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To Teach Underlying Knowledge

This document discusses several important aspects of teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP). It argues that ESP courses should be based on the specific language needs of the learners rather than the structure of general English. ESP teachers need competence in both the English language and the subject area being taught. They must understand discourse forms and genres in the subject, be able to design materials and assessments, and help students develop strategic competence to use their subject knowledge and language skills together. The role of an ESP teacher is to act as a mediator between the language and subject matter. They should be curious about the subject, confident in teaching it, and collaborate with subject experts. Team teaching allows ESP teachers to gain familiarity with the conceptual aspects of the subject

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Al Fridha Dwi Putri
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458 views

To Teach Underlying Knowledge

This document discusses several important aspects of teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP). It argues that ESP courses should be based on the specific language needs of the learners rather than the structure of general English. ESP teachers need competence in both the English language and the subject area being taught. They must understand discourse forms and genres in the subject, be able to design materials and assessments, and help students develop strategic competence to use their subject knowledge and language skills together. The role of an ESP teacher is to act as a mediator between the language and subject matter. They should be curious about the subject, confident in teaching it, and collaborate with subject experts. Team teaching allows ESP teachers to gain familiarity with the conceptual aspects of the subject

Uploaded by

Al Fridha Dwi Putri
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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TO TEACH UNDERLYING KNOWLEDGE

An important of ESP approaches to language teaching is that the purposes for which
learner needs a language rather than a syllabus reflecting the structure of general English should
be used in planning an English course. Different types of students have different language needs
and what they are taught should be restricted to what they need. (Richards, 2001:32).
The ESP teacher’s competence in the discipline-specific area is a very controversial
issue, teacher needs competence in a particular professional or academic area, familiar with the
language of the subject because learners will certainly possess far more in-depth knowledge of
their specialist field than the teacher. Certain skills should be acquired by the ESP teacher as
“content-knowledgeable instructor” to be effective and successful in his/her profession. They
should possess a. English language knowledge b. thorough command of course design, and c.
expert knowledge of the related field of science (Maleki, 2008: 9). Most ESP teachers lack on the
skills because many of them are the subject teachers who are not specialized in English. The
subject teacher ignores many aspects of language. Some of them can hardly read in English, but
are chosen because they are experts in their field.
ESP teacher needs in addition to the linguistic competence is the ability to evaluate, adapt
and design materials, the ability to gain feedback from the students (i.e. to assess and test) the
ability employ state of the art methods, approaches and techniques and the ability to encourage,
enhance and implement learning strategies. Carreon (1996:4) emphasizes the knowledge of
certain discourse forms, their grammatical features and believe that teachers should be able to
think within the discipline to which their students belong. However, she lists certain skills that
are applicable to any ESP context: (1) The teacher should possess certain knowledge about the
discipline he/she teaches and must know where and/ or from whom a student might obtain the
appropriate help; (2) The teacher should have acquaintance with the discourse characteristics of
the ESP genres (like being able to write and know the purpose of writing a proposal in ESP and
to be able to make reports and memos in English; (3) Teachers must also be able to make needs
analysis, syllabus design, material writing or adaptation and evaluation. They should receive
adequate training in ESP teaching and they would better be graduated with Masters in English
rather than in literature.

TO DEVELOP STRATEGIC COMPETENCE


Discussions of strategic competence have appeared in definitions of language ability in
the language-testing literature. Douglas (2000) argues that strategic competence acts as a
‘mediator’ between the external situational context and the internal language and background
knowledge that is needed to respond to the communicative situation. Strategic competence is the
link between context of situation and language knowledge and can be defined as the means that
enables language knowledge and content knowledge to be used in communication. Teaching
ESP to students who have workplace and professional experience or who have experience in
study in their disciplines may aim to develop the students’ strategic competence. The intent is to
bring to the surface the knowledge of the subject area that the students already have and to create
opportunities for the students to actualize this knowledge in the target language (in this case,
English).
The role of the teacher is to be a mediator between the language and subject knowledge
by providing language needed to express the content. The teacher should have the following
features that seem to be persuasive: (1) Curiosity: here the teacher should possess the basic level
of knowledge of language of the subject, to be interested in this subject and open minded to
know more; (2) Confidence: sometimes, the new ESP teacher finds difficulty in teaching this
course because of lack of confidence in succeeding in teaching this subject; (3) Collaboration: in
this respect, the teacher should consult the subject specialists without being sensitive to get help
from them.
Realizing from the beginning the teacher’ role is going to change and then be willing to
show their interest in the subject matter and collaborate with specialists in the field will help
confidence to grow. The advantages are given for team teaching or collaboration with the
specialist: (1) the students have immediate assistance with any difficulties as they arise; (2)
Subject specialists find out how effectively they communicate to the students. (3) Teacher gains
familiarity with the conceptual matter of the subject and how language is used to represent it. (4)
Teacher understands where linguistic difficulties arise in relation to conceptual matter. ( Johns &
Dudley-Evans, 1985,p. 141).

REFERENCES
Basturkmen, Helen. 2006. Ideas and Options in English for Specific Purposes. London:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers
Carreon, Edwina S. 1996. Preparing ESP Practitioners for the Unfamiliar. A paper Presented at
the Annual Meeting of the Teachers of English to Speakers of other Languages,
TESOL Convention, Chicago.Pages (1-8).
Maleki, Ataollah. 2008. ESP Teaching: A Matter of Controversy. ESP World, 7, 1(17). Pages (1-
21).
Richards, J.C. 2001. Curriculum Development in Language Teaching. Australia: Cambridge
University Press

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