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70Бюллетень науки и практики /Bulletin of Science and Practice Т. 7. №6. 2021
https://www.bulletennauki.com https://doi.org/10.33619/2414-2948/67
UDC 378.147 https://doi.org/10.33619/2414-2948/67/62
TEACHING METHODS OF ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES
©Saidvalieva D., ORCID: 0000-0001-9058-7797, Tashkent University of Information Technologies named after Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi, [email protected]
МЕТОДЫ ОБУЧЕНИЯ АНГЛИЙСКОМУ ЯЗЫКУ ДЛЯ СПЕЦИАЛЬНЫХ ЦЕЛЕЙ
©Саидвалиева Д. Р., ORCID: 0000-0001-9058-7797, Ташкентский университет информационных технологий им. Мухаммада аль-Хоразмий, г. Ташкент, Узбекистан, [email protected]
Abstract. Foreign Language Teachers for Specific Purposes have a lot in common with teachers of general foreign language. For both it is necessary to consider linguistic development and teaching theories, to have insights in contemporary ideas regarding their own position and role as well as the position and role of foreign language learners in education and to face new technologies offered as an aid to improve their methodology. The most important difference lies in the learners and their purposes for learning English. ESP students are usually adults who already have some acquaintance with English and are learning the language in order to communicate a set of professional skills and to perform particular job-related functions. An ESP program is therefore built on an assessment of purposes and needs and the functions for which English is required.
Аннотация. Преподаватели иностранного языка для специальных целей имеют много общего с преподавателями, которые обучают общему иностранному языку. И тем, и другим необходимо учитывать теории лингвистического развития и преподавания, понимать современные идеи относительно их собственного положения и роли, а также положения и роли, тех студентов, которые изучают иностранный язык в вузе, а также сталкиваться с новыми технологиями, предлагаемыми в качестве помощи для улучшения их методологии. Самое важное различие заключается в студентах и их целях в процессе изучения английского языка. Студентами ESP обычно являются те обучаемые, которые уже немного знакомы с английским языком и изучают его, чтобы передать набор профессиональных навыков и выполнять определенные функции, связанные с работой. Таким образом, программа ESP основана на оценке целей, потребностей и функций обучаемых, для которых требуется английский язык.
Keywords: ESP, design course, develop materials, evaluation, communication, professional context.
Ключевые слова: английский для специальных целей, дизайн, разработка материалов, оценка, общение, профессиональный контекст.
The current study investigates problems among teachers and students at private school "Wise School" in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Although English is of particular importance to students, particularly those who are in scientific domains, there are problems for both teachers and students. The former pertains to the critical teaching situations as far as dealing with specialist texts is concerned, but the latter refers to the students' low-level English skills and the dissatisfaction of
Бюллетень науки и практики /Bulletin of Science and Practice Т. 7. №6. 2021
https://www.bulletennauki.com https://doi.org/10.33619/2414-2948/67
subject-matter teachers in relation to the students' poor communication skills. Language teachers find some difficulty in teaching ESP materials due to the lexical complexity of very scientific and technical texts included in the units being taught. Also, the teachers' lack of the texts background knowledge adds a further barrier to the teaching process. Hence, the teachers will be in critical situations with their students, who are always more knowledgeable about the text content due to their previous education. Consequently, the ESP courses don't achieve the target objectives, and this creates dissatisfaction for both students and teachers [1-3].
ESP is a style of teaching, as they all are, that has positive and negative aspects. Coming from a background unrelated to the discipline in which they are asked to teach, ESP teachers are usually unable to rely on personal experiences when evaluating materials and considering course goals. They are also unable to rely on the views of learners who tend not to know what English abilities are required by the profession they hope to enter. The result is that many ESP teachers become slaves to the published textbooks available, even when the textbook they are using aren't perfectly suited for the needs of the student.
There are many resources available on the net and websites that offer information but how much background reading does the ESP teacher need' In order to meet the specific needs of the learners and adopt the methodology and activities of the target discipline, the ESP Practitioner must first work closely with field specialists. An ESP teacher is should remember that they are not specialists in the field, but in teaching English. Every time that person enters the classroom they should understand that our subject is English for the profession, and not the profession in English. They should help the students, who generally know their subject much better, develop the skills which are essential for them in understanding, using, and presenting authentic information in their profession. A professional ESP teacher must be able to easily switch from one professional field to another without being obliged to spend months on getting started [4].
