TEACHING ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES IN MIXED ABILITY GROUP

Universal Journal of Educational Research, 2020

The study aims to investigate the possibility of using the Belbin Self-Perception Inventory (SPI) for the actualization of the social aspect of the language learning style in the differentiated English for specific purposes (ESP) learning of information technology (IT) students so as to determine the students' and teachers' attitudes to the use of Belbin's roles in the differentiated ESP instruction. To achieve the outlined aim, a mixed research design was employed which involved 180 university IT students and 10 teachers. For data collection we used the Belbin's SPI, students' self-assessment survey and ESP teachers' survey. The results showed that the students' team and functional roles were evident in each group, irrespective of the number of students in it. Communicative roles were found to be an integral part of functional, team, and social roles. Various interaction patterns were defined for students' functional roles. The findings suggested that in the context of social relations and the roles, the subject of a conversation, communicative behavior, professional knowledge, experience, and language potential of the interlocutors are different and reflect the specifics of the situation. To improve the students' communicative skills, three stages of role learning were suggested. The optimal group size for the differentiated ESP instruction was defined. The Belbin's roles were found suitable for groups of students with different English language proficiency levels. This study showed that the use of Belbin's approach to actualization of the social aspect of the language learning style in the differentiated ESP instruction can be effectively used in teaching IT students at university.

International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, 2020

This study reports on students' interest in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and challenges impeding their effective learning. The study is anchored on Richards' Communicative Language teaching theory (CLT) framed on principles of language teaching and learning. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used. A four Likert Scale questionnaire was used to gather information from fortyfive respondents determined basing on Morgan and Krejcie's approach. Analysis revealed that despite that majority of students are interested in English for Specific purposes, factors such as fear of practice, few or lack of appropriate facilities, class size affect teaching and learning. It was recommended that the three parts concerned with the teaching and learning play their parts to grapple with these challenges.

Academic Notes Series Pedagogical Science

There are many strategies that can be put into practice to meet the needs of all students, but unfortunately, no "magic method" will guarantee every student's academic success. Today, most schools have students of different levels and abilities, which is a challenge for teachers. The teacher's goal is to reach all students by observing them in a variety of ways to achieve effective learning. Almost most students think of English as a subject they have to learn in school and do not realize that English is a language of communication that is used all over the world. A systematic approach is needed to solve these problems. Education should be aimed not at knowledge, but at skills. The article is devoted to the organization of the foreign language learning process in groups of students with different levels of foreign language proficiency. The reasons for the appearance of such groups, as well as the problems that may arise when studying in such an educational environm...

My aim in the study is to investigate the performance of the mixed ability class and the difficulties encountered by the teachers and the students while teaching and learning spoken English in such a class. Through interviews, the input of the experienced teachers is investigated. The students are also approached through a questionnaire to find out their responses. The researcher interviewed eight teachers involved in teaching spoken English classes at various institutions in Multan.

LSP International Journal, 2021

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has Noor Mala Ibrahim gained prominence and abundant research has been conducted on issues associated with it. However, research addressing the challenges of ESP teaching and learning continues to receive extensive attention focusing on issues ranging from the most appropriate methodology to use in ESP classrooms and contents to cover for effective learning outcomes for the learners. The aim of this review paper is to give a brief overview of what ESP is all about, it also covers some issues faced by ESP practitioners while in the process of teaching. During the course of this review, the key words “ESP Challenges”, “ESP teaching methodology”, “ESP teacher” were used on Google scholar to search for relevant materials to the topic covering the range of years from 2012 - 2021. Twenty relevant materials were finally selected which are used for this review. This review finally concludes by offering solutions as to how these challenges can be overcom...

Abstract: 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 jobrelated functions. An ESP program is therefore built on an assessment of purposes, needs and the functions for which English is required. The objective of this study is to examine the English language needs of ESP learners in ESP Course. In order to identify the problem of these learners a language based activity was conducted among 60 students of Engineering background. A task with relevant techniques was designed for the students to perform resulted in successful communication.

