives are important to reveal the actual challenges inthe classroom to determine the best solution. A questionnaire wasdistributed to around thirty lecturers of ESP to be analyzed statistically byusing the Likert scale to show their views on the obstacles and challengesof teaching ESP. There are four domains that are analyzed which are,opinions, attitudes, preferences, and perceptions of the subjects. Theresearcher counted and found out the average score, middle point in thescore distribution, point where the most score was obtained, finding theaverage deviation of each score from the mean, and percentage of theproportion of the group population. From all of those calculation results,the researcher derives conclusion by comparing to the result of theinterview as well. It comes to the conclusion that from four fields thathad been studied, attitudes and preferences take the highest rank of theteachers’ challenge.

Analysis and classification of errors when shifting from general English to ESP teaching at University (the case of legal translation)


 
 
 Teaching legal translation at university causes a number of challenges which are caused by linguistic and sociocultural characteristics of the corresponding original and translation texts and psycholinguistic peculiarities of the second language acquisition process. There are some aspects in teaching legal translation that are rarely under investigation, among them there are issues that arise when shifting from general English to legal translation teaching. The article aims to comprehensively analyse and classify errors that students make during the introductory course of legal translation as well as to reveal the causes thereof. The author is guided by a set of methods including inter alia analysis of research on errors made by foreign language learners, observation and representative method. It concludes with recommendations related to teaching legal translation at the introductory level, summarises sources, types of errors and the ways to minimise and avoid them.
 Keywords: Teaching legal translation, ESP, ESL, error analysis.
 
 

The New Developments of Constructivism Theory and Its Reflection on College English Teaching in the Era of New Media―A Case Study of International Textile Trade English

Constructivism, as one of the core theory of psychology, has a deep influence on foreign language teaching and learning in China. The author in this paper takes a university-based ESP course, International Textile Trade English as a case study and applies the main conception of the four schools of Constructivism as a guide to organize teaching practice, with the expectation to explore the effective combination of Constructivism theory with the ESP teaching practice. Some limitations of the research are put forward in the end.

GUIDELINES FOR THE DESIGN AND GENERATION OF CORPUS-BASED TERMINOLOGY-ORIENTED INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIAL

A great deal of research has been conducted to exploit linguistic corpus data for language learning and teaching use. In the integrative corpora and language pedagogy stream of research diverse practical purposes coexist at the front and have presently become consolidated practice -learner corpora, ELT dictionary-making corpora, learner dictionary corpora, EAP corpora, specialised domain corpora, English-taught programmes corpora such as Content Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) or English-medium Instruction (EMI). This paper outlines a framework for corpus exploitation process towards the design of instructional material for the learning of terminology of a specialised domain which is applicable to ESP courses. Our proposal advocates for a protocolised use of written corpora to devise a resource for teaching terminology and, accordingly, suggests guidelines to ESP teachers/ practitioners who undertake the tasks of extracting corpus data and adopt the role of material designers and, occasionally, of computer programme developers. To accomplish this, in the first place, specialised corpus compilation and design criteria have been customised to guarantee consistency across the pedagogic ends, the functional language needs of the ESP user and the specific learning objects within the DDL approach framework. In the second place, search strings used for semi-automatic text mining actions are illustrated as well as samples of terminology-oriented activities that can be automatically generated using concordancers and annotating computational tools. Future research might apply our proposal to further language contexts.

COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING WITHIN THE FRAMES OF GLOBAL COMMUNITY INTEGRATION

The article represents the main advantages of communicative approach to foreign language teaching and its influence on development all-round person. Moreover, it reveals the way communicative approach can be implemented in all spheres of language teaching as ESP teaching, four skills teaching, material design, and etcetera.

COMPETANCY-BASED APPROACH TO TEACHING ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES (ESP) AND BUSINESS ENGLISH (BE)

The article presents the competency-based approach to teaching ESP and BE defined and substantiated by the authors. It shows the ways of developing ESP and BE students’ competencies as well as ways of identifying and nurturing ESP and BE teachers’ core competencies. Implementation of competency-based approach to teaching ESP and BE in University context requires transformations in the teaching process and provided educational content. The article focuses on the analysis of future economists’ professional and BE competence structure and ESP and BE teachers’ core competencies structure.

Practicing the Skill of Mediation in English for Legal Purposes

Abstract This article deals with mediation in language teaching, focusing on how the practice of mediation – as a specific language skill – can be incorporated in the syllabus. The chapter defines the skill of mediation as an emerging concept in language education, and discusses its potential for effective teaching of English for Specific Purposes in general and English for Legal Purposes in particular. The first part of the text seeks to answer several questions, aiming to determine whether mediation is relevant in the context of legal practice and whether it has a place in an English for Law syllabus. The second part addresses a more practical concern of how the skill of mediation can be practiced by students. The article makes a case for assigning mediation a much more central place in the classroom, giving a number of specific examples of how this soft skill can be developed in the teaching of ESP and ELP.

