This document discusses three key issues facing ESP teachers: 1) The lack of an established orthodoxy or set of guidelines for ESP teaching provides little guidance for teachers. 2) ESP teachers must learn new subject matter beyond their usual expertise. 3) The role and status of English teachers changes in ESP from teaching English as a subject to serving other specialized fields, which can lower teachers' status. It provides recommendations for ESP teachers such as conducting surveys of ESP programs, forming teacher groups for support, and ensuring pre-service training covers ESP issues. Teachers need a positive attitude and basic understanding of subject areas rather than extensive expertise. Broad subject groupings and fun topics can help address teachers' concerns about specificity.

1. THE ROLE OF THE ESP
TEACHER : ORIENTATION
14222053 Solihatin
14222071 M. Naufal Fauzaan

2. ORIENTATION
In this chapter we shall consider this situation in greater detail,
focusing in three problems which we have found consistently arise in
discussing with teachers of ESP:
1. The lack of an ESP orthodoxy to provide a ready-made guide
2. The new realms of knowledge the ESP teacher has to cope with
3. The change in the status of English Language Teaching

3. THE LACK OF AN
ORTHODOXY
Lacking a long tradition which might give some stability, ESP
has frequency been a hotbed of conflict-the Wild West of ELT.
The importance of a text is not intrinsic to the text, but
devices from the rule the text has to play in the teaching/ learning
process.
As the example of the use or non-use of authentic texts
illustrates, ESP teacher will often have to orientate themselves to difficult
problems with little or no guidance.

4. There are no easy solutions to this situation, but some
methods that might be useful are:
 Surveys of the history and present state of ESP in your own or
neighbor countries
 Formations of groups of ESP teacher, perhaps allied to any
existing national organization for the promotion of ELT, to further
the support and development of ESP
 Establishment of newsletters and other form of publication, for
exchanging information and views about ESP in your country
 Provision of pre-and in-service teacher training focusing on ESP
issues. Such provision can take a variety of form: workshops,
seminars, short courses etc.

5. NEW REALMS OF
KNOWLEDGE
As well as having to cope with the uncertain values of the
strange land of ESP teachers may also have to struggle to master language
and subject matter beyond the bounds of their previous experiences.
Does the ESP teacher need to understand the subject matter
of ESP materials?
Taken in isolation, the answer to this question must be ‘yes’.
Teachers of social or literary English would not enter the classroom
understanding little about the content of the texts to be taught.

6. We ne e d to ask our se lve s thr e e que stions:
 Does the content of ESP materials need to be highly
specialized?
In specialized texts the discourse structure may be denset and
more formalized, but not different in kind from that of less specialized
material.
The linguistic knowledge needed to comprehend the specialist
text is little different from that required to comprehend the general text.

7.  Why do so many ESP teachers find it difficult to comprehend
ESP subject matter?
This problem arises from four causes:
1. There is the tradition in education of separating the Humanities and the Sciences.
Languages have usually been allocated to the Humanities camp.
2. Many ESP teacher are reluctance settlers in the new territory. They would prefer to be
teaching literature and Social English in the comfortable environs of ELT, but have
been obliged by economic pressure to emigrate.
3. Considering the scale of the ESP revolution it must be admitted that little effort has
been made to retrain teachers or to at least allay their fears.
4. The general attitude in ESP seems to be to expect teachers to conform to the
requirements of the target situations.

8.  What kind of knowledge is required of the ESP teachers?
ESP teachers do not need to learn specialist subject knowledge. They
require three things only:
1. A positive attitude towards the ESP content;
2. A knowledge of the fundamental principles of the subject area;
3. An awareness of how much they probably already know.

9. CHANGE IN THE STATUS OF
ENGLISH TEACHING
One of the most important features of ESP in relation to General English is
that the status of English changes from being a subject in its own right to a service industry
for other specialism. In many cases this leads to a lowering of status for the teacher, or at
least this seems to be the ESP teacher’s view.
There are only two ways in which the subject has any kind of influence on the language
content:
a. Vocabulary. But even here the differences are far less significant than might be expected.
b. Certain subject areas show a higher proportion of particular grammatical or structural
forms. For example, a register analysis of Scientific and Technological subjects will show
a high percentage of passives and nominal/adjectival compounds.

10.  The reason for having the subject-specific approach rest almost
entirely on two affective factors generated by the learners themselves:
1. Face validity. Subject-specific materials look relevant
2. Familiarity.

11.  A strategy for dealing with the problem
1. The first step is to try and establish grouping along broad subject lines
2. Avoid highly specific materials and try to give everyone’s specialism some
chance.
3. Look for topics which give access to a number of different specialist areas.
4. Make learners aware of the lack of specificity of their needs.
5. If people are havong fun, they are far less likely to complain.