Nauka v sovremennom mire, 2019

This article is aimed to reveal the strategies such as individualization, differentiation and material adaptation to teach mixed ability classes. Furthermore, the article depicts the results of the experiment followed by questionnaire and observation carried with the learners of vocational English in Tashkent university of informational technologies named after Muhammad al-Khwarizmi. The product of the research became the basis for implication of the mentioned above strategies in the syllabus of the course.

2021

Raising young professionals is one of the main goals of ESP teachers across the globe, but in today’s rapidly changing world it is complicated by the need to adapt learners to a demanding international working environment that puts heavy pressure on human resources. English communication skills are now sought by employers, so, English teachers worldwide need to help future graduates meet such high expectations. However, the practice has shown that options for improvement within national educational systems are limited. In artificially bilingual classrooms progress requires cooperation and networking of practitioners from different countries. This article presents the results of the first stage of an experimental collaborative educational project, which involved teachers and students from two state universities in Russia and Kazakhstan. It describes the beginning of implementing a relatively new pedagogical model for ESP teaching through designing a virtual crossborder learning envir...

Сучасні дослідження з іноземної філології, 2021

The main goal of the Professional English course for medical students is to teach intending doctors to use the language skillfully and fluently in communication with patients, colleagues, while participating in international conferences, seminars and webinars. This goal involves the formation of foreign language communicative competence of the student. To form students' appropriate speech competencies in listening, speaking, reading, writing, translation and phonetic, lexical and grammatical competencies in professional English, the teacher must carefully select the material and types of tasks taking into account the level of preparation of students, their age and intellectual abilities. When preparing assignments, the teacher must take into account the capabilities of each group of students (advanced, intermediate, elementary), and prepare appropriate multi-level tasks to involve everyone into the work. To organize the work of students in the classroom, such forms of student learning activities are used as individual work, pair work, and group work, which differ from each other by the number of students employed and ways of organizing activities. It is the group work that compensates for all the shortcomings of other types of work and is mainly used to summarize the studied material. The difficulty for a teacher in a mixed ability group is to organize the work of the group in such a way as to meet the needs and interests of all students. The preparation of the teacher for classes in a mix ability group involves several stages: to choose the right interactive method for a particular lesson, which is determined by the purpose of the lesson and the characteristics of the material being studied; to organize correctly students into groups; to consider carefully the structure of the lesson using group forms of educational activities; to choose a problem and outline ways to solve it; to think about the interior of the classroom. When grouping students and planning classes in a mix ability group, the teacher takes into account not only the level of students' language proficiency, but also their psychological characteristics and needs, creating a relaxed and friendly atmosphere in the group.

Polonia University Scientific Journal, 2020

Teaching a foreign language for the specific purposes to the multicultured University students is quite challenging due to the fact that this category of learners is characterized both by numerous peculiarities of mentality, national traditions and general level of background education, nevertheless all the academic group students should fulfill the ESP programme's requirements. The mentioned factors stimulated the teachers of Odessa National I.I. Mechnikov University (Ukraine) to undertake the analytical investigation of: teaching methods and techniques used in the world, so that to estimate their value for ESP; of psychological and psycholinguistic characteristics of the students from different countries-in order to find out the possible ways of creating positive learning atmosphere which would allow every individual to develop his or her personality, as well as to equip all the students with the strategies of learning through team and group work. The primary aim was to find out which method would be the best for ESP teaching to the learners from different national background, the secondary one was to prove the hypothesis that thesaurus-thematic cycles methodology is efficient for developing linguistic and communicative skills of the students in the multicultured groups due to envolving each and every individual into the common goals learning activity. The mentioned above methodology was pioneered by us, its validity having been checked during a decade. The data obtained (test and exam results) demonstrated that the methodology was valuable, one of its merits being the easiness of application both for off-line and for on-line ESP teaching which was of special importance during the COVID-19 quarantine period. The present article discusses the work done, demonstrates real tasks, forms and regimes of work at the faculties of Mathematics, Law, Biology, History, Philology, International Economic Relations and outlines the perspectives of the future investigation.