Information Technology Students’ Language Needs for their ESP Course

The purpose of this study was to find the needs of Iranian undergraduate Information Technology (IT) engineering students for their ESP course. To this end, a needs analysis questionnaire was administered to 30 undergraduate IT students to elicit information about their needs in English language at Islamic Azad University, Tabriz Branch. The results of data analysis revealed that among four skills reading was the highly needed skill followed by writing. It was also found that a majority of participants were dissatisfied with the current ESP courses for undergraduate students. This, in fact, indicated that ESP curricula have not yet been successfully developed in satisfying the students’ professional needs in target situations. Findings point to the fact that ESP and its teaching in Iran has to undergo serious rethinking not only in the content of the course but also the whole process of teaching the language. The findings can help course designers to both put much more credit for ESP courses, and consider appropriate and suitable materials which can give useful information to the students. It can also help ESP teachers to meet the language needs of their students.

Using films and TV series for ESP teaching: A multimodal perspective

This paper presents the results of a project carried out at the Language Centre of the University of Pisa in partnership with the Language Centre of the University of California at Berkeley to collaborate in the development of the Library of Foreign Language Film Clips (LFLFC), which aims to promote the learning of language and culture through films. A selection of clips cut from films and TV series was purposefully chosen as they pertain to different genres and are characterised by the use of English in specialised domains (i.e., law, politics, economics, tourism, and medicine). They are used to show how various semiotic resources work together to construct meaning in ESP and how they can provide useful tools for research and teaching in ESP contexts. In language teaching, a multimodal approach can help students learn to exploit modes beyond verbal language (e.g., visual, gestural, and spatial) to both understand and produce texts in the target language more effectively. This becomes particularly important in situated communicative contexts where domain-specific discursive, pragmatic, and cultural features can create significant obstacles for language learners.

LEARNING DISCOURSE STRATEGIES FOR INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

The article deals with the issue of facilitating learning the specific features of spoken professional communication for International Relations through discourse analysis. The authors present an EFL methodology solution to the problem of teaching ESP to International Relations students based on a strong determination to use the latest advancements in linguistics, i.e. discourse analysis for the purposes of ESP teaching at the university level of education, namely the bulk of linguistic research into the rhetoric of discourse strategies. The paper considers the very concept of discourse and discourse strategies, provides examples of discourse strategies used by IR VIP persons in publicly open interviews on TV and outlines the methodology applied to structure the educational process to help students use their linguistic knowledge to achieve efficiency in spoken professional intercultural communication.

Поліваріантність ролей викладача іноземної мови для професійних цілей

The article focuses on the results of the analysis of the various psychological and pedagogical roles of the English for Specific Purposes/ESP teacher which are actualized in the process of professional training within the ESP course. It has been specified that the level of methodological competence of the ESP teacher is determined, in particular, by the ability to choose behavior patterns and combine roles that are appropriate in a particular educational situation. Due to the psychological theories of interaction the range of teaching roles has been determined in the context of pedagogical interaction between ESP teacher and ESP students, thus, gradual transformation of the guardian and mentor position to the role of partner, co-worker, colleague, accomplice, co-author, collaborator has been grounded. Considered in the article is the concept of pedagogical facilitation as an innovative approach to ESP training. Identifying facilitation with the notion of pedagogical management made it possible to emphasise on the managerial, adaptive, organizational and consultative functions of the ESP teacher, therefore, the roles of manager, supervisor, attendant, assistant, consultant, counsellor have been outlined. The role of facilitator within ESP teaching is regarded as a complex concept which comprises the positions of consultant, moderator, and tutor. The significance of such teaching position in ESP training has been substantiated primarily due to the specific target learners of the ESP courses who fundamentally differ from the students of the general language courses in terms of their theoretical and practical professional background.

The principles of blended teaching of English for Specific Purposes at engineering and pedagogical higher educational institutions

The article deals with principles of blended learning in ESP course at engineering andpedagogical higher educational establishments, namely the scientific principle, the principles ofconsciousness, accessibility, activity, systematicness and consistency, the strength of knowledgeand skills acquisition, visibility, the principle of taking into account the individual characteristicsof students, the principle of interactivity, the principle of professional orientation, the principle ofautonomy and the principle of flexibility in teaching English as a foreign language. It is shown thatan ESP curriculum within a blended learning framework should be realized on the basis of activeand autonomous methods of knowledge acquisition and work with information. The course isconsidered to be the most efficient within the framework of blended learning based upon bothbasic didactic regulations and methodological (general and particular) principles, consideringindividual student characteristics, such as age and specialization, ESP course peculiarities as wellas blended learning features. The article aims to address the peculiarities of the given technologyand prospects of its application for the purpose of ESP courses at engineering and pedagogicalhigher educational establishments. Taking into account the principles of blended ESP teaching, thefollowing conditions of its successful application were identified: increase in the level of students’autonomy; adaptability of the model; reasonable expenditure of classroom time and students’independent work; individual characteristics of students; use of various means of pedagogicalinfluence; increase in the amount of educational materials; interactivity; availability of the absoluteaccess to educational materials.

The Coexistence of Latin and English in Medical Terminology and its Contribution to ESP Teaching

The Coexistence of Latin and English in Medical Terminology and its Contribution to ESP Teaching

Exploring students' perception and efficiency of technology-mediated ESP teaching

Exploring students' perception and efficiency of technology-mediated ESP teaching