How many types of English for specific purposes do we have and what does each of them study in particular? What are the expectations of ESP learners who attend such courses?
Regarding to the expectations, learners have at least three kinds of expectations:
1. Cultural-educational
2. Personal and individual
3. Academic/occupational
The first two have a close relationship with the learner's own background and his view of himself as a learner, his expectation of success, his optimism or pessimism about the ESP course in terms of what he expects to learn. The last ones relate to the branch of ESP, which represents the type of ESP. These sets of expectations are the ones most commonly expressed in advance, when a needs-analysis is carried out.
The result of the class observations and semi-structured interviews with the ESP teachers at private school "Wise School" in Tashkent, Uzbekistan indicated to some obstacles during teaching English to level two students. These difficulties are due to the scientific context and content of the texts which are almost adjacent to specialist lexical items, nominal compounds, and non-verbal information and scientific formula [5].
Added to this, the teachers' lack of the schemata about the topics included in these scientific texts hinders making use of contextual and textual instances to reduce the barrier of understanding such difficult texts. More importantly, the wide gap between the students' background knowledge and that of the teachers as far as texts topics are concerned due to the nature of the previous education of each, bearing in mind the cultural aspect of Uzbek students. Culturally speaking in Uzbekistan, the teacher is an information source and has to answer any question addressed by
Бюллетень науки и практики / Bulletin of Science and Practice Т. 7. №6. 2021
https://www.bulletennauki.com https://doi.org/10.33619/2414-2948/67
students to attain their satisfaction in the teaching process. This, in fact, maximizes the challenging rate of administrating ESP courses among private school "Wise School" students [6].
The ESP issue essentially concerns three aspects: the ESP teacher, the subject-matter instructor, and the ESP learner who is sometimes expected to be more knowledgeable than the ESP teacher with regard to some chunks of specialist information. This, in fact, may contribute to ESP problems both for the teacher and the learner. However, the skillful ESP teacher should be able to make use of the student's potential content background knowledge and get some scolding hints from the specialist teachers in order to reduce the lexical and content complexity of some texts. Therefore, it is necessary to attain harmonization between these three elements in order to achieve successful learning situations in ESP classes.
In relation to the communication between the teachers and their students in ESP classes, the responses referred to the lack of effective communicative situations due to the teacher-based teaching strategies that cast the full burden on the teacher in the teaching process without any help from the side of students as far as the technical and scientific background knowledge is concerned [7].
With regard to the students' performance in ESP courses over the last four semesters, the teachers referred to a very low performance, and this aligned with the continuous complains of the subject- matter teachers about the students' low level in English language and their inability to use English as a medium of instruction. This verifies the ineffectiveness of the current ESP teaching methods among private school "Wise School" students and may generate a fruitful academic research.
In our view, ESP courses should be undertaken by highly qualified ESP teachers so that they can achieve the target objectives. That is to say, we strongly support the notion of conducting training sessions for the current teachers, particularly those who will be engaged in teaching level two ESP materials. Yes, it is true that they are all academically qualified, as the selection caliber of the teaching staff members at private school "Wise School" in Tashkent, Uzbekistan is strict. However, the English language teachers may lack certain professional technicalities of teaching English in such new pedagogical environment. Furthermore, it is more effective to depend on the textual clues to deal with unfamiliar lexical items better than looking them up in dictionaries and make use of the lexical familiarization which is intentionally provided by the author for a specific reader. More importantly, in an ESP class, the teacher should focus on the expression rather than the content when dealing with technical texts; they should emphasize on the linguistic features of these texts, as it is main concern of ESP settings. That is to say, students are supposed to study the morphological and grammatical structures of some text sentences and use technical lexical items in academic situations verbally and nonverbally. For example, students should be able to recognize the lexical and syntactical parts of some sentences and how to reword them in several structures [8].
The first thing that needs to be said is Foreign Language Teachers for Specific Purposes have a lot in common with teachers of general foreign language. For both it is necessary to consider linguistic development and teaching theories, to have insights in contemporary ideas regarding their own position and role as well as the position and role of foreign language learners in education and to face new technologies offered as an aid to improve their methodology. The most important difference lies in the learners and their purposes for learning English [9].
