NAME : NOVA DILLA

CLASS : 6D TBI
SUBJECT : ESP

1. ESP Assessment
There has always been a debate concerning ESP and “general English”, ESP
assessment and general English assessment. Traditionally there has been a distinction
between the two, but after recent publications (Bachman and Palmer, 1996) this contrast
became indistinct. Currently most language assessment specialists agree on the same
principles of measurement concerning validity and impact (Douglas, 2010). Generally
students have a thorough language background when they proceed to ESP study, which is
generally designed for intermediate or advanced students (Bailey, 2007). The current paper is
the result of an experiment assesment session, which took place at the University of
Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine from Cluj, Romania, with first year students.
Most students included in this experiment studied English for 10 or 11 years in primary,
secondary, and high school and others, beyond all these, had some work experience abroad.
During the first course of English the teaching staff is interested in preparing and designing
the ESP course, which is usually based on the specific needs of learners (Long, 2005). The
course designers conduct needs analyses to ascertain the students’ target needs and learning
needs and then integrate the required linguistic elements into the syllabus. The pre-course
needs analyses are used to obtain information and data concerning‚ the need for language
skills’ (Holliday, 1995) in order to give directions for the course design and syllabus
development the term “needs assessment”.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
The target group of the experiment consists of first year students in Horticulture,
Landscape Architecture, Landsurvey, and Forestry. The students are organized in groups of
20-25, most of them in the first year, aged from 18 to 25. They are preparing for careers in the
global economy and are aware of their need of ESP courses. Most students, future specialists,
need to become proficient in English, in order to meet a predictable range of communicative
abilities. They will be in the process of developing expertise that will enable them to succeed
in their future internships and jobs. In order to be successful they have to master several
language skills and be able to perform a variety of activities in English.
The ESP course designers conceive the first tests and questionnaires in such a way as
to obtain relevant results for the teaching process. They conduct needs analyses in order to
find out the students’ target needs and learning needs and then include the required linguistic
elements and skills into the course. When students start an ESP course, most of them already
know about 20-25% of the terminology, which they are supposed to acquire by the end of the
academic year. Students in Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, for instance, can give
lists of flowers, fruit-trees, and vegetables. Students in Forestry can name medicinal plants,
varieties of trees, and bushes. Students in Land Survey can mention activities performed by a
landsurveyor, various instruments for measuring the land, and GPS applications. At the very
beginning it usually happens that students do not realize how much of this terminology they
know, because all these words have not been part of their active vocabulary. This is why the
needs assessment session includes two stages: the first stage, with no preparation, during the
first couse, and the second, after a reading session, a listening session, and a long
conversation, all with reference to specialty subjects.
 Both stages of the needs assessment session have the same purposes and the same
structure, as described in Tab 1. After the first assessment stage the students prove to be
familiar with only 5-10% of the terminology. The second assessment stage, preceded by the
above mentioned listening, reading , and writing activities, proves that their knowledge of
terminology goes up to 25%. The explanation is that the words, representing the terms
neccesary to their new domain, have been learned in the past, but have not frequently been
used; it was only after the “refreshing button” was pushed that many terms were remembered.
Tests and questionnaires are given to students in order to gain insight into their perceived
needs, preferences and gaps.

Skill Task type Number of tasks Time allowed

Listening Question answer session 10 10 mins
Reading session; Two text
Reading 20 mins
Questions-answers 10 questions
Prompt involving an
Writing One prompt 15 mins
extended written answer

From the results of the tests, the language level of students, which is helpful in the
design of the course, can be established. Tests scores are very important to test designers and
course designers, but they are equally important to students. As McNamara and Roever have
remarked: “...through the concern for the rationality and consistency of the interpretations
made on the basis of test scores, validity theory is addressing issues of fairness, which have
social implications” (McNamara and Roever, 2006). Both tests and questionnaires are used to
seek information about the students’ specialist areas, personal background, work experience,
and other relevant details that would play some role in conceiving the course and the
following assessment stages. From the results of the tests and questionnaires, we can ascertain
the language level of the learners, which is helpful in the materials selection, course design
(McNamara, 2009), and especially in the placement of students in groups, according to their
level. Although most students started studying English in primary school, many groups of
lower intermediate and upper intermadiate level are necessary Tests for speaking skills are
conceived with the language input from general to specific, so that to check the students’
knowledge of both general and technical English. Topics are sequenced in three stages. In the
first stage, general topics are used, such as personal data, easy conversation, story telling, and
nature description - for Horticulture, Landscape Architecture, and Forestry, and land
description and measurement units for Land Survey. The second stage progresses towards
covering general technical topics, such as talking about European and home agriculture, old
and modern methods of cultivating plants - for Horticulture and Forestry, and map reading for
Land Survey. The third stage of topic selection includes subjects connected with the European
Union, from agriculture and trade to human rights.
2. Case Studies in ESP Course Development

