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Themes and issues
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Mon, 03/09/2009 - 23:11
What do you feel are the most interesting themes and issues within ESP that you think the IATEFL conference should be exploring and addressing?
Wed, 03/11/2009 - 17:45
#2
Dear Albert
It's nice to see you and hear from you. This is just to say that I do not think that ESP training is essential for EFL teachers to become ESP practitioners. Experience shows that EFL teachers come to ESP in different ways. Personally I have an experience of working as a translator, engineer and patent officer, and only then I became an ESP teacher, though I have a dilpoma in EFL Teaching, Translation and Linguistics. Without any doubt, if you know from practice WHERE and WHAT FOR engineers will use English, it is much more easier to teach/train others even if you are lack of theoretical knowledge. Experiential knowledge is here of great help too.
To answer your question it is necessary to clarify whether there are any differences in the qualities of ESP and EFL teachers. If yes, what qualities make an ESP teacher successful. And if teachers are lacking them it will be good to take an ESP Teacher Training Course.
What do you and others think on this?
Sat, 01/23/2010 - 12:02
#3
Hi Zira,
I am very thankfull to you.I have sent u a message and u didn't answer. Can we discuss some points concerning ESP because I am a post graduate student learning ESP?
Thank you.
Fri, 03/13/2009 - 10:24
#4
dear albert,
i feel previleged to welcome to you on board as a junior moderator for esp.your teaching experiences are awesome.could you please share your ideas regarding my topic
regards
dr.mangay
Fri, 03/13/2009 - 14:21
#5
Dear Albert
It's just a piece of advice for you and your teachers. Why not to use this site for ESP teacher training? You can put the typical questions of your teachers as topics for discussion. Hope it will be helpful not only for them, but for many other ESP practitioners.
Best wishes
Mon, 03/16/2009 - 10:04
#6
Hi Zira,
I'm going to put your idea into practice next week when I will be running a short course for ELT teachers who want to teach EAP. This seems to me to be an ideal way to show them an important aspect of ESP/EAP and get them interacting online in a real conference - how motivating is that!
Olwyn
Mon, 03/16/2009 - 21:43
#7
Dear Olwyn
It's a good idea! Who and how can join it? I think many teachers will be grateful for you for this opportunity. I wish you good luck.
All the best
Tue, 03/10/2009 - 17:14
#8
Dear Nik, Below are some typical issues discussed by ESP teachers while trainings:
- What distinguishes ESP from General English? What are the main differences between them, if any? (Some teachers are still sure that ESP (university) course should start with GE after which ESP follows.)
- Is there any specific methodology while teaching ESP? Which one(s) is the most appropriate?
- The role of teacher and student(s) at ESP course. How to find a balance?
- How deep and wide may EFL teacher go into the students’ specialism? (I mean content of the specific texts).
- What specific skills should be trained through a ESP course? Are they dependent on future students’ specialism?
- The place of study skills at ESP course. Should be they taught /trained through the course? If yes, why? What for?
- The place of language knowledge, Grammar and pronunciation, in particular.
I hope ESP teachers from other countries face the same questions and problems. It would be interesting to know what they think on them. Iryna Z.
Wed, 03/11/2009 - 09:43
#9
I'm visiting the ESP forum from the EAP forum. It's interesting to see that many of the comments here refer to English for Academic Purposes, i.e. how to work with students studying subjects at university (rather than using English in their workplace) so it seems the terminology is different in different countries.
Zira has asked some interesting questions which bring out many of the issues that I've been thinking about too. I think the main difference between General English and Academic English is that General English focuses on verb grammar and teaches conversation skills while Academic English focuses on noun grammar and teaches reading to write skills. This means that pronunciation is probably much less important for Academic English but students do need to know how to form complex noun phrases, e.g. 'the extent to which computer applications have changed business practices'.
It is of course impossible for a teacher to go deeply into all the subject specialisms that the students will study but I think it is also important to remember that students should not expect to know all the subject-specific vocabulary before they start their course - that is why they are doing the course, to learn these new terms and the lecturers will explain the. What the lecturers will not explain, because they assume the students already know it, is the general academic vocabulary which is transferrable across all subjects: language for defining, comparing, linking causes to effects and evidence to conclusions and talking about problems and their solutions with appropriate hedging. I believe this is the language that teachers can understand and teach.
Wed, 03/11/2009 - 18:44
#10
Dear Olwyn
Nice to meet you. For me, EAP can be seen as ESP or one of its constituents as it is for Academic Purposes which are Specific Purposes for students.
I support your idea that general academic vocabulary is essential for any of specialisms/subjects and fully agree with you that it is impossible to develop full range of specialist vocabulary within the students at least for one reason: innovations constantly appear in various areas of human life and new terms appear as the result. I doubting whether it is possible to predict and teach all of them. What EFL/ESP/EAP teachers CAN DO is to develop lexical minimum in the area of students' study and information location skills, using reference sources and dictionaries, in particular.
