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instruction. The items are presented or highlighted by the teacher. This is followed by
some form of practice activity in which the students produce the items. The input can
take various forms such as a language description, analysis of a genre, or teacher-led
discussion of features in a text. The input provides accurate samples of how the
language works and how it is used. The students become aware of a gap between how
they currently understand or use the linguistic form or feature and the equivalent
feature in target language use. The teacher then requires the students to produce
(output) the targeted item(s), generally within the same lesson or the following lesson
[ibid.].
In ESP, the input-to-output option is used for teaching different aspects of
language, including genre knowledge. However, the use of model texts and the idea of
analysis suggest that learning is partly a question of imitation and partly a matter of
understanding and consciously applying rules [2, p. 119].
3. Output-based Strategies
Output-based instruction takes as its starting point learners’ efforts to
communicate in the target language. Two sub-strategies can be identified. The first is
based on the premise that using the language (producing output) is sufficient for
learning and the second on the premise that it is only when students’ production or
output is followed by some form of input (discussion or highlighting of language) that
learning occurs. In instruction based on a predominantly output strategy, students are
placed in situations that require them to perform production tasks (to produce output)
at the outset of a lesson or activity. The rationale is that through producing language,
students can identify where their interlanguage (developing language system) is
sufficient for the performance or production task and where it is not.
In being pushed to produce, language learners notice ‘holes’ in their linguistic
repertoire and this stimulates learning of language to fill in the holes. There are
identified three key points for the role of output in advancing levels of grammatical
language accuracy:
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i. The need to produce output (‘pushed language use’) that is precise,
coherent, and appropriate during negotiation of meaning encourages the learners to
develop the necessary grammatical resources.
ii. During output, the learners can try out their hypotheses about language.
Production, as opposed to comprehension, may force the learner to move from
semantic to syntactic processing. It is possible to comprehend a message without any
syntactic analysis of the input it contains.
iii. Production is the trigger that forces learners to pay attention to the means
of expression [2, p. 124].
The idea of students being required to produce language is reflected in many
task-based activities for the classroom. A task is understood to be an activity that
involves the use of language but in which the focus is on the outcome of the activity
rather than on the language used to achieve that outcome. Tasks specify what students
will communicate about and action they will take but do not specify the language that
students will use or are expected to learn in the process of doing the task. Such activities
do not set out to teach a pre-selection of linguistic items as it is recognized that any
pre-selection of language items to be taught is unlikely to match the learner’s internal
syllabus. It is claimed that tasks create the conditions for acquisition, such as
negotiation of meaning, and that doing tasks enables learners to develop the language
and skills in line with their own internal syllabuses.
Task-based teaching has featured strongly in ESP in recent years and is used
often in combination with an ‘output strategy’—student performance as the point of
departure for the lesson and for which students may or may not have been given
preparation time [7]. Dudley Evans and St. John argue that a benefit of the strategy is
that it reflects the students’ target or professional, academic, or workplace world where
performance is the point of departure rather than preparation.
In ESP the use of the output strategy is associated with case study activities,
projects, presentations, role plays, and simulations.
4. Output- to- Input Strategy
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Basturkmen shows that learners’ production (output) in instruction based on an
output-to-input strategy are followed by feedbacks [2, p. 126]. Students perform a task
and feedback is provided to show a more native-like performance. The aim is that the
students notice how their own output differs from the more native-like model. The
feedback stage may be followed by a further optional stage in which students re-
perform the task. During task production, students notice ‘holes’ in their linguistic
repertoire or resources, thus creating the meta-cognitive state necessary for input.
Learners may notice that they cannot say what they want to say precisely in the target
language— ‘noticing a hole in one’s inter-language’. It is thought that provision of
input in advance of students’ themselves recognizing a need for it is similar to
expecting someone to be interested in filling a crack in the plaster work on the wall
before they have perceived that there is a gap to be filled.
The ESP instructor is liable for choosing what strategy will be followed in the
process of teaching. Highly professional specialists are flexible and can effectively
work combining various strategies for different specific tasks and assignments.