English for medical Doctors

The course was developed to help a group of overseas trained medical doctors who
were preparing to sit medical registration examinations in New Zealand. This chapter was a
course that focused on the patient centred nedical consultation, one very specific
communicative event in medical practice.
Context
The need for of ESP course in this case arose from observasions made before the ESP
teacher/course develover was approached. It had been observed that a number of overseas-
trained doctors taking the medical registrasion examination in a previous year head
experienced difficulties in this specific event.
Investigsting needs
In the case, the doctors’ area of greatest need had been specified before the ESP
teacher came on board since the professional development trainers had noticed an area of
communication the patient-centred consultation in which number of the doctors in the first
cohort of the bridging programme had experienced some language difficulties.
Investigating specialist discours
The reminder of this section describes how the course developer examined language
use in consultations.
Multiple sources of information
The teacher made use of multiple sources of information to help her address this
question. The sources included the following :
 Observations on the role plays between the overseas-trained doctors and actor
“patient” and th feedback comments made by the professional development trainers
on the doctors performance and use of language in the role plays.
 Observations at authentic medical consultations in two general practice clinics in
suburban settings.
 Filmed materials including a television series offering a “fly on the wall “ perspective
of day to day interactions between doctors and patient.

Designing the course and materials

For the ESP teacher in this case, the main consideration in designing the course was
rhe specification of course content.that is, specification of what to teach.

She devised a course of instruction based on a two pronged strategy of providing

feedback on the diagnosed areas of difficulty and treatment in terms of information about
language use ( the input ) that had been derived from her observations of authentic doctor
patients consultations in local settings.

Responding to difficulties and contraints

One of the difficulties the ESP teacher faced in this case was, as she saw it it, at the
same time an advantage. The difficulty was that the ESP teacher was not medically trained,

