Scribd
Upload
1K views3 pages

Key Issues in ESP Curriculum Design

The document discusses key issues in designing an English for Special Purposes (ESP) curriculum for a public relations job. It addresses: 1) The abilities needed for successful communication in occupational settings, including using job-specific jargon, academic skills, and informal language. 2) Balancing content language acquisition with general language skills. More time was allotted to content lectures but language skills were developed through team activities. 3) Structuring heterogeneous student groups, noting minimum language and education standards must be enforced for placement.

Uploaded by

intan melati
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
1K views3 pages

Key Issues in ESP Curriculum Design

The document discusses key issues in designing an English for Special Purposes (ESP) curriculum for a public relations job. It addresses: 1) The abilities needed for successful communication in occupational settings, including using job-specific jargon, academic skills, and informal language. 2) Balancing content language acquisition with general language skills. More time was allotted to content lectures but language skills were developed through team activities. 3) Structuring heterogeneous student groups, noting minimum language and education standards must be enforced for placement.

Uploaded by

intan melati
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 3

Key Issues in ESP Curriculum Design

1. Abilities Required for Successful Communication in Occupational Settings


There are three abilities necessary for successful communication in a professional
target setting. The first ability required in order to successfully communicate in an
occupational setting is the ability to use the particular jargon characteristic of that specific
occupational context. The second is the ability to use a more generalized set of academic
skills, such as conducting research and responding to memoranda. With the public relation
job this was largely related to understanding a new culture. The third is the ability to use the
language of everyday informal talk to communicate effectively, regardless of occupational
context. Examples of this include chatting over coffee with a colleague or responding to an
informal email message.
The task for the ESP developer is to ensure that all three of these abilities are
integrated in the curriculum. In the case of English for Public relation Job there were many
possible potential occupational settings to research.

2. Content Language Acquisition versus General Language Acquisition


In this section, key issues in ESP curriculum design are examined. The issues
explored here are a product of professional experience of developing the curriculum for
English for Public relation Job. This experience has been supported by the literature on ESP
The needs analysis and the management needs of the curriculum made the balance
shift on the content-knowledge lectures to be delivered weekly. The English course syllabus
was broken down into 28 classical content lectures and 14 seminars which were distributed
on two semesters of the first academic year. It was determined that more time need be
allotted for pure content lectures and extra-curriculum time needed to be for team-taught
activities.
The first thing that is apparent from this breakdown, is that time devoted to content-
based lectures far outweighed the time devoted to the acquisition of general and specific
language and academic skills. However, the need for the development of content knowledge,
academic proficiency and general language was interwoven with team activities. The learners
indicated that they desired the opportunity to interact with their instructor in the seminar in
addition to attending the old-style lecture format. The students were highly motivated to
attend the content lectures and yet additional support from the English for Special Purposes
instructor was required in the seminar because, in order to meet the learners' needs, we could
not teach the restricted professional repertoire in isolation.
Most of the students could recognize specific meaning, but not produce it. It was
determined that more time should be allotted for seminar work on communication science
terminology. Moreover, much more time would be also spent on communication for the
workplace; in this way, they students would be afforded ample opportunity to integrate and
practice the restricted repertoire acquired in content lectures.

3. Structure of the students groups


There are a number of variables which characterize a heterogeneous learner group. I
argue that variations in language level, prior education and work experience can be
accommodated only to a certain extent. Minimum entrance standards must be established in
the areas of language level, motivation, and prior education and experience. Most
importantly, these standards must be strictly enforced at the time of placement.
Due to the limited time frame for the development of the public relation science
English syllabus the minimum general language entrance requirement was dropped from high
to low intermediate in order to generate a large enough pool of suitable students to make the
programme effective.

4. Materials Development
Materials development in ESP courses is very crucial and it shows the effort and
creativity of the course designers as well as the teachers. Authentic materials that are used in
the real world are the best materials that should be used in any English for Academic
Purposes (EAP) or English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) courses. This would give the
students a look on the real world that they will be entering once they have graduated. It will
also attract them in learning English as learning English for second language learners has
always been a problem due to lack of vocabulary and lack of confidence to name a few.
Let us look at what materials really mean. Materials can be defined as anything or any
source that can be used to assists the students in the process of language learning. It can be
textbooks, workbooks, Audio video, photocopied hand outs, paper cutting or anything that
informs the language being learned (Tomlinson, 2008). Materials too can also be in the form
of instructional, experiential, elicitative or exploratory (Tomlison, 2001).
Many ESP practitioners are thinking of the best materials that can suit their students
or learners in this growing world today. What might be fun last year would no longer able to
interest the student this year. Technology is developing rapidly hence educators, trainers and
ESP practitioners should catch up and move according to the trend and not against the trend.
Most importantly the rules of developing materials should be put as the main priority in
designing and developing ESP materials.
Materials in ESP are tailored to meet the needs and interest of a specific group of
learners. Taking into account the issue of centrality of the learners needs analysis is said to
be the main features that many authors in the field of materials design agree of (Sysoyer,
2000). In defining learners needs in material design, authors should consider the language
knowledge that the learners require for their proficiency development, the language and
content knowledge that needs to be added or reincorporated to the learners knowledge and
not forgetting the learners desire of language and content. All these elements are important
as it will make or break any ESP courses.
When teaching ESP courses, course designers as well as materials designers should be
able to reach to different target audience. This is because having different target audience can
lead to having a variety of materials because the need to cater to their different needs. For
example materials for English for Tourism and English for Aviation would be totally
different. This does not only happened when it comes to developing materials but same goes
to methods and teaching approaches such as lexical, task based, communicative and problem
solving.
Three main characteristics or factors that need to be considered or look into seriously
when designing ESP materials are, first, criteria of implementing or modifying materials,
subjective criteria on what teachers and students want from that material and lastly objective
criteria, which is what the material really offers (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). This is really
important because then only the author would be able to produce a good set of materials that
will make the learners as well as the teachers teaching the specific course at ease throughout
the whole process of language and knowledge learning.
In the process of designing ESP materials, there are also many suggestions on the
factors that shaped a good set of ESP materials. Among them, are for authors to look at topics
or speciality. Learners situation, general and specific proficiency of the language at entry
and exit levels, students previous educational and cultural experience. Authors should also
look at types of skills to be developed and expected outcomes of the learning goals.

You might also like