A.
Selecting
and Developing ESP Materials
Sysoyev (2000) argues that
for many teachers, selection of teaching materials is based on their
availability. Furthermore, chosen materials determine the content of the
course. Quite often it serves as a justification and explanation of the use of
the same syllabus with different students. In student-center approach, the
appropriateness of the materials includes student comfort and familiarity with
the materials, language level, interest, and relevance.
1.
Authentic
materials
The important issue in ESP
materials is authenticity. The language in ESP should be as authentic as
possible. The used of simplified language for instructional purposes has to be
minimized since authentic language can be motivating for students particularly
when keyed to a subject they are concerned about.
According to Robinson
(1991:54) authentic materials in ELT refers to the use of print, audio, video
and practical materials originally produced for a purpose other than the
teaching of language.
Ellis and Johnsson
(1994:157) also agree that authentic material is a kind of material taken from
the real world and not specifically create for the purpose of language
teaching.
A number of criteria need
to be considered in selecting authentic texts for classroom use according to
McGrath (2006,pp.106) are:
a.
Relevance
(to syllabus, to learners, needs)
b.
Intrinsic
interest of topic/ theme (interest learners)
c.
Cultural
appropriateness (religiously, social, political)
d.
Linguistic
demands (language proficiency)
e.
Cognitive
demands (maturity and knowledge)
f.
Logistical
consideration: e.g. length, legibility/ audibility
g.
Quality
(as a model for use or as a representative token of a text-type)
h.
Exploitability
There are several reasons why authentic material is highly
recommended. First, authentic texts, audio, video, or written (multimedia),
will have a number of features that are often lacking in texts and dialogues
created for learning English. Second, the material may provide information
about real-life situations or events. In this case, it is the content of the
material rather than the language which is useful for the teacher or for the
learner.
For ESP situation, we must also consider whether the goals that we
set are authentic with regard to students’ real-world roles, and whether the
goals set are authentic tasks or activities that take place in the learning
situation are authentic.
In the relation to material development for ESP, Moore (1977:45)
suggests six criteria to be applied in creating materials:
a.
Purpose:
Is the purpose clearly defined?
b.
Type: Does
the exercise type effectively and economically accomplish the purpose?
c.
Content:
Is the ratio of language given and student task economic? Are instructions to
students clear?
d.
Interest:
Is it interesting?
e.
Authentic:
Is it a meaningful task? Is it challenging?
f.
Difficulty:
Does it contain distracting difficulties?
2.
Materials
for self-access centers
Self-access materials may
be established to serve the whole institution or simply be housed in a corner
of a classroom. It is like a library in that it is essentially a
material.resource, but need to be specially prepared in categories of
materials.
a.
Published
materials
Published materials can
be used in various ways. At the very minimum, there will be books for extensive
reading, and perhaps graded reading schemes.
b.
Authentic
materials
Authentic materials
authentic materials also have a place. Gardner and Miller (1999:102-3) made a
list of categories; newspapers, magazines, user manuals; leaflets and
brochures; foreign mission information; materials from international companies
and airlines; letters, faxes, and e-mails; videos; and songs.
c.
Adapting
and supplementing published materials
Published materials
which have been adapted and supplemented in some way should also be made
available.
d.
Specially-prepared
materials
In addition to published
and authentic materials, there will always be a need for materials that is more
precisely tailored to the needs of students on their own such as practice/
testing activities, learning/ awareness-raising activities, and reflective/
creative activities, or social/ peer matching activities (e.g 8;communication
tasks)
B.
Contextualization
Contextualization has been
recognized as an important concept in ESP classroom and involves some
variables. One of the context variables that should heavily be considered in
ESP classroom is what the students have to do. Context refers to circumstances
or setting in which a person uses a language. Therefore, the key issues related
to this matter are the relationship between the students’ special field of
study, interest, the place and the nature of language practice.
Contextualized instruction
should gain the attention of the learners and relate the goals to the learners’
needs. Contextualization is to ensure relevancy and interest.
Little John and Hicks
(1987:69-91) characterize contextualized language classroom tasks as follows:
a.
Learners should
be involved in processing language; that is information gap;
b.
Learners
should be able to choose what they want to say;
c.
There
should be a purpose for communication;
d.
The task
should require learners to deal with language spontaneously;
e.
The task
should be motivating, and observing and should exploit the learners’ prior
experiences
Phillips (1981:97) suggests four key methodological principles in
ESP classroom tasks as:
a.
Reality
control, which relates to the manner in which tasks are rendered accessible to
the students;
b.
Non-triviality,
that is the tasks must be meaningfully generated by the students’ special
purposes;
c.
Authenticity,
that is the language must be naturally generated by the students’ special
purposes;
d.
Tolerance
of error, errors which do not impede successful communication must be
tolerated.
To apply these principles,
Robinson (1991:49-52) believes that role play and stimulation, case study,
project work and oral presentation have been effective and efficient in ESP
classroom interactions.
1.
Role play
and simulation
Role play and simulation
essentially involve the learners’ looking on a different role and even identify
from their usual one.
2.
