WORSHOP # 1

STEVENSON PORTILLO
JUAN FABRA
JUAN SUAREZ

Ms. ITALA DIAZ

UNIVERITY OF CORDOBA
2019
Universidad de córdoba
facultad de educación y ciencias humanas
departamento de idiomas extranjeros
Course Design –Workshop#1

For the development of this workshop it is required to read section 1 chapter 1 and 2 of the book
English for specific purposes: tom Hutchison and Alan waters.

QUESTIONS:

1. What do you think course design is? briefly explain your thoughts.
2. Take a look at the story on page I “THE CITY OF ELT” and create a comic strip to summarize
it.
3. Why was ESP introduced in your country / city and teaching institution?
4. What kinds of ESP are taught?
5. What needs did tailor the demands of English courses?
6. What new influential ideas did shape in the study of language?
7. What was the gain Swales and the others had on the research of the nature of language at
that time?
8. How did the development in educational psychology contribute to the rise of ESP?
9. What were the three important factors that brought the growth of ESP about?
10. Tell me what need English for and I will tell you the English you need (p.8) how justifiable do
you think this claim is for ESP?
11. “The clear relevance of the English course to their needs would improve the learner’s
motivation and thereby make learning better and faster (p.8)
A- Give three ways in which relevance can be achieved
B- In what ways can motivation affect language learning?
12. Which of the stages outlined above has your country or city experienced?
13. Has it developed in completely different way?
14. Why do you think EST has set trends in the development of ESP?
15. How far would you agree with Widdowson and Alles´ assertion (pp.10-11)
16. What is target situation analysis? and how could it be carried out?
17. How is a target situation analysis usually known? describe it in terms of Munby’s
18. Create a chronological outline to illustrate the origins of ESP.
19. Use a graphical diagram to outline the development of ESP.
20. What do you think course design is? briefly explain your thoughts.

SOLUTION

1. Understood as all the steps features and methodologies that teachers make use
of when it comes to create or design a course, and stablish quality learning
environments and experiences for students.
2. Comic.
3. Based on the information collected through meetings made to three different
teachers we conclude that the main reason for ESP was introduced to our country
was because of the recent concept of globalization and the dominance of the
United States along with their language, reason why English is now considered
the universal language. In an attempt to catch up with globalization the rest of the
countries (including ours) have felt the necessity to use English as a tool to
connect themselves to business-related interaction in order to sustain their
economy but instead of learning the language out of passion or seeking to fully
understand it, there’s a higher necessity to use it for specific purposes such as
acquiring enough proficiency to success at a job interview in which the second
language is used.

4. English for Science and Technology (EST).

a. English for Academic Purposes (EAP): English for Medical Studies
b. English for Occupational Purposes (EOP): English for Technicians

English for Business and Economics (EBE)

a. English for Economics
b. English for Secretaries

English for Social Sciences (ESS)

a. English for Psychology
b. English for Teaching

5. The demands of a Brave New World.

The New World knew an age of massive and unprecedented growth in all the
activities especially the economic, technical and scientific ones, inexorably it
engenders a demand for an international language to communicate, and this
responsibility was accredited to English for various reasons. Consequently, it
created a new generation of learners who knew specifically why they were
learning a language, aiming at fulfilling their daily needs which consisted in the
comprehension of the simplest brochure or manuals to most complicated genres
of discourses as scientific texts.

A revolution in linguistics
Some linguists, being aware of the world changes, began to focus their studies
on the ways in which language is used in real situations. Traditional approach in
language study centred the attention on the grammatical rules governing the
language usage. However, it was found that discourses vary according to
contexts. Then, it was necessary to reorganize the teaching and learning
methodologies according to the language specificities of each situation. The
English needed by engineers, doctors, linguists or officers could be identified by
analyzing the linguistic characteristics of their specialist area of work or study.

Focus on the learner

In the same period, learner’s motivation towards acquiring a foreign language
was the subject study of the educational psychologists, who noticed the use of
different learning strategies by learners; they have different attitudes, needs and
interests. The idea was based on the statement of tell me what you need English
for and I will tell you the English you need. It was a natural expansion of this
philosophy to plan special courses for each range of specific learners. The
movement referred to is the global trend towards “learner-centered education”.
 Like the world, language study and concepts of education fundamentally
changed, the English language teaching changed with it, and knew the birth of
teaching English for Specific Purposes which is considered as the direct result of
the world evolution.

6. Influential ideas
One finding was that the language we speak and write varies considerably, and
in a number of different ways, from one context to another.
In English Teaching for example, there are important differences between the
specific purposes of ESP (the English of commerce and that of engineering).

7. Swales and the others stablished that the view gained ground that the English
needed by a particular group of learners could be identified by analyzing the
linguistic characteristics of their specialist area of work or study.

8. New developments contributed to the rise of ESP, by emphasizing the central

importance of the learners and their attitudes to learning. Learners were seen to
have different needs and interests, which would have an important influence on
their motivation to learn and therefore on the effectiveness learning. The
assumption underlying this approach was that the clear relevance of the English
course to their needs would improve the learners’ motivation and thereby make
learning better and faster.

9. The three important factors: the expansion of demand for English to suit particular
needs; the developments in the fields of linguistics; and educational psychology;
 all three factors seemed to point towards the need for increased specialization in
language learning.

10. I think the passage above is very justifiable because depend on the rising of
ESP, English needed by a Particular Group of learners could be identified by
analyzing the linguistic characteristic of their specialist area of work or study. ESP
provide the need of learners to be proficient in their specialist area.

11.

a. One way in which relevance can be achieved is by analyzing learners’ needs

and focusing on the fulfillment of those, especially for the ones whose
intentions are to get language acquaintance for specific purposes.
Another way is by relying on the fact that there is no time wasted as the course
isn’t focused on topics that may be considered irrelevant to the learners.
Also the fact that the teacher has more time to design the classes due to the
specificity of the available topics makes it easier to design the class in such a
way that is relevant to the students.

b. The motivation plays an important role in language learning as it sets a

constant goal to achieve by students, it can work as a prompting force that
will help them learn the language just for what they need it. Motivation’s
intensity in learner’s lives can even decide the time they will spend before
achieving their goals.
12. Taking into account the five stages announced in the article, we can say that the
experienced in the country are:
- Target Situation Analysis
- Skills and strategies.
13. We’d say some of the stages have indeed been developed in our territory but
there’s a little variation to it, as from our point of view not all of them have been
seen in the history of education regarding our country.

14. We personally think Est truly set trends, because taking into account the
document read, it indicates that in the late 60’s and early 70’s was the greatest
expansion in research into nature in particular varieties of English, so this means
that from this point, different areas regarding teaching English emerged and
between those areas which emerged was ESP, this with objective of giving
learners new English purposes.

15. We are in agreement, most of the time, some English learners faces with some
difficulties at the moment of learning English, this mainly happens because some
of the learners are not acquainted with English and so, when they are having that
unfamiliarity with the use and their needs can’t be met, this produces a great gap
between the learners and the course taught.

16. The aim of this phase is to take the existing knowledge and set it on a more
scientific basis, by establishing procedures for relating language analysis more
closely to learners’ reasons for learning. There is a purpose of ESP course that
support this phase, the purpose is to enable learners to function in situations
which the learners will use the language they are learning, then the ESP course
design process should proceed by first identifying the target situation and then
carrying out the right analysis of the linguistic parts of that situation.
we can see that the learners’ needs of English play an important role in developing
and designing the learning materials to achieve their specific needs.