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ALBANIAN STUDENT AMONG CHANGES AND CHALLENGES IN LEARNING ESP COURSES
Vanina Kanini
(Tirana, Albania)
Albania, a small country, situated in Southeastern Europe, has been isolated to the world for almost 50 years, because of the communism governing. After the 90s’, Albanian students began learning foreign languages, and they are really good at it. They love learning languages, and English language is among the most favorites. English language is taught since the third grade of elementary school, till the second year of Bachelor studies in the Universities.
Till some years ago, English Language was taught as a general language, based upon traditional methods, like translation method, grammar, verb-patterns, idioms, etc..With the opening to the world, commerce industry, building industry, agriculture, business etc. so the need of a growing demand for English for Specific Purposes (ESP) instruction in Albania. They began to be applied in different universities around the country, and there was a big interest upon students and teachers to apply it in their English classes. This was due to the fact because they found it worth for their future career. But the ESP courses are still limited to learning specific lexicon and translating texts. With the continued expansion and participation in the international arena, much attention should be drawn to the design of ESP courses which can help to prepare learners for future professional communication. In response to these needs, there should be done an attempt to provide a guided approach to ESP course designforAlbanian engineeringstudents at tertiary level.
Keywords: ESP courses, designing ESP courses, learning skills.
Introduction
With the globalization of trade and economy and the continuing increase of international communication in various fields, the demand for English for Specific Purposes is expanding, especially in countries where English is taught as a Foreign Language. Even though ESP courses have become popular recently in Albania and many institutions and universi-
ties offer ESP courses for senior students, for years the instruction has been limited to specialized lexicon and sentence structures, an approach which fundamentally ignores the learners’ personal interests. This often leads to low motivation in their English studies and, in turn, poor performance later when they use English in their future profession.
Their views about school, studies, life, leisure activities etc. have changed significantly. Desire is the most diverse occupy an increasingly important role in the lives of youth interest to support education, and in many cases they manage to avoid it. Besides school, young people use other sources more numerous for getting information and gaining knowledge.
Ways young people act, observe and analyze the world around them changed and is constantly enriched. Unemployment casts a dark shadow in the imaginations of young people for a future of safe and independent.
On the other hand, the tendency of young people to leave Albania to increase the ratio of population aging on her new, especially in rural areas, where the burden of agricultural work decreased at the expense of women, especially minors. Avoiding such a phenomenon requires our educational system the ability to make a thorough review, based on a deep knowledge of reality and future-oriented possible, even desired by most Albanians.
Contemporary curriculum in the field of learning emphasizes the active role of students in building their knowledge structure. Attitudes and perceptions of their students go to the points where the focus of their attention. To some extent, this depends on the information they receive and make that interpretation. The management of the learning process depends very much on their experiences.
The process of learning to serve structuring and completion of previous knowledge of students and their operating models of behavior, they themselves should be evaluated as active participants in the process of acquiring, processing and evaluation of knowledge. Just so further work and through knowledge and skills will be organized and will focus on structures that enable their use. It also requires changing role of teachers who appear more and more as managers and drafters learning situations.
The school is keen to transmit only a very small amount of information from rapidly growing. For this reason, schools and education, in general, should make very careful choices to ensure the required effectiveness of teaching and learning.
School is very important to determine:
• on what basis will select the contents of what should be taught,
• will be selected as it is important that the large amount of information, but
• how it will be accomplished structuring of knowledge, skills and values for a single purpose.
Information outdated and irrelevant content contained in various school disciplines, should be avoided by replacing the scale - the scale and so very careful of new information.
Schools should guide students toward increasingly critical attitude toward gaining knowledge and skills acquired to solve practical problems and situations. Increasing the efficiency of learning requires connection between different subjects.
In response to these problems, it is important to help students adapt to today’s competitive society, meaning that university English faculties need to design ESP courses that can best prepare learners for future professional communication. Designing a new ESP course involves issues such as what to teach, how to teach or where to start. Based on an integrated approach, this paper stresses the fact that teachers should work harder on creating a sample ESP course framework and critically analyze the core elements of ESP course design: needs analysis; course goals and objectives; course details; materials design; and finally, assessment and evaluation, in order to have a good result in their ESP classes.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The growth of the ESP movement is a result of the fast development of the world economy and has been greatly influenced by ELT methodology and the development of Applied Linguistics. The first dominating approach to ESP course design focused on the grammatical and lexical items of a particular field of English. With the popularity of Communicative Language Teaching, language use became the key emphasis in the ESP world, known as the functional-notional approach. In the early 80s, it was found that there was a certain need underlying a particular language use and in addition, the process of learning and learning skills needed to be taken into account (Dudley-Evans & St John, 1998).
Analyzing the specific needs of a particular learner group serves as the prelude to an ESP course design, because it determines the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of an ESP course. Chen (2006) also reached the conclusion that ESP course designers should explore and identify the learners’ potential needs in the first place. The current concept of needs analysis in ESP, according to Dudley-Evans and St John (1998, p.125), includes consideration of the following aspects:
A. Professional information about the learners: the tasks and activities learners are/will be using English for- target situation analysis and objective needs.
B. Personal information about the learners: factors which may affect the way they learn such as previous learning experiences, cultural information, reasons for attending the course and expectations of it, attitude to English- wants, means, subjective needs.