Case study
Case studies involve
studying the facts of a real-life case, discussing the issues involved and reaching
some kind of decision or action plan.
3.
Project
work
Project work is
particularly appropriate for EAP, since doing a project may be a requirement
for a college student.
4.
Oral
presentation
Another task type which
is common to ESP is the oral presentation and this may be part of the other
tasks. Oral presentation does not merely involve discussion, but it can also
involve all the language skills: writing and reading the information required
for the presentation will be surely performed beforehand.
C.
Check List
for Evaluating Published Materials
1.
What kind
of learner is the material aimed at?
a.
Job and
task to perform at work
b.
Work
experience
c.
Language
level
d.
Cultural
background
e.
Educational
background
f.
Age
g.
Learning
style
2.
What are
the main language objectives?
a.
Skills
b.
Functions
c.
Structures
d.
Vocabulary
3.
What are the
main topic areas covered?
a.
Does the
material introduce the subject
b.
Does it
use the topic area as contextual background?
c.
Is the
coverage of topic content high in credibility?
4.
What is
the main methodological approach?
a.
Demonstration
of language in context through text, tape, or video
b.
Explain
grammatical rules
c.
Presentation
of functional language
d.
Presentation
of vocabulary
e.
Controlled
practice of language
f.
Open
practice of language
g.
Skill
development
5.
What is
the role of the material?
a.
To present
language
b.
To
practice language
c.
To provide
a resource for the learner for the learner
d.
To check
or test knowledge
6.
Is the material attractive?
a.
Clear
layout
b.
Good use
of space
c.
Useful,
clear pictures and diagrams
d.
Interesting
context and tasks
D.
Selection
and Exploitation of Authentic Materials
When
selecting authentic materials to use, there are three questions to keep in mind
(Ellis and Johnson 1994 : 162-71).
1.
Who is it
for?
2.
What is
the training purpose?
3.
How can
the material be exploited?
E.
Developing/
Adapting Materials
Curriculum
design in ESP, according to swales (1995), is a three-stage process;
1.
Reaching
some understanding of the target situation
2.
Studying
the target situation elements
3.
Devising
materials and language learning activities with the hope that the elements
cited in stage two can be acquired as efficiently as possible, so that the
students, can survive and flourish in target situation environment.
Material development is obviously in stage
three of the process which is very essential since this stage will have to
facilitate the learners with learning condition, language input, and
opportunities to use the language.
To
satisfy the language and learning needs
of the students Brinton, Snow and Wesche (1989) offer the following points of
guidelines text selection for content-based courses.
1.
Content
authentic
a.
How
up-to-date is the content material?
b.
Does the
material give students an opportunity to practice the more extensive types of
reading, writing, and listening typically required in content discipline?
2.
Task
authenticity
a.
Are the
task required of students appropriate to the discipline/subject matter?
b.
Do they
promote critical thinking?
3.
Interest
level
a.
Will the
subject matter engage the students’ interest
4.
Difficulty
level
a.
Are the
material appropriate for the proficiency level of the students?
b.
How heavy
is the lexical and syntactic load?
c.
Is the
length of the text appropriate?
5.
Accessibility
a.
Do the
students have necessary background knowledge to engage the text?
b.
Is it
culturally accessible?
c.
Is the
information load appropriate i.e., not too dense?
d.
Is the
text organized according to standard organizational patterns?
e.
Is the
style/register appropriate?
6.
Availability
a.
What
content-specific, e.g., readings, video/audio taped lectures, and films are
available for use in the course?
b.
Are the
materials affordable?
7.
Packaging
a.
Is the
text visually attractive?
b.
Do layout
features, e.g., type face, color, borders. Contribute to students’
comprehension of the content material?
8.
Textual
aids
a.
Are
textual aids, e.g., glosses, study questions, indices utilized to assist
students in their comprehension and retention of the content material?
9.
Supporting
materials
a.
Is there a
teacher’s guide and/ or answer key available?
b.
Is there a
supplementary student workbook?
10.
Flexibility
a.
Does the
text lend itself to the integration of skills and information exchange
activities?
b.
Does it
appeal to a variety of sources, thus exposing students to different types,
e.g., narrative, descriptive, analytic?
c.
Are the
various media utilized?
Additional Materials for ESP Materials
Additional Material for Part A
Materials mean anything which is used to help to
teach language learners. Materials can be in the form of a textbook, a workbook,
a cassette, a CD-ROM, a video, a photocopied handout, a newspaper, a
paragraph written on a whiteboard or anything which presents or informs about
the language being learned (Tomlinson, 1998:xi).
Further, Tomlinson (2001) states that materials mean
anything which can be used to facilitate the learning of a language (linguistic,
visual, auditory or kinesthetic). These materials can be presented in print, live performance, on cassettes,
CD-ROM, DVD, or in
the internet. These materials can be instructional, experiential, elicitative, or
exploratory. The material is instructional when it informs the learners about the
language. It is experiential when it provides exposure to the language in use,
elicitative when it stimulates language use, and exploratory when it seeks discoveries
about language use in natural settings.