The complexity of ESP teaching today is predetermined by the wide variety of
methods and tools that the teacher is able to apply during the teaching process.
Firstly, it presents recent enhancements in teaching English to pre-experienced
adult students at the tertiary level of education which includes:
(1) content-and-language integrated learning;
(2) use of didactic case studies;
(3) corpus studies conducted for teaching purposes and aimed at identifying
high frequency language elements: terms, specialized lexis items, collocations,
phrases, formulae, acronyms, etc., that need to be prioritized in language courses;
(4) more effective course-books with higher terminology indexes;
(5) extended use of online materials;
(6) teaching writing for specific purposes;
(7) teaching professional culture and non-linguistic skills.
(1) Content-and-language Integrated Learning (CLIL) was introduced in ESP
at the end of the 20th century. It has been advocated by the Language Division of the
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Council of Europe in all types of formal education: primary, secondary, and tertiary.
In their report Council of Europe experts strongly support CLIL courses run at
universities. They also advocate materials development for specific groups of students
to facilitate CLIL. The classical model of CLIL requires two teachers: a language
teacher and a subject matter teacher. In practice, however, the dominant teaching model
at universities now is that with one teacher who teaches both subject matter and
language. It can be expected that this type of learning will become more popular in the
future. More and more universities all over the world look for and welcome students
from abroad – from neighboring countries or from emerging economies – countries
like China or India. The only way to give education to these students is in the medium
of English, which is taught in most secondary schools all over the world.
Some experts say that we are facing the “Englishization” of tertiary education.
It could be a unique opportunity to provide international students with intensive CLIL
courses in ESP. The priorities in CLIL comprise professional communication skills
combined with practicing active language skills. CLIL offers teaching that is targeted
at content matter, but strong emphasis is also put on using academic, professional, and
authentic course materials with high terminology input.
There are four types of knowledge presented by Anderson and Krathwohl
(2001)
1
:
– factual knowledge: basic facts, components, terminology;
– conceptual knowledge: knowledge of classification, rules, theories, models,
and processes;
– procedural knowledge: ability to perform specific tasks and to solve
problems,
– meta-cognitive knowledge: understanding learning strategies, understanding
the importance of life-long learning.
1
Krathwohl, David. A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Overview, [electronic resource], -
https://www.depauw.edu/files/resources/krathwohl.pdf
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In CLIL there are more opportunities to teach conceptual, procedural, and
meta-cognitive type of knowledge which are more difficult to teach than factual
knowledge. This makes teaching ESP at tertiary level more meaningful and effective.
(2) Use of Didactic Case Studies. The use of didactic case studies in tertiary
education is a prime example of a learner-centered approach. This learner-centered
approach provides students with lots of opportunities to practice analytical and creative
thinking, problem solving, and decision making. It teaches critical and constructive
thinking, evaluation and forecasting and thus contributes to the development of
conceptual thinking. It encourages students to defend their ideas and to reflect on their
thinking when they take decisions, critically compare, and evaluate options or design
an action plan. It also allows them to compromise and reach a consensus when they
work in teams.
The case study method is used extensively in law, medicine, psychology,
economics, management, and in finance. It is also used in other varieties of ESP. A
didactic case presents a real-life problem that either has been solved or needs to be
solved. It gives some background information to the problem. It often contains some
data in the form of graphs, documents, interviews, tables, etc. that may be helpful in
identifying the problem and in solving it.
(3) Use of Corpus Evidence in Materials Development. Teaching materials
used in ESP courses should reflect the language used by professionals in typical
communication acts. The content of any ESP course today needs to be judiciously
selected both in terms of content matter and material selection. It is true that publishers
offer much better ESP course-books now; ten or twenty years ago some ESP areas were
not provided with course-books at all or the choice was limited to two or three course-
books. However, course-book authors do not consider extremely important corpus
evidence concerning language use.
The argument for teaching the most frequent words in the language is a
powerful one. It is claimed that the most frequent words express the most frequent
meanings in the language. Why corpus studies are necessary? High-frequency
language elements: core vocabulary (both ESP terms and specialized lexical items),
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area specific collocations, phrases, formulaic sequences, abbreviations and acronyms
used in the language of professional communication need to be identified in corpus
studies carried out for teaching purposes. Frequency lists should be a prerequisite for
authors of ESP course-books.
