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English for Special Purposes

This document discusses various approaches to course design for English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses. It begins by defining course design as the process of interpreting learning needs to produce a series of teaching experiences to lead learners to a particular knowledge state. It then outlines several common course design processes, including needs analysis, selecting theoretical views, creating a syllabus, and establishing evaluation procedures. The document also discusses specific ESP projects focused on developing students' ability to read texts in English. It compares language-centered, skills-centered, and learning-centered approaches to course design and emphasizes the importance of a learning-centered approach that considers learners' needs, attitudes, and potential at every stage.

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COURSE DESIGN is the process by which the raw data about a learning need is interpreted in order to produce an integrated series of teaching-learning experiences, whose ultimate aim is to lead the learners to a particular state of knowledge.
this is the simplest kind of course design process and is probably the one most familiar to English Teachers. This aims to draw as direct connections as possible between the analysis of the target situation and the content of ESP course.
Identiify learner’s target situation Select theoretical views of language Create Syllabus Identify linguistic features of target situation Design materials to exemplify syllabus items Establish evaluation procedures to test acquisition of syllabus items
• It has been applied in a number of countries, particularly in Latin America. Students in universities and colleges there have the limited, but important need to read subject texts in English, because they are unavailable in the mother tongue. In response to this need, a number of ESP projects have been set up with specific aim of developing the students’ ability to read in English.
 Basic theoretical hypothesis is that underlying any language behavior are certain skills and strategies which the learner uses in order to produce or comprehend discourse. SCA aims to get away from the surface performance data and look at the competence that underlies the performance
 Pragmatic Basis it was derived from a distinction made by Widdowson (1981) between goal-oriented courses and process-oriented courses. Holmes pointed out that: In ESP the main problem is usually one of the time available and student experience. First, the aims may be defined in terms of what is desirable. –i.e. to be able to read in the literature of the students’ specialism but, there may be nowhere near enough time to reach this aim during the period of this course. Secondly, the students may be in their first year of studies with little experience of literature of their specialism. . . Accordingly both this factors.. May be constraints which say right from the start, “the aims cannot be achieved during the course.”
The emphasis in the ESP course, then, is not achieving a particular set of goals, but on enabling the learners to achieve what they can within the given constraints: • The process-oriented approach… is at least realistic in concentrating on strategies and processes of making students aware of their own abilities and potential, and motivating them to tackle target texts on their own after the end of the course, so that they can continue to improve..
Theoretical views of language Identify target situation Analyze skills/ strategies required to cope in target situation Write syllabus Theoretical views of learning Select text and write exercises to focus on skills/strategies in syllabus Establish evaluation procedure which require the use of skill/strategies in syllabus
this approach is based on the principle that learning is totally determined by the learner. As teachers we can influence what we teach, but what learners learn is determined by the learners alone learning is seen as a process in which the learners use what knowledge or skills they have in order to make sense of the flow of new information. learning, therefore, is an internal process which is crucially dependent upon the knowledge the learners already have and their ability and motivation to use it. learning is not just a mental process, it is a process of negotiation between individuals and society.
Identify Learners Theoretical views of Language Analyze Target Situation Theoretical views of Learning Analyze Learning Situation Identify attitudes/wants/potential of learners Identify needs/ potential/ constraints of learning teaching situation Identify skills and knowledge needed to function in the target situation Write syllabus/materials to exploit the potential of the learning situation in the acquisition of skills and knowledge required by the target situation EvaluationEvaluation
A language-centered approach says: this the nature of the target situation performance and that will determine ESP course. A skills-centered approach says: that’s not enough, we must look behind target performance data to discover what processes enable someone to perform. Those processes will determine the ESP course. A learning-centered approach says: that’s not enough either. We must look beyond the competence that enables someone to perform, because what we really want to discover is not the competence itself, but how someone acquires that competence.
