Identifying ESP Course Goals and their Enabling Objectives.doc

2015

English Studies at NBU

The paper presents the results of a needs analysis conducted to optimise the academic ESP courses at a Bulgarian university. There are few studies on the issue in Bulgaria unlike the global situation with universities and employers studying the ESP needs of their students and workforce regularly. Hence by carrying out a survey of the students at this particular university along with students from another six local universities and fifteen universities from eleven countries worldwide, all with the same profile, the research team expected to gather reliable information about the course parameters that require improvement. The student sample includes 939 local and 167 foreign students. In addition, a survey of 32 local faculty teaching language and/or subject matter was conducted to triangulate data and strengthen the research contribution to the enhanced course effectiveness based on the greater motivation for ESP acquisition by formulating recommendations for syllabi development.

Literate: A Journal on Literature, Language, and Culture Studies, 2006

The intent of this paper is to call ESP program initiator and instructors for a special attention to The needs of the program participants as the key to success of the program. This paper is based on a research that portrayed the implementation of a four-semester English• training program for nun-English Department students in Universitas Muhammadiyah Purwokerto and confronted the result with the needs of the program participants. The research used the Goal-Free Evaluation model, where, as its label suggests, the focus is what is going on in a program, ignoring the program goal pre-stated by the program initiator. The research has concluded that the English instruction program has exactly matched the participants' needs, which implied failure in the context of ESP. Keywords: ESP, a [our-semester English training program, implementation; non-English Department students, program participants. Goal-Free Evaluation.

2016

Needs analysis is a device to collect the information that will become the basis for designing an effective and efficient language course. Needs analysis may include target situation analysis, present situation analysis, deficiency analysis, strategy analysis, and means analysis. However, needs analysis should not focus only on learners, but should also consider “the views and roles of other stakeholders”, such as the institution, departments, and instructors (Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998; Frendo, 2005). This paper describes the process of designing an ESP syllabus for undergraduate education students on the basis of the needs analysis conducted through (a) a questionnaire given to the students, (b) interviews with the instructors and the faculty’s management, (c) observations in the classroom, and (d) review of the documents. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively, and resulted in the “target needs and learning needs” (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). Target needs...

Advances in Asian Social Science, 2012

Needs analysis is a useful tool to understand students' needs and to help the implementation of educational policies (Munby 1978, R. Richterich & JL. Chancerel 1980, Van Els et. al. 1984). Hence, this research is intending to probe the following research questions: 1) What are the learning styles of students who covered ENGL 191 and ENGL 192 at Faculty of Communication? 2) What are the needs of those students according to the learning styles? 3) How can learning efficiency be improved through designing a ...

2012

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has grown in leaps and bounds in the last decade. Course design is one of the key stages in ESP. Hutchinson and Waters see ESP as an approach rather than a product, by which they mean that ESP does not involve a particular kind of language, teaching material and methodology. Language varieties are self-contained entities which extend from a common core of language. This paper has highlighted some of the issues involved in ESP curriculum development. The main focus is on the topic of language varieties and on the type of investigation ESP curriculum developers use to identify the gap between what learners already know and what they need to know in order to study or work in their specific target environments. Apart from this it examines the topic of wide- versus narrow-angled course designs.

European Journal of Language and Literature, 2017

English has the status of a global language and nowadays, it is "a must tool". In order to be successful in any field of study you need to know the language that is spoken or known worldwide. Therefore, English should be included in any fields of study or disciplines. English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Courses have been offered at the public universities in Kosovo as an elective or compulsory course at many departments, at least for two semesters. Teaching English courses in higher education should be designed based on students' needs by analyzing their level of English and study disciplines, concretely, English for specific purposes courses. Even though, ESP looks as an "easy peasy" issue, in this study has been involved the challenges that ESP teachers and students come across during the complexity of teaching and learning process. In general, this paper also presents an overview of the current situation of ESP courses profile at three public universities in Kosovo. The study has been carried out using three different evaluative research instruments, concretely, has been included a quantitative questionnaire with students and ESP teachers, a qualitative questionnaire (interview) with ten ESP teachers, currently teaching English specific courses at the three universities and also a class observation at three main public universities in Kosovo (Prishtina, Peja and Prizren). Based on the findings, the course content affects directly beliefs, motivation and interests of the students. Hence, ESP courses should be designed based on students' specific language and professional needs in each discipline, while studying at Higher Educational Institutions.

egitim.cukurova.edu.tr

This paper reports on the pre-implementation stage of an ELP study for the ESP learners and the ways to develop the self- assessment checklists for that implementation. Conducting a target situation analysis, identifying the actions that might take place in their works, finding out the related needs in these actions, and selecting the available descriptors from the 'Bank of Descriptors

The study aims to examine certain issues for designing an ESP syllabus as well as to investigate the perceptions of the students and their teachers that concerning the present course and how challenges, which face both students and teachers, are to be solved based on suggestions and recommendations accordingly. It is an exploratory study, that is, to discover the aspects of evaluating a program by involving both teachers and students to express their issues and views. The researcher followed quantitative and qualitative approaches to obtain his results in the form of validity and reliability of data. Therefore, he used three methods to collect the data, that is, questionnaire, interview, and classroom observation. The subjects of this study were of two types: the teachers who are either having experience in teaching ESP courses or teaching the current course (Commercial English) and the students who study diploma. The total number utilized in the study was fourteen teachers, twenty diploma students, and sixteen certificate students for the questionnaire. The interview, on the other hand, adopted four teachers, seven diploma students, and seven certificate students. The data obtained were analyzed using tables. The data collected by the questionnaire was analyzed through statistics (numbers) while the data collected by interview and classroom observation was analyzed in the form of descriptive interpretations. The findings of this study assured that the students face some problems at the polytechnic under the study such as the lack of some of the basic skills especially speaking skills. The study Hussein Hassan Ibrahim-Concepts and Measurements for Designing an ESP Course

RELC Journal, 2003

English for specific purposes (ESP) courses are often discussed in terms of a two-way distinction between 'wide-angled' and 'narrow-angled' designs. The term 'wide angled' is used to refer to courses for learners targeting a broad work place, professional or academic field. The term 'narrow angled' is used to refer to courses for learners targeting one particular work place, professional or academic environment. Often wide-angled course designs are based on the premise that there is a set of 'generic' skills and linguistic features that are transferable across different disciplines and professional groups. Proponents of narrow-angled designs argue against this premise (Hyland 2002). This paper illustrates a number of narrow- and wide-angled course designs in ESP and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the options.