Obviously, ESP students are usually adults who already have some acquaintance with English and are learning the language in order to communicate a set of professional skills and to perform particular job-related functions. An ESP program is therefore built on an assessment of purposes and needs and the functions for which English is required. ESP concentrates more on language in
Бюллетень науки и практики / Bulletin of Science and Practice Т. 7. №6. 2021
https://www.bulletennauki.com https://doi.org/10.33619/2414-2948/67
context than on teaching grammar and language structures. It covers subjects varying from accounting or computer science to tourism and business management. The ESP focal point is that English is not taught as a subject separated from the students' real world; instead, it is integrated into a subject matter area important to the learners. As a matter of fact, ESP combines subject matter and English language teaching. Such a combination is highly motivating because students are able to apply what they learn in their English classes to their main field of study.
The analysis of the result of this study showed that a professional ESP teacher must be able to switch from one professional field to another without being obliged to spend months on getting started. The material should be provided by the professors or experts in the subject. It should be authentic, up-to-date, and relevant for the students' specializations. The ESP teacher ends up performing five different roles including teacher, collaborator, course designer and materials provider, researcher, and evaluator. The first role as 'teacher' is synonymous with that of the general English teacher. It is in the performing of the other four roles that differences begin to emerge.
References:
1. Hutchinson, T., & Waters, A. (1987). English for specific purposes. Cambridge university
press.
2. Paltridge, B., & Starfield, S. (Eds.). (2014). The handbook of English for specific purposes. John Wiley & Sons.
3. Widodo, H. P., & Pusporini, R. (2010). Materials design: English for specific purposes (ESP). HP Widodo, & L. Savova, The Lincom guide to materials design in ELT, 147-160.
4. Anthony, L. (1997). Defining English for specific purposes and the role of the ESP practitioner. Retrieved November, 18, 2008.
5. Dudley-Evans, T., St John, M. J., & Saint John, M. J. (1998). Developments in English for specific purposes: A multi-disciplinary approach. Cambridge university press.
6. Anthony, L. (2007, October). The teacher as student in ESP course design. In The Proceedings of 2007 International Symposium on ESP & Its Applications in Nursing and Medical English Education (pp. 70-79).
7. Steinhausen, P. (1993). From General English to ESP: Bridging the Gap.
8. Dudley-Evans, T. English for specific purposes. R. Carter & D. Nunan (Eds.). Teaching English to speakers of other languages. 2001: 131-136.
9. Eslami, Z. R. (2010). Teachers' Voice vs. Students' Voice: A Needs Analysis Approach to English for Acadmic Purposes (EAP) in Iran. English Language Teaching, 3(1), 3-11.
Список литературы:
1. Hutchinson T., Waters A. English for specific purposes. Cambridge university press, 1987.
2. Paltridge B., Starfield S. (ed.). The handbook of English for specific purposes. John Wiley & Sons, 2014.
3. Widodo H. P., Pusporini R. Materials design: English for specific purposes (ESP) // HP Widodo, & L. Savova, The Lincom guide to materials design in ELT. 2010. P. 147-160.
4. Anthony L. Defining English for specific purposes and the role of the ESP practitioner // Retrieved November. 1997. V. 18. P. 2008.
5. Dudley-Evans T., St John M. J., Saint John M. J. Developments in English for specific purposes: A multi-disciplinary approach. Cambridge university press, 1998.
Бюллетень науки и практики /Bulletin of Science and Practice Т. 7. №6. 2021
https://www.bulletennauki.com https://doi.org/10.33619/2414-2948/67
6. Anthony L. The teacher as student in ESP course design // The Proceedings of 2007 International Symposium on ESP & Its Applications in Nursing and Medical English Education. 2007. P. 70-79.
7. Steinhausen P. From General English to ESP: Bridging the Gap. 1993.
8. Dudley-Evans T. English for specific purposes. R. Carter & D. Nunan (Eds.). Teaching English to speakers of other languages. 2001. P. 131-136.
9. Eslami Z. R. Teachers' Voice vs. Students' Voice: A Needs Analysis Approach to English for Acadmic Purposes (EAP) in Iran // English Language Teaching. 2010. V. 3. №1. P. 3-11.
Работа поступила Принята к публикации
в редакцию 07.05.2021 г. 12.05.2021 г.
Ссылка для цитирования:
Saidvalieva D. Teaching Methods of English for Specific Purposes // Бюллетень науки и практики. 2021. Т. 7. №6. С. 481-485. https://doi.org/10.33619/2414-2948/67/62
Cite as (APA):
Saidvalieva, D. (2021). Teaching Methods of English for Specific Purposes. Bulletin of Science and Practice, 7(6), 481-485. https://doi.org/10.33619/2414-2948/67/62