Analyze target situation Analyze learning situation Write syllabus Write materials Teach materials Evaluate learner achievement Identify target situation A language-centered approach Considers the learners to here A skill-centered approach Considers the learners to here A learning-centered approach Considers the learners to here A comparison of approaches to course design
In the figure shows that a learning-centered approach to course design takes account of the learner at every stage of the design process. This has two implications: Course design is a negotiated process. There is no single factor which has an outright determining influence on the content of the course. The ESP learning situation and the target situation with both influence the nature of the syllabus, materials, methodology and evaluation procedures. Similarly each of these components will influence and be influenced by the others. Course design is a dynamic process. It does not move in a linear fashion from initial analysis to complete course. Needs and resources vary with time. The course design, therefore, needs to have built-in feedback channels to enable the course to respond to developments.
WHAT? Language descriptions WHO? WHY? WHERE? WHEN? Needs Analysis HOW? Learning Theories ESP COURSE Nature of particular target and learning situation syllabus Method ology Factors affecting ESP Course Design
ESP is based on designing courses to meet Learner’s need What does course design involve? Ways of describing language Needs Analysis Models of learning Approaches to course design SECTION 2: COURSE DESIGN
How do you use a course design? Syllabus design Materials evaluation Materials design Methodology Evaluation What is the role of ESP? ResourcesOrientation SECTION 3: APPLICATION SECTION 3: THE TEACHER
• This principles below applies to intermediate and advanced students of English. 1. Content difficulty should approximate the level in their normal courses. This means for instance, you cannot expect medical students and doctors to study high school biology. Medical students need University Level content. And if this means that the English teacher cannot understand the science, then so be it: let the English teacher learn the science. 2. Content should lead language. The content itself should be useful to the students, and should be stretching in its own right. This does not mean that the texts used are always complicated: there are plenty of genres, such as blogs, the latest news etc where the content is new and interesting and still covers the needs to reinforce basic language. 3. The exercises on the material should be authentic, as well as the material itselfThis means an end to trivial tasks, and a major focus on real world comprehension, inferencing, and debating.
4. There should be massive exposure to content and language This massive exposure should often come from many directions simultaneously. 5. We need to be using authentically long texts for listening and reading 6. Communication gaps should be massively exploited It is well known that language is learned fastest when there is a desire to know, or when there is controversy. 7. Methods should draw inspiration from content teachers The comparison to be made is with how L1 learners advance and learn a new technical subject in L1. Therefore, ESP should draw inspiration from the content teaching methods in L1 (which frequently have high demands on language).
8. Elaborate, but do not simplify Elaborated texts retain the original complex authentic text, with all the associated context, redundancy, and language clues. They add extra supporting material, and this elaboration is much more than translations or synonyms. It can include supplementary material, and extra extended explanations. In short, elaboration should not lead to simplification. Rather, the material is repeatedin another linguistic form. 9. Train students to handle difficult texts. Just as in advanced L1, we should not expect students to understand every idea or word Native speaker academics frequently do not understand every single idea or word in a text. Yet they are capable of using the texts. Therefore, the language teacher should not expect students to fully understand every text. 10.Consider using translation as a scaffolding for weak students: 11.Speed up learning by drawing on the research comparing French and English Of course, this research is hard to find, except on this website! Few linguists have been willing to do the careful legwork needed for such comparisons.
12.Massive exposure, and extracting meaningful information should be the focus - NOT language pointsThis point derives from the fact that for students from B2 onwards (upper intermediate) there is no6. Communication gaps should be massively exploited. It is well known that language is learned fastest when there is a desire to know, or when there is controversy. 13.A course designer should have three syllabuses: a content syllabus, a language syllabus, and a learning/skills syllabus. The ‘content syllabus’ should be related to the way the specialists divide up the subject. 14.Students need exposure to the multiple genres within their specialty. These genres can differ widely in language and style. 15.Ideally, another subject should be taught in English, and failing that, compulsory readings in English should be set by the subject specialist. When students really want to understand, when they are encouraged by examination pressure, then they will make the extra effort to learn.
English for Special Purposes
English for Special Purposes
English for Special Purposes