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Section 4 THE ROLE OF THE ESP TEACHER

Our explorations of the land of ESP are almost complete, and we come in this final section to consider the role of the ESP teacher, in particular, to consider in what ways the ESP teacher`s lot differs from that of the General English teacher. We have stressed a number of times the need to see ESP within the context of language teaching in general and this applies as much to the role of the teacher as to materials and methodology. Nevertheless, three are important practical ways in which the work of the General English teacher and the ESP teacher differ. We shall conclude our journey by considering two of the most important differences, the one briefly and the other at greater length.

Firstly it will be clear from the preceding chapters that the ESP teacher`s role is one of many parts. Indeed swales (1985) prefers with some justification to use the term `ESP practitioner` rather than `ESP` teacher ` in order to reflect this scope. It is likely that in addition to the normal functions of a classroom teacher, the ESP teacher will have to deal with needs analysis, syllabus design, materials writing or adaptation and evaluation. We do not intend to go into this aspect in any further detail : the whole book is a testimony to the range of parts the ESP teacher is called  upon to play. The second way in which ESP teaching differs from General English teaching is that the great majority of ESP teachers have not been trained as such. They need, therefore, to orientate themselves to a new environment for which they have generally been ill-prepared. This section will deal with this matter of orientation. The appendix details sources of information to help the ESP teacher.

4.     Orientation

1.      The lack of an orthodoxy

Lacking a long tradition which might give some stability, ESP has frequency been a hotbed of conflict-the Wild West of ELT.

The importance of a text is not intrinsic to the text, but devices from the rule the text has to play in the teaching/ learning process.

As the example of the use or non-use of authentic texts illustrates, ESP teacher will often have to orientate themselves to difficult problems with little or no guidance. There are no easy solutions to this situation, but some methods that might be useful are:

·      Surveys of the history and present state of ESP in your own or neighbor countries:

·      Formations of groups of ESP teacher, perhaps allied to any existing national organization for the promotion of ELT, to further the support and development of ESP:

·      Establishment of newsletters and other form of publication, for exchanging information and views about ESP in your country:

·      Provision of pre-and in-service teacher training focusing on ESP issues. Such provision can take a variety of form: workshops, seminars, short courses etc.

2.      New realms of knowledge

As well as having to cope with the uncertain values of the strange land of ESP teachers may also have to struggle to master language and subject matter beyond the bounds of their previous experiences.

Does the ESP teacher need to understand the subject matter of ESP materials?

Taken in isolation, the answer to this question must be ‘yes’. Teachers of social or literary English would not enter the classroom understanding little about the content of the texts to be taught.

We need to ask ourselves three questions:

a)    Does the content of ESP materials need to be highly specialized?

In specialized texts the discourse structure may be denset and more formalized, but not different in kind from that of less specialized material.

The linguistic knowledge needed to comprehend the specialist text is little different from that required to comprehend the general text.

b)   Why do so many ESP teachers find it difficult to comprehend ESP subject matter?

This problem arises from four causes:

                                  i.          There is the tradition in education of separating the Humanities and the Sciences. Languages have usually been allocated to the Humanities camp.

                                ii.          Many ESP teacher are reluctance settlers in the new territory. They would prefer to be teaching literature and Social English in the comfortable environs of ELT, but have been obliged by economic pressure to emigrate.

                              iii.          Considering the scale of the ESP revolution it must be admitted that little effort has been made to retrain teachers or to at least allay their fears.

                              iv.          The general attitude in ESP seems to be to expect teachers to conform to the requirements of the target situations.

c)                   What kind of knowledge is required of the ESP teachers?

ESP teachers do not need to learn specialist subject knowledge. They require three things only:

                                                        i.            A positive attitude towards the ESP content;

                                                      ii.            A knowledge of the fundamental principles of the subject area;

                                                    iii.            An awareness of how much they probably already know.

3.      Change in the status of English teaching

One of the most important features of ESP in relation to General English is that the status of English changes from being a subject in its own right to a service industry for other specialism. In many cases this leads to a lowering of status for the teacher, or at least this seems to be the ESP teacher’s view.

There are only two ways in which the subject has any kind of influence on the language content:

a)         Vocabulary. But even here the differences are far less significant than might be expected.

b)        Certain subject areas show a higher proportion of particular grammatical or structural forms. For example, a register analysis of Scientific and Technological subjects will show a high percentage of passives and nominal/adjectival compounds.

            The reason for having the subject-specific approach rest almost entirely on two  affective factors generated by the learners themselves:

a)      Face validity. Subject-specific materials look relevant

b)      Familiarity. If learners have got used to working with a particular kind of text in the ESP classroom they will be less apprehensive about tackling in the target situation

COMMENTS

In this chapter, we learn about orientation. This chapter is the some of the features that distinguish the role of the ESP teacher. In this way, the difficulties that many ESP teachers encounters can be reduce. So, we should like to present a simple analogy to sum up the approach we have presented in this book