Intuition and experience of course-book writers cannot provide the hard
evidence that is accessible by means of corpus studies into authentic spoken and written
texts. Students need to be exposed to the highest-frequency ESP language elements
very early in the course. It will give them a sense of achievement and improve their
motivation. The didactic value of a course prioritizing such elements will increase
significantly. Learning time will be better used. Learning efforts will be more focused.
Consequently, the effectiveness of ESP courses is likely to increase.
(4) Monitoring Specialized Terminology Indexes in Teaching Materials. ESP
terminology is the most important single factor that makes a quantum of difference
between general English and English for Specific Purposes.
Highest frequency ESP terms are of key importance in professional
communication. Proper understanding and use of professional terminology allow for
effective communication between specialists.
However, in tertiary teaching it is important to look at terminology use from a
wider perspective. Input materials have to be assessed by means of two criteria:
a) the quality of ESP terms contained in teaching materials (understood as
corpus-based information on which ESP terms to include);
b) the quantity of ESP terms understood as their concentration in teaching
materials.
A terminology index is a research tool which allows to measure the
concentration of ESP terms and collocations in a text, a collection of texts or a course-
book. It is measured by the ratio of ESP terms and collocations to the total number of
running words in a given text or a collection of texts.
This tool:
– provides unbiased quantitative data on language use in teaching materials;
– measures the didactic value of an ESP text;
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– helps to assess teaching materials in terms of how much new core ESP
terminology (and specific lexis) students can learn using a given text;
– shows the repetition rate of key ESP terms, – identifies texts that require
supplementation;
– assures high quality of teaching materials.
The use of the terminology index allows to measure the concentration of core
ESP language elements and grade it according to students’ language competence and
to students’ needs. It also allows for controlling the number of newly introduced
specialized language elements and for monitoring their repetition rate (recycling). If
the repetition rate of a given term or collocation is high, students have a more intensive
input and are more likely to memorize the term.
Effective teaching materials for tertiary students need to have a relatively high
terminology index, close to that found in authentic ESP texts.
In practical terms, it is quite easy to measure the terminology index for a
particular course-book. It is enough to take several 100-word long samples of texts
from the course-book and to count the terminology indexes in them. If the consolidated
terminology index in those samples is close to 0.25 (for business texts), it can be
interpreted as high enough. Course-books with a high terminology index usually do
not require any supplementation. Additionally, when analyzing the samples, it is
possible to measure the concentration of specialized collocations in them. Collocations
are as important in specialized communication as specialized terms. Thus, a high
concentration of specialized collocations, because of its high didactic input, makes the
text more effective.
(5) Extended Use of Online Materials and E-courses. Many ESP teachers
encourage their students to make use of online materials as supplementary teaching
texts. It is a good practice as it gives learners an opportunity to have greater exposure
to authentic specialized texts.
Students usually like to use online materials (area specific texts, documentaries,
case studies, articles in quality professional journals, company websites, video clips,
etc.) and think that such materials add variety to the learning process. The popularity
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of e-courses is increasing and will probably continue to increase in the future. Most e-
courses that are currently offered to learners are in general language, not in ESP.
However, there are a few courses in business English, and in the future courses in other
ESP varieties are likely to become available as well. Learners like them since they offer
greater flexibility than regular language classes. They also give an immediate feedback
to the learner.
Massive Open Online Courses are a completely new type of online courses run
by the best and most renowned universities worldwide and offered for free to all
learners wanting to enroll. For instance, Coursera – an online system of free training –
offers specialized courses in law, management, finance, and economics as well as in
sociology, history, medical sciences, and mathematics taught by university professors
from such reputable universities as Stanford, Harvard or the London School of
Economics.
(6) Teaching Writing for Specific Purposes. In the recent decade ESP courses
have made the component of professional writing and important part of the ESP course.
