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2.7 Course Designing and Material Development
The main objective of needs analysis is to identify the needs and wants of the
learners to be able to find the best ways to satisfy these needs. For this reason, needs
analysis is the first element to consider in the decisions-making process of the course
designer. This section sheds light on the process of material designing and the main
considerations that teachers and book designers should take into account in order to meet
their learners needs.
Evan Frendo (2009: 32) states that designing an ESP English course is a matter of
making a series of decisions based on information gathered during a needs analysis.
According to Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998) many questions should be taken into
consideration to design a course that satisfies the learners needs. Dudley-Evans and St.
John (1998: 145) discuss criteria for ESP course design and put forward useful steps for
ESP teachers and course designers to consider. They believe that ESP practitioners should
provide clear answers to the following questions:
Should the course be intensive or extensive?
Should the learners performance be assessed or non-assessed?
Should the course deal with immediate needs or with delayed needs?
Should the role of the teacher be that of the provider of knowledge and activities, or
should it be as facilitator of activities arising from learners expressed wants?
Should the course have a broad focus or narrow focus?
Should the course be pre-study or pre-experience or run parallel with the study or
experience?
Should the materials be common-core or specific to learners study or work?
Should the group taking the course be homogenous or should it be heterogeneous?
Should the course design be worked out by the language teacher after consultation
with the learners and the institution, or should it be subject to a process of
negotiation with the learners?
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Table 1. Criteria for Designing ESP Course Material adapted from Dudley-Evans and St. John
(1998)
The questions deal mainly with material designing and features of the designer and
the designed material. Nevertheless, none of the questions involve the learners in material
designing which gives the impression that learners can be of no use to the course content.
2.8 Criteria for Evaluating ESP Designed Courses:
Many researchers, ESP practitioners and ESP book designers agree that the most
important criterion to evaluate any designed material is authenticity. It is considered the
key term in any material designing. Wang (2006) points out that authentic materials can
lead to increased motivation as they have a real communicative purpose. Bojovic (2006)
also believes that material should be authentic, up to date and relevant for the students
specializations. Other factors that influence ESP material designing according to
Widdowson (1984) are availability, awareness of the students' interests and motivation,
relevance and appropriateness. These factors play a crucial role in designing material that
would be suitable for a particular group of learners.
ESP practitioners face tremendous difficulties designing home-made courses for
their classes. To overcome these difficulties, save time and satisfy the economic needs of
the sponsoring institutions, ESP teachers resort to the library book-shelves and choose the
best reference for them that they believe would accomplish their learners needs.
However, many researchers believe that using already designed books completely goes
against the learning centeredness of ESP teaching. Evan Frendo (2009) believes that book
publishers are keen on satisfying the needs of learners and teachers as much as possible,
but a book intended for a fairly wide clientele cannot always satisfy relatively specific
needs. So, published books in different fields would never satisfy the needs of different
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learners interests. Publishers are mainly concerned with accomplishing economic interests
and they are, to use Waters (1987) words, naturally reluctant to produce materials for very
limited markets.
Using published books to teach ESP classes is bitterly criticized by many scholars.
Anthony (1997) has a very negative view of teaching from ESP course books
believing that teachers were often slaves to the book or worse taught from
textbooks which were unsuitable. Wright (1992, p.9) also contends against the overuse of
designed textbook courses stating that The scope of existing materials is often not
appropriate to the needs of a particular group of trainees. Textbook courses are too broad or
too narrow, too long or too short. So, the role of ESP practitioners is to use these
references as a point of departure and to adapt, modify, change, add or design their own
material. Evan Frendo (2009: 43) States the main reasons that make him strongly believe
that ESP teachers are required to design their own teaching materials. He argues that course
books are not enough to satisfy the diverging needs of the learners.
Business English teaching is about meeting the needs of the learners and or
their sponsors, and it is rare that a course book can do this completely
successfully without any additional material, or without being adapted in some
way. Course books can sometimes date fairly quickly. They can include
culturally inappropriate content, and they may include assumptions about
language learning which do not always fit with the teachers or learners own
perceptions of how best to learn a language.
The solution is to design an in-house material that is locally designed to overcome
the course books shortcomings. Teaching materials are frequently improved, modified and
adapted to meet the learners specific needs. Most teachers adapt materials whenever they
use a textbook in order to maximize the value of the book for their particular learners.
Tomlinson (1998: xi) argues:
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Making changes to materials in order to improve them or to make them more
suitable for a particular type of learner. Adaptation can include reducing,
adding, omitting, modifying and supplementing. Most teachers adapt materials
every time they use a textbook in order to maximize the value of the book for
their particular learners.
