Steps for Designing, Implementing, and Assessing an ESP Course

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1. Introduction

An ESP course entails rigorous adherence to its absolute characteristics that define it as need based pedagogy which uses specific content and specialized language to help learners acquire proficient use of language in diverse academic or workplace contexts. ESP involves various steps in designing, implementing and assessing a target course. This includes identification of the key issues that are specific to the teaching and learning context, cognizance of the implications for the course design, conducting a comprehensive needs analysis, collating the results of research, analysing data, developing course outline, selecting materials, defining appropriate methodology, developing assessment tools, and evaluating the course for further improvement.

2. Key issues in EAP

2.1. Linguistic Features

The primary aim of any ESP course is to answer the question “why do the learners need to learn the foreign language”? This means the focal emphasis is on helping the learners to communicate accurately and precisely. Therefore, ESP adapts elements from other approaches as a foundation for its own methods and techniques. An ESP course is thus designed to cater for the appropriate structural, functional, and discourse levels learners might need for developing the needed language competence (Hutchinson & Waters: 1987).

a. At the structural level, substitution tables and structural syllabi are very common in ELT. In an ESP course, rather than explaining rules via lecturing, substitution techniques can be employed in a reinforcement exercise.

b. The functional/notional level refers to language in use. An ESP syllabus that includes functions could have topics such as the following: making hotel reservations, giving tour informat...

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