Sorry to say, but I need some clarification on (study) skills developed through the course. What SKILLS should be developed within ESP/EAP students? What do you and other participants think on this?
Best wishes
Fri, 03/13/2009 - 12:13
#11
Hi Zira,
I think we need to give students the skills to analyse texts in order to understand their purpose and organisation and the stance of the author who wrote them. This helps students to extract relevant information from the texts to use for their own purposes. We need to show them how language is used in these texts to present ideas and show relationships between them.
It is likely that we will be the last teacher of English that our students ever have - certainly they will be too busy on their degree programmes to have much time for English. So they need skills to be able to continue learning the language by themselves as they go through their courses. If we have shown them how to notice the organisation and language of texts, they should be able to manage on their own.
They need critical thinking skills, not just to be able to follow arguments but to be able to relate ideas to their own experience, to be able to give examples of their own to illustrate ideas, to be able to select and categorise relevant ideas and to show their stance towards them. Of course teaching students to think critically is dangerous :-) They might start asking us 'Why' questions: why are we doing this? why are we doing it this way? I certainly find this challenging but I think it's right that students feel able to do it.
What do others think?
Fri, 03/13/2009 - 13:59
#12
Hi Olwyn
I fully agree with you. Great thanks for your detailed reply! It may sound funny for you, but it's usually me who challenge students with questions: Why and What for? first. I think it is necessary to make them think. Though the result is not immediate, later they enjoy doing it by themselves and even can predict why we are doing this or that activity/task. Sorry, but one more question to you and others:
Do you teach or train each of the skills separately or in integrated way?
Fri, 03/13/2009 - 10:53
#13
hi olwyn,
can you introduce yourself in this forum.pleased to hear from you.
dr.mangay
Fri, 03/13/2009 - 12:00
#14
Hi Mangay.
I'm a moderator on the EAP forum - next door to this one. I've been involved in university level EAP teaching for about 16 years now but recently I've been teaching research skills to MSc level students in the social sciences. This has been quite a challenge for me and I've had to do a lot of reading about the philosophy of research and research design. However, I've really enjoyed the classes and I believe I've been able to use my understanding of how to teach EAP to bring a more process oriented appraoch to teaching research skills.
I'm not a subject specialist so I've really had to rely on the students to provide content knowledge while I provide knowledge of the process and the final product (their dissertation). This seems to me to be a good sharing of responsibility for MSc level students.
Mon, 03/16/2009 - 05:29
#15
hi olwyn,
lucky to have you as a neighbour.you are very humble too.
regards
dr.mangay
Tue, 03/10/2009 - 22:44
#16
Hi Nik,
In my country there is a significant difference between teaching GE and ESP. If you start a career with the latter you will benefit from no mentoring, no induction period, in other words you will be self reliant, will have to invest a large amount of time dealing with special vocabulary in case of advanced students if the special field is remote from your BA and general education, i.e. medicine, law, will be called happy if you have received in service training once during your career or have taken part in mobility.
The ESP teaching methods should also be different from GE as you basically deal with adult people who prefer to be trained rather than taught. Moreover, you should master e-learning and other platforms for delivering asynchronously to meet the massification, need for autonomy, outside commitments and career switchers in higher education. After 20 years of experience in teaching BE and medical English, I still need to rely sometimes on explanations of content teachers especially when dealing with MA students who are specialists in their field. The idea that you, the teacher, are the language specialist and your students are the field specialists does not hold when you have to help them understand the nature of their mistakes or why they have picked up the wrong alternative in a multiple choice vocabulary exercise, for example. It's not the issue of trying to maintain control but of losing face and self-respect.
Therefore I think that some issues of interest for ESP would be: needs coping ESP teacher training, bridging the GE/ESP gap, ESP and adult education, pre-service ESP training.
For all its hardhsips it is a nice career, however! Greetings from Romania to all ESP teachers in Cardiff and all over the world. Anisoara
Wed, 03/11/2009 - 10:05
#17
Hi Anisoara,
Your reply really chimes with me. I remember well (and still experience) the feelings that I had to try to work out what to do in my university context with little or no support. Over the years the best support I have had has come from conversations with content lecturers who were themselves interested in improving their students' communication ability. Of course lecturers sometimes have strange ideas about what constitutes good writing. I had one who insisted that English has a subjunctive - maybe so but is that piece of grammar knowledge going to help my students to write lab reports?
The main problem I've experienced is lack of time to cover all the language that the students require. I've tried to deal with this by focusing only on the most essential langauge but of course it's difficult to work out what this is. I've also tried to make them more independent from a teacher so that they are able to go on learning langauge and evaluating their performance as they travel through their academic journey.