C. English language information about the learners: what their current skills and language use are- present situation analysis- which allows us to assess (D).
D. The learners’ lacks: the gap between (C) and (A)- lacks.
E. Language learning information: effective ways of learning the skills and language in (D)- learning needs.
F. Professional communication information about (A): knowledge of how language and skills are used in the target situation- linguistic analysis, discourse analysis, genre analysis.
G. What is wanted from the course.
H. Information about the environment in which the course will be run - means analysis.
In the ESP curriculum design for Greek EFL students of computing, Xenodohidis (2002) states that, in addition to needs assessment, the course development process should also include determination of goals and objectives. In order to avoid de-motivation, the goals should be realistic and the objectives should be appropriate to the goals (Nunan, 1988, as cited in Xenodohidis 2002).
When designing an ESP course, another issue to take into consideration is that grammatical functions, acquisition skills, terminology, specific functions of discipline content are crucial parts of the ESP course. In the meantime, general English language content should also be integrated into the course since content-related language cannot function without general English language content (Chen, 2006).
Based on the professional experience developing the curriculum for Language Preparation for Employment in the Health Science, Gatehouse (2001) pointed out that when developing an ESP curriculum, three abilities need to be integrated into it for the purpose of successful communication in occupational settings. The three abilities encompass the ability to use particularjargon in specific context; to use generalized set of academic skills; and finally the ability to use everyday informal language to communicate effectively. Therefore, ESP course designers should take
into account how to integrate the three abilities into the components of an ESP course.
Assessment and evaluation are also two important issues that should be included in the course design process. Assessment is a process of measuring what learners know and what they can do, whereas evaluation reveals how well the ESP course works with emphasis not only on successful factors but also on modifying less successful aspects (Dudley-Evans & St John, 1998).
Background to the Engineering English course
Albanian is the national language in Albania and English is taught as a foreign language. All subjects are taught in Albanian at the majority of colleges and universities, while English is included in the school curriculum as a compulsory subject. With the adoption of English as the international language for communication and its wide use all over the world, more and more colleges and universities place an emphasis on running different kinds of English courses for their students to enable them to become competitive and competent enough in their future career. At the Polytechnic University in Tirana, Albanian students have English classes in the first semester of the first year and in the first semester of the second year, which is 7 credits, and this is according to Bologna System which has been applied in our faculties since 2006.
In what bases are the text books and materials selected?
When designing an ESP course, the primary issue is the analysis of learners’ specific needs. Other issues addressed include: determination of realistic goals and objectives; integration of grammatical functions and acquisition skills; and assessment and evaluation. Although ESP contexts view these issues from their own perspectives, the proposed framework for ESP course development is argued as being of benefit to teachers who may encounter problems in ESP course design.
Students work with the text book “Technology”, an Oxford University Press book and we also provide them extra materials according to their branch, (electronics, informatics, telecommunication), which are taken from different web sites on the internet. The materials are chosen according to the students’ needs. The purpose is to raise their English proficiency in engineering settings as well as to prepare them for successful communication in their future profession. The use of these ways of getting information in their professional language, is a little bit difficult, because, as English is taught since the first semester of the first year, students are faced with these terms for the first time, even before knowing
their meaning in Albanian language, because the subjects taught in the first year of Bachelor studies are general, (such as mathematics, physics, chemistry), and not those of the profession (such as electronics, CAD, or informatics, etc.)
Another problem is the fact that there is a lack of laboratory of English studies, which makes it more difficult for students to get the information and so they find the information concerning their profession on different web sites on the net. After having found it, they work with the vocabulary, finding out the new words and terms and analyzing the text.
After having studied for two years in Engineering terms and general English, students have a well understanding of Engineering language but their English level is not so much sufficient, as there is such a short period of time. We are attempting to negotiate with the other departments in the university in order to have English classes during the three years of bachelor studies and that way students will have sufficient understanding of their engineering skills in English language which will help them in their future career.
CONCLUSIONS
As a conclusion I can say that the foreign language teaching for specific purposes has become a necessity of time and requires a particular focus of attention, it is necessary, at the outset, to define the place to voice this way of studying a foreign language in relation to general language then, going into its language content. The goal is to meet the most comprehensive needs of students or specialized public through practical and economic means. This selection also varies depending on the part of reality that is taken as the object of study, because each area of life has its own vocabulary and way of conceiving of reality. The use of a language is, to some extent, a reflection of a reality.
Material selection and processing of language for specific purposes requires the construction of a special pedagogy of teaching English depending on the interests of the public and to follow these courses.
In contemporary pedagogy, learning a foreign language is not an end in itself, but a means to achieve a particular purpose. As in every field of life, even here works the operating principle of functionality.
I am pretty sure that, we, as teachers and researchers, will do our best towards teaching and especially ESP courses, in order to have successful students that will succeed in their future career.
References
1. Dudley Evans, T. & St John, M. .J. (1998). Developments in English for Specific Purposes: A multi-disciplinary approach. Cambridge: Cambridge Universitty Press.
2. Xenodohidis, T. H. (2002). An ESP Curriculum for Greek EFL Students of Computing: A New Approach. ESP World, Issue 2, Vol. 1. Retrieved November 29th, 2006 from http:// www. esp-world.info/index. html