A second difficulty in the development of the English Course for medical doctors was
that of finding aunthentic source materials.
 Given this difficulty, a key element in the development of this course was the
contacts made by the professional development trainers to help the ESP course teacher gain
access and obtain the appropriate patients and doctors consents and permission to observe
medical consultations in general practice clinics.
3. Critically Evaluate Currently Available ESP Materials
Through the analysis of this Visual Arts ESP textbook some issues came to surface.
First, the lack of a standard framework in preparing this book became an issue to be
discussed. Second, looking deeply through this book showed and confirmed the previous
research findings that reading comprehension is the main objective of SAMT textbooks.
Unfortunately, little or no parts of this book is devoted to reading strategies. Comparing with
the other ESP textbooks components, it was investigated whether this book has inclination
toward the four skills in English Language teaching and learning rarely exercises involve
students in developing language skills or communicating ideas. Based on what Riazi (2003)
mentioned, being up to date is the significant features of ESP textbooks.
Regarding this Visual Arts ESP textbook, during these 20 years, it just has been
revised one time and texts, so in terms of exercises, skills, and strategies this book like other
books have been missing edition. Considering patterns, like other researches which have been
done on other ESP textbooks, this book has followed the same pattern of reading passage,
comprehension questions and vocabulary practices. According to Fadavi and Ershadi (2014),
academic language needs of the Iranian students of art include knowledge on technical
terminology providing the proper meanings and anthropology, reading (specialized records,
papers, professional texts), writing (letter writing, enquires, presentations, letter of
complaints, correspondence), Speaking (conference presentations) not just translation. The
finding of the present study indicates that the present ESP textbook is not in line with the
findings of needs analysis studies.
Compared to our findings, Azarnoosh and Ganji (2014) in their evaluation of the
English for students of management course book, concluded that textbook can be suitable for
students with modification in some cases to accomplish the course goals and encourage
students to use what they learn in their future workplace. Evaluating Physics ESP course book
published by SAMT, Sajjadi and Hadavi Nia offered for the future revision and/or designing
the textbooks. Through critical analysis of four ESP textbooks of Architecture, Insurance
Management, Computer Sciences, and Civil Engineering, Gholami, Samudi, and
Mohammadnia (2017) confirmed that the textbooks suffer from some deficiencies such as not
being up to date, using formulaic exercises, having a monotonous, assembly-line method of
presenting texts and exercises, a misconception of the aims of ESP courses and their nature in
materials development and lack of face validity.
With regard to register, treatment of grammatical patterns and vocabulary should
follow specific procedure. Grammatical aspects should be treated from functional approaches.
There is no need to teach a–z of English grammar. ESP is not concerned with technical
vocabulary but semi-technical vocabulary. Core English vocabularies which have same
meanings in various disciplines are of importance in ESP teaching. It is worth mentioning that
ESP teaching materials should be related to the field of specialization of learners but not
dominated by it. Although ESP teaching is rooted in GE, it should have its distinguishable
features and it should not wholly cover GE behind its title. On the other hand, it is argued that
ESP should not be concerned wholly with specialized content. To put it into nutshell, ESP
should make use of manageable specialized content which have function if carrier content to
convey real content. The use of subject contents provides a way to present vocabularies in an
authentic way.
By integrating specialized content and language content, students’ motivation
enhances because they find the materials relevant to their specific needs and lacks in their
area of study. ESP courses better use appropriate textbooks accompanied with many other
resources such as glossaries of vocabularies in specific topics, reference grammar books, and
so on. The findings of the present study offer a number of implications for revision as well as
development of future ESP textbooks in Iranian context.
In conclusion, traditional materials and frameworks are not responsive to students’
needs and genre knowledge in visual arts majors. The materials designed and selected for the
students should be related to the curriculum, situations, task requirements, and needs of the
mentioned major of study. Generally repeated revisions of ESP textbooks based on systematic
needs analysis are mandatory to bring about practical changes in ESP and more specifically
EAP programs in Iranian contexts.
4. Define guidelines to Adapt ESP Teaching in A Specific Professional Area
Adaptation denotes that languages teachers while in the ESP situation should look for
the best of their classes. To do so, the following forms will be of great deal when opting for
the process of materials adaptation. First Modifying the content by adding or deleting some
parts to the material be it a textbook, a manuscript, or a recording. Second, reorganizing the
content in terms of tasks; either by modifying or extending them according to the needs. Now,
the governing condition of all what has been said above is- as stated by Marand (2011:552
citing Graves 1996) -that abundant factors need to be taken into account while adapting
materials.
The most pivotal are: effectiveness in achieving the course objectives and
appropriateness which encapsulates “student comfort and familiarity with the material,
language level, interest and relevance”. The last point to speak here is a frequent question
asked by many ESP teachers or practitioners i.e. what are the ways of materials adaptation?
But before, it should be stressed here that any material adaptation is based on an important
previous process i.e. material evaluation. This last aims at investigating the deficiencies as
well as the lacuna of ELT as to ESP materials. Coming back to the answer of the above
question, it is summarised in the following table.

Way Description
Ommision The teacher leaves out things deemed
inappropriate, offensive, unproductive, etc.,
for the particular group
Addition Where there seems to be inadequate
coverage, teachers may decide to add to
textbooks, either in the form of texts or
exercise material.
Reduction Where the teacher shortens an activity to give
it less weight or emphasis.
Way Description
Extension Where an activity is lengthened in order to
give it an additional dimension. (For example,
a vocabulary activity is extended to draw
attention to some syntactic patterning.)
Rewriting/ Modification Teacher may occasionally decide to rewrite
material, especially exercise material, to
make it more appropriate, more
“communicative”, more demanding, more
accessible to their students, etc.
Replacement Text or exercise material which is considered
inadequate, for whatever reason, may be
replaced by more suitable material. This is
often culled from other resource materials.
Re-ordering Teachers may decide that the order in which
the textbooks are presented is not suitable for
their students. They can then decide to plot a
different course through the textbooks from
the one the writer has laid down
Branching Teachers may decide to add options to the
existing
 In summary that ESP materials adaptation is seen as a result of materials development
and evaluation. All of which, is to meet the students needs in their area of specialism.
Besides, different materials have different potential areas for adaptation. The whole process
of material adaptation is seen where the existing ELT materials: fail or are unable to fulfil the
goals and objectives put forward by those engaged in syllabuses or curricula development.
Furthermore, the material in hand cannot be finished in the time available, require facilities or
equipment or other supporting materials that are not available. The rationale behind all what
has been said throughout this paper is to engage the learners’ personality, beneficial to the
learners’ culture, and cater for the learners’ interests.