Fri, 03/13/2009 - 10:57
#18
thanks for your greetings and explanation.a new discussion has started. please share your views on it.
regards
dr.mangay
Wed, 03/11/2009 - 00:03
#19
Hi everyone,
My name's Alaa Eddeen .I'm from Egypt and I'm a student at Al-Azhar English Training Centre (AAETC)in Cairo.I'm doing an English course right now and I'm enjoying learning this beautiful language very much specially we have an excellent teachers (English & Egyptians ).
I'm also a student at Al-Azhar university Shareaa and low faculty.I'm in the third year and my college is five years.We'll finish the course next year(if Allah will)and I'd like to continue learning English anywhere because I love this language and don't want to leave it .
About our Centre, it's a grant from the British council and Al-Azhar university chose the first twenty students from the first year from Sharia&low,Usol Eddeen,Arabic language and Daawa faculties.
Well,that's all right now and I'm waiting if anyone have aquestion..
Keep in touch,
Shamshoon
Fri, 03/13/2009 - 11:03
#20
hi shamshoon,
welcome on board.a new discussion is going on anticipating you to join in .as a student you can give us many ideas on the topic
best wishes
dr.mangay
Thu, 03/12/2009 - 09:13
#21
dear nic, iatefl should explore on themes such as
1.the need for oral communiction from ( junior to collegiate level)and the teachers role in enhancing the spoken language.
2.role of english teachers in training students for campus recruitments
regards
dr.mangay
Fri, 03/13/2009 - 14:17
#22
Hi, I am a new member.
Fri, 03/13/2009 - 14:34
#23
Welcome and join the discussions!
Fri, 03/13/2009 - 14:42
#24
Hope, everyone will be satisfied here , and our students will be a bit luckier and happier after this great professional event! Nick, dear, you're doing a lot for the participants , thank you so much.
Sun, 03/22/2009 - 18:48
#25
welcome olga,
great to see you here.you are kindly expected to share your views on the new topics started in this forum
regards
dr.mangay
Sat, 03/14/2009 - 20:53
#26
I agree with Zira that a ESP teacher should have some background in the SP part to really be effective. Most ESP courses I have seen are just general English courses with some jargon thrown in. They dont seem to go into how the English language is most likely to be used by the students after they graduate. For example, the way engineers, medical practitioners and those in tourism will use English will be very different because the situations they will use English in will be different.
I would imagine that the engineers' use will be a bit more "academic", reading and perhaps contributing to specialized journals to keep up with their fields. Medical practitioners will do this as well, but I imagine that a number of them will have to deal with English speakers. So they might need to know how a medical practitioner should talk to gain and English-speaker's confidence. For those in tourism (a big reason to learn English in Mexico), conversational and intercultural competence are crucial. All should also have some level of Business English as well.
I would certainly rather have a teacher who knows the field teaching me the equivalent (like Spanish for Medical Personnel) if I were studying Spanish and medicine. Although I have a masters in TESOL and am a native speaker, I do not feel qualified to teach any of the examples I note above.
Fri, 03/20/2009 - 12:40
#27
Hi all,
I'm a lecturer on the Foundation Program at the
petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi. took a Diploma in ESP, rather
than the DELTA course and do feel that the background training has
helped make me better at being able to generate materials at lower
levels towards ESP than I would have been without the input from the
course.
Regards,
Phil Cozens
Fri, 03/20/2009 - 16:40
#28
dear cozens,
welcome to have you on board.tell me more about your foundation programme
regards
dr.mangay
moderator of ESP
Sat, 03/21/2009 - 12:26
#29
Currently, we have what is, primarily, a two semester course which includes, English, pre-calculus, chemistry, physics, an introduction to geology and basic computing skills. Weaker language students can, at the moment, take up to four semesters to complete the courses which are all taught in English. With the weaker students, we spend quite a long time focussing on the study skills they need to acquire in order to succeed as these are usually non-existent when they arrive. We also include an 'experiment' activity - which is completed in Arabic - as they have had lottle, or no, hands-on experience during their secondary schooling. We are not really a full ESP provider, but combine a combination of EAP and ESP language. All our degree courses, however, are aimed at engineering for the oil and gas industries, so we try to include large aspects of these topics within the materials.
Phil
Sun, 03/22/2009 - 18:54
#30
dear phil,
you are doing great! kindly share your ideas on the new topics opened here in this forum.as an ESP teacher you can provide us more details
regards
dr.mangay
Dear Nik,
Do teachers of English need to undergo training in ESP in order to be successful teachers of ESP courses?
I have taught the course English for Engineering and Technology for more than a decade. Often my colleagues ask me whether ESP training is essential for those who teach Technial English or any other ESP courses.
I'm interested in getting the views of ESP practitioners.
Best wishes,
Albert P'Rayan
Moderator, Teacher Training and Education Forum