It refers particularly to the language of business and law as these ESP varieties require
that professionals have particularly good writing skills. There are texts and documents
they have to produce in a professional and standardized way.
Professional writing has been incorporated into language courses to meet the
needs of students who will need to be effective, informative, and persuasive
communicators in writing. Each of the following groups of professionals needs
instruction in specialized forms of writing: managers, management consultants, and
businesspeople as well as lawyers.
The writing code in each of these professions is different, even though they
have certain elements in common. In the world of business these forms of writing
include business reports, memoranda, corporate profiles, trade contracts, commercial
correspondence, business plans, annual reports, advertisements, agendas, itineraries,
minutes, press releases, among others.
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Each of the forms of writing listed above has a special layout, structure, style,
and tone. It requires a specialized routine language, brevity of form, and clarity of
argumentation. It also requires a specific degree of formality and appropriate wording.
University students certainly need to learn how to write for professional
purposes. Teaching writing is a difficult task for two basic reasons: (1) secondary
school students generally do not know how to write in a logical, clear, brief, and
structured way, neither do they know how to write in an informative or persuasive way,
and (2) teaching writing for professional purposes is time consuming and needs a lot
of planning, organizing, drafting, and redrafting.
Also, the growing popularity of certificate exams seems to indicate that more
and more students want to have written confirmation of their competence in a given
ESP awarded to them by an external examination board. An increasing number of
corporations require such language certificates from their employees and from job
applicants.
(7) Teaching Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Competence. The last development
in ESP teaching refers to teaching non-linguistic skills. Good communication skills
require excellent language skills matched with good pragmatic and sociolinguistic
skills. Many of these skills are transferable and can be learned.
Professionals usually need good interpersonal skills, business and managerial
skills, analytical skills, persuasion skills as well as specific micro-skills. In business
these micro-skills are extremely important and can have far-reaching consequences for
professional performance; due to those skills one can generate profits for the company
and contribute to its development and growth. They include such micro-skills as e.g.
negotiating, networking, chairing a meeting and participating in one, delivering
business presentations, giving a sales pitch, attending customers, presenting facts and
figures, using visuals, networking, and telephoning.
An enormous growth area in English language teaching has been in the area of
Business English because many students perceive a need for the kind of language
which will allow them to operate in the world of English-medium commerce. Once
again there is specific vocabulary and language events (presenting to colleagues, the
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language of contracts, etc.) which are unlikely to appear in a general English course,
but which are vitally important for business students. And so, teachers find themselves
training classes in such procedures as the art of negotiating, the correct use of phones
and e-mail, or the reading of business reports.
In our globalized world, good interpersonal skills also encompass cross-cultural
skills. Professionals are likely to have contacts with other professionals as well as
customers and clients from different cultures. Awareness of cultural differences makes
cross-cultural contacts significantly easier and beneficial for all parties involved.
Accepting that we are culturally diverse and respecting things that are culturally
important for others help in developing and maintaining good professional contacts
with foreigners.
Cross-cultural skills help to avoid potentially dangerous cultural clashes or
misunderstandings, which may have negative consequences. The knowledge of the
basic principles of professional etiquette also plays a significant role. Students who
know the rules of etiquette, good manners, and rituals prevailing in their future
profession will probably find it easier to adapt to the code of good practices that are
respected in their profession.
Some universities teach professional skills in separate courses. They give
courses in negotiations or in business culture. There are some ESP course-books that
are accompanied by skills books and cross-cultural components. The decision of what
to include in the course depends on numerous criteria, with the number of teaching
hours being the strongest determinant of what a syllabus can realistically include. It is
important to remember, that knowledge and skill combine in efficient communication.
However, teaching for knowledge is very different from teaching for skill.
Knowledge can be ‘presented’ or ‘discovered’; it can also be forgotten. Skill, on the
other hand, can only be acquired through practice, and once acquired is relatively easily
maintained. The fact is that while we can ‘teach’ knowledge, we cannot teach skill.
Skill must be learned, and practice is a central element in that learning.
As a response to the needs of learners in acquiring English, the teachers of
English have to develop an integrated teaching model which enables students to learn