Principles of ESP REVIEW OF THE ESP COMPETENCES

Principles of ESP - REVIEW OF THE ESP COMPETENCES - THE FIVE MAIN PRINCIPLES OF ESP

Quiz Read the questions in the following slides then choose the right answers!

What should an ESP teacher be able to do ? 1/ a- Teach special English words and texts b- Teach English for learners having specific language needs) 2/ a- Use ready-made ESP course books b- Design ESP curricula and/or provide ESP teaching materials 3/ a- Assess ESP learners’ levels and progress b- Evaluate current ESP courses and learners

What should an ESP teacher be able to do ? 4/ a- Use ready-made grammar books and text books b-Do researches about ESP registers, discourses, texts and needs 5/ a-Develop wide knowedge of the target discipline/ profession b- Solve the lack of disciplinary/ professional knowedge through close collaboration with content teachers / professionals.

ESP teachers’ competences A true ESP teacher (practitioner) is supposed to be: 1 - A teacher Teach English for learners having specific language needs (co-learner) 2 - A curriculum Design ESP curricula, and designer and Provide (produce/select) ESP materials provider 3 - An evaluater Evaluate current ESP courses and learners 4 - A researcher Do researches about ESP registers, discourses and texts Solve his/her lack of special knowedge of the field (discipline/profession) through close 5 - A collaborator

Principles of ESP Swales (1985): Five main “enduring conceptions” Methodology: Learnercentredness, Coopertaive learning, problemsolving, CLT, TBL, project work Needs: target needs Present needs, deficiency needs strategic needs, learner needs Authenticity: texts (unsimplifie d/ genuine), task, purpose Research base: Lexicogrammatical features of discipline and professions Text/discourse: coherence, cohesion, text patterns, turn taking, topic change

Principles of ESP �Authencity �Authenticity of text (West, 1995): In early 1960’s: texts (written) had to be original, not simplified. In the 1970’s, oral texts were included (dialogues, conversations) �Authenticity of task (Hutchinson and. Waters, 1987) : professional academic tasks and activities �Authenticity purpose (Dudley-Evans and St John, 1998): Learners’ level determine text and task needs

Principles of ESP Research base: For Halliday, (1964), there is a need: for a research base for ESP lexico-grammatical features of registers register analysis Swales J. (1991) defines this principle as “a trend towards papers that rely on some kind of data-base”. This principle has regained importance with corpus analyses of disciplinary and professional texts

Principles of ESP Text/discourse: �Shift of focus from sentence level analysis to discourse/ text level analysis (beyond sentence) Priority is given here to the communicative principles of discourse, According to Allen and Widdowson (1974): coherence, cohesion, Dudley-Evans and St John (1998): text patterns, turn taking, topic change �Genre analysis (swales: 1985): attempts to discover the regular structural features of texts.

Principles of ESP Needs (analysis) �arget needs: linguistic forms used in the target professional/ academic environments �Present needs: learners’ language development at the beginning of a language course �Deficiency needs: takes into accound present needs and target needs. �Learning/learner needs: what learners need to do in order to learn a language �Strategic needs: how the learners wish to learn (styles and strategies) �Means analysis educational environment in which the ESP course is to take place (Swales: 1989).

Principles of ESP Teaching methodology �In, EGP methodological decisions are taken by of general political objectives (how do we want the citizen to be like). �ESP is not restricted to any specific methodology. All decisions are made on the basis of the learners’/learner’s needs �Most modern ELT methods have been developed by ESP practioners. �Learner-centredness, Coopertaive learning, problemsolving, CLT, TBL, project work

Principles of ESP �Instead of conducting interviews with specialists in the field, analyzing the language that is required in the profession, or conducting students' needs analysis, �many ESP teachers have become slaves of the published textbooks, �and are unwilling To do the necessary analysis of difficult specialist texts to verify their contents.