Materials selection, adaptation, or
writing is an important area in ESP teaching, representing a practical result
of effective course development and providing
students with materials that will equip them with the knowledge they will
need in their future business life.
Materials in teaching are very important because they can
help the teachers in this case, ESP teachers to deliver the lessons better.
Moreover, the students can also be active and progressive when the teachers are
creative in choosing the materials.
Authenticity
has been pointed to by various authors as a relevant feature in ESP
methodology (Safont and
Esteve 2004: 261-274) and thus,
authentic materials constitute an aspect traditionally emphasized in the ESP
literature. The learner-centred
approach is essential to ESP teaching, and identified learner’s needs are not
fully satisfied by published texts.
These authentic materials should be taken from the real world and not
primarily created for pedagogical reasons.
Such materials are particularly important for
communicative
purposes since they reproduce an
immersion environment and provide a realistic context for tasks that relate
to learner’s needs. Authentic materials
can greatly benefit problem-solving, project-based learning, casebased
learning, role-play, and
simulation and gaming methodology.
Students and teachers can use authentic materials as a means to “link the formal, and to some
extent artificial, environment of the classroom with
the real world in which we hope our students will eventually
be using the language they are learning”
For example, the
teachers who teach in tourism can use authentic materials which have relation
with the subject like map, ticket and many more. The authentic materials can
help the students closed more with the real situation and condition of their
course. Authentic materials are important tools for use in ESP
classes for, they motivate and immerse learners in specific areas of the target
language in which practice is needed.
Additional Materials for part B
According
to contextual learning theory, learning occurs only when students (learners)
process new information or knowledge in such a way that it makes sense to them
in their own frames of reference (their own inner worlds of memory, experience,
and response). This approach to learning and teaching assumes that the mind
naturally seeks meaning in context—that is, in relation to the person’s current
environment—and that it does so by searching for relationships that make sense
and appear useful. For the real situation, it is needed by the teachers to
teach contextually because the students can get some new information that is
important for them. For example, the
teachers who want to teach about machine that they should explain contextually
and appropriately then the students can assume the lesson by connecting their
experiences.
Building
upon this understanding, contextual learning theory focuses on the multiple
aspects of any learning environment, whether a classroom, a laboratory, a
computer lab, a worksite, or a wheat field. It encourages educators to choose
and/or design learning environments that incorporate as many different forms of
experience as possible—social, cultural, physical, and psychological—in working
toward the desired learning outcomes.
Additional Materials for
part C
Evaluation
is a matter of judging the fitness of something for a particular purpose. Given
a certain need, and in the light of the resources available, which out of the
number of possibilities can represent the best solution? Evaluation is, then,
concerned with the relative merit. There is no absolute good or bad - only
degrees of fitness for the required purpose.
We can
divide the evaluation process into four major steps:
1.
Defining criteria
On
what bases will you judge materials? Which criteria will be more important?
2.
Subjective analysis
What
realization of the criteria do you want in your course?
3.
Objective analysis
How
does the material being evaluated realized the criteria?
4.
Matching
How
far the material match your need?
Additional Materials for
part D
Berado (2006: 63) identifies some
factors that should be considered when sourcing and selecting authentic
materials for use in the language classroom:
1.
Suitability of content
Will the material be of interest to the learners?
Is it relevant to the learners’ needs?
Does it represent material the learners will come across outside of the
classroom?
2. Exploitability
Can the material be exploited for teaching purposes?
For what purpose should the material be exploited?
What skills or strategies can be developed by exploiting the material?
3. Suitability of Language
Is the material too easy/difficult for the learners?
Is it structurally too demanding/complex?
How much new vocabulary/grammar does it contain? Is it relevant?
4.
Presentation
Does it look authentic?
Is it visually appealing?
Will it grab the learners’ attention?
Additional Materials for part E
Learners
needs can be identified by the teachers from the target learners
from whom they are going to
develop the materials. Very often,
learners needs have been formulated by the institution where the learners are learning in
the form of
learning objectives. These learning objectives can be made more specific
in the form of syllabus which according
to Hutchinson and Waters (1989:80) means a document which says what will (or at least what should)
be learnt .
There are at
least eight types of syllabus that can be used to analyze
learners needs: topic syllabus (the topic should be clear that can give limitation to the
syllabus), structural and situational
syllabus, functional and notional syllabus, skills syllabus, situational syllabus,
functional and taskbased syllabus, discourse
and skills syllabus, and skills and
strategies syllabus. Any syllabus can be used as far as the syllabus can
accommodate the analysis of the learners needs.
References:
C.J Brumfit, ESP
for University. http://englishagenda.britishcouncil.org/sites/ec/files/Y299%20ELT-12-screen-ESP.pdf
, 08/11/2014
Elaine DeLott
Baker, Laura Hope and Kelley Karandjeff, Contextualized Teaching &
Learning: A promising Approach for Basic Skills Instruction
Gabriela
Torregrosa Benavent, Sonsoles Sanchez- Reyes Penamaria, Use of Authentic
Materials in The ESP Classroom
Tom Hutchinson
and Alan Water, English for Specific Purposes: A Learning Center Approach, Press Syndicate of the University of
Cambridge, 1987
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