Ginanjar Nurzaman | 1122040026 | English Education Department | A-2012

ESSAY ESP
Lecturer : Muhammad Aminudin, M.Pd

By
Ginanjar Nurzaman
1122040026

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF TARBIYAH AND TEACHER TRAINING
SUNAN GUNUNG DJATI ISLAMIC STATE UNIVERSITY
BANDUNG
2015

A. BACKGROUND
As an International Language, English is important to learn and teach. Accordingly,
due to its importance, English is learnt and taught from elementary to tertiary levels. The
purpose of learning the language is essentially a differed purpose, differed till the tertiary level
of education, normally at university, where, it is agreed, knowledge of English would be helpful

in their academic studies. Immediate aims of learning English are defined by the requirements
of examinations. In such a situation English is no longer a general subject that must be learned
in order to pass the language examination, but it is probably the medium of instruction and
access to scholarly works and literature written in English or for particular reasons connected
with their studies or their job (professions). For this reason the extent of teaching for specific
and limited purposes is steadily growing. It is because the learners are more aware and know
specifically why they are learning the language. The situation like that can be found and resulted
in the expansion of one particular aspect of English language teaching (ELT), namely the
teaching of English for Specific Purposes (ESP).
Jeremy and krzawnowzky (2013: 5) argue that ESP contrasts with General English,
which is aimed at a very wide range of learners. It also contrasts with Business English,
although there is considerable overlap between the two branches. A lawyer and a marketing
executive might both benefit from attending the same Business English course, focusing on the
generic skills they both need at work (such as writing an email or participating in a meeting),
but they might get more from attending an ESP course in legal or marketing English
respectively as this will focus more precisely on their needs.
Teaching English at tertiary level, therefore, is to be suitable with major context
which is called English for specific Purposes (ESP). In English language teaching, rise to the
view that there are important differences English, say, the English of commerce and that of
engineering. These ideas married up naturally with the development of English course for
specific groups of learners (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987: 7). Additionally, Harmer (1991: 1)
states that the term English for Specific Purposes has been applied to situations where students
have some specific reason for learn the language. As a matter of fact, recently the teaching of
English for specific purposