UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL ABIERTA Y A DISTANCIA

School of education
Programa Licenciatura En Ingls Como Lengua Extranjera
Course 551038A Teaching English for Specific Purposes

Activity 3: Collaborative task 1

Natalia Eugenia Castro cd. 38756982

November 06 2017
CEAD Medellin
Needs and characteristics of ESP courses

By: Natalia Eugenia Castro

Since the World War II and in the last fifty years the English language took a main
position in the world, thanks to events of history and the aspects to polity, also the
economy and industrial revolution because the first objective of Britain and USA was
the economy and the business, of this way the English language spread around the
world and it have become in the number one nowadays.

An ESP (English for Specific Purposes) course is a designed course for cover the
needs of two specific groups, learner and professionals that want to improve their
language skills according with their career and occupations, this modality have
become in an important medium to develop a high level in students and
professionals in different fields.

There are two ways of aboard ESP course, academic and occupational, therefore in
academic purposes these language skills help to learners to have a broad access to
information, textbooks, conferences, magazines and new researches and to
professionals help to have a direct contact with people and information related their
occupations where they use the English language.

For start an ESP course the teacher must do an analysis of needs, like result the
choose of materials is disposed for a deep analysis of needs to students, the teacher
must focus in activities, study field, weakness, abilities and which wants to do with
the English, but this need assess it is not the unique process, Dudley-Evans in the
Japan conference on English for Specific Purposes says:

A definition of ESP, however, requires much more than an acknowledgement of the

importance of needs analysis. The establishment of needs is based on the activities
that the learner has to perform in English, but this is only the first step; once we know
which skills are needed and what activities learners will be engaged in, we need to
carry out a more focused analysis of the genres and language involved in each of
these skills and activities.
According with the author we have three aspects to have in account in ESP course
like 1. Genres of language for example grammar, lexis, discourse, technic
vocabulary etc. 2. An assess of needs to students, these needs can be, in
occupational purposes, productive speaking, interpreting, reading, writing, and
communicative situations in each case in particular, in the case of ESP for academic
purposes the needs can be, listen conferences and reading textbooks, academic
writing, research and use of references and academic notes. 3. Another aspect is
the use of proper methodology, the ESP course is focused to different disciplines
like medicine, engineer, economic, science and technology, on top of that can be
applied such adults and teens in high school therefore the teacher must evaluate the
best methodology according gender and language level.

The main outcome of ESP course is close to people of different disciplines to English
language and to give language tools in many fields, for communicate, research,
produce, and discover new advances in each knowledge branch. Also is a great
opportunity for teachers of TOELF to acquiring wide knowledge about technic
vocabulary, different genres of language and they can collecting experiences only
not in the language field also in many grounds.
 REFERENCES

Dudley-Evans, T. (1998). An Overview of ESP in the 1990s. Taken 01 of

November of 2017 of http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED424775.pdf
Fuertes Olivera, P.A. Samaniego Fernndez, E. (2004). El Ingls para Fines
Especficos: rasgos distintivos. Taken 01 of November of 2017 of
http://www.pedrofuertes.net/uploads/ESP.pdf