Nevertheless, adapting material is not an easy task especially for novice ESP
practitioners who are likely to face numerous complications and problems since they lack
the know-how of designing effective courses that will cover the specific language needs
of their students. On the other hand, no one can deny the importance of the designed course
books in providing the practitioners with a solid ground to use as a starting point, yet not all
of them can be completely relevant to the wants and needs of a particular group of learners.
Gatehouse (2001, p.10) believes that there is a value in all texts, but goes on to say that
curricular materials will unavoidably be pieced together, some borrowed and others
specially designed.
2.9 The Learners Involvement in the Design of ESP Class Material.
ESP course designing is never an individual decision taken by teachers. Instead,
many other participants are involved in the decision making in relation to course designing
and material development. In addition to the ESP practitioner, the sponsoring organizations
have an effective role in designing course material. These sponsoring organizations identify
the main learning needs and provide useful orientations that the course material designers
bank on while deciding on the most effective and suitable course material. In addition,
learners themselves, especially in-service learners, play a fairly important function in
relation to the teaching material. Their experience in the field of work is considered of a
great importance to the learning process as well as to the teaching material. In-service
learners are fully aware of the real needs, wants, obstacles, situations and problems they
encounter in their working experience. They can bring material or suggest the best ways for
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them to accomplish the course objectives. Michael William Cameron Brunton has
conducted a research to study the effects of learners participation and involvement in
course design. He found that involving the learners in the learning process has
constructive learning experiences among adult ESP learners since they can provide their
rich work experiences which should be tapped into as effective learning resources. The
study reveals that learners involvement enhances the learning process, increases their
motivation and makes them fully responsible for their learning. Kennedy and Bolitho
(1984: 3) argue that any decision to use an ESP approach relating to a specific subject will
inevitably demand some degree of co-operation between language and subject specialist.
Kaur (2007) also supports the positive effects of learners participation in course designing.
He believes that when ESP learners take some responsibility for their own learning and
are invited to negotiate some aspects of the course design. They feel motivated to
become more involved in their learning. Ellis (1994) highlights the importance of the
experienced learners in the course content. He states that in the case of job-experienced
learners, the objectives for the course and its content will be the product of negotiating
process between the learner or sponsoring organization and trainer or training
organization.
ESP material designing is not a free individual decision; instead, there are many
constraints and guidance that the ESP practitioner must respect to satisfy the learners
needs and wants. Two important criteria should be present in any material designing
process. The first one is that it should closely match the objectives of the course
highlighted during the first step of needs analysis. In other words; any material should
serve the learners needs. Teachers should be able to bring a very good material of
Business English to add, modify, and change the syllabi of the ESP classroom. The second
crucial factor that ESP practitioner should carefully consider is authenticity. In the same
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respect, Krzanowski (1998) argues that self-designed ESP materials have to respect the
following considerations:
balance informative, language and communicative content (adequacy of content);
be based on topics of general academic and professional interest;
be directly linked to related degree/course/curriculum;
be recyclable and evergreen;
be evaluated against length and time available;
be set in a memorable context;
meet the criterion of authenticity;
Ideally cover both language and skills;
offer students the opportunity to gain transferable skills;
Not over-promote one discrete skill;
lend themselves to being adapted and/or extended;
stimulate student interaction;
adapt preferences to learners needs and knowledge;
be professionally printed and edited;
help practitioners develop their own teaching style.
To sum up, it seems that ESP course designing is a a difficult task and it should be
carefully carried out. The plethora of materials and course books available would not
satisfy the needs of different groups of learners and it would certainly violate the learning
centeredness aspect of ESP. Hence, class material designing is the task of the practitioner
who is more aware of the needs of his clients. In addition, the learners participation is
inevitable especially in the case of pre-experienced trainees who are more knowledgeable
about the subject matter than the ESP teachers, who are in most cases no more than
language experts. As a result, a strong collaboration between language experts and field
professionals will be very fruitful to come up with a communicative curriculum. Though
designing a course is not an easy task to handle, Gao (2007: 6) sums up the main elements
to consider while deciding on class material.
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When designing an ESP course, the primary issue is the analysis of learners
specific needs. Other issues addressed include: determination of realistic goals
and objectives; integration of grammatical functions and the abilities required
for future workplace communication, and assessment and evaluation.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that material design normally undergoes a
continuous process of change, development and adaptation simply because of the
changing needs, wants and expectations of the learners. Material designing never
reaches its end. An ESP practitioner should always keep an eye on his material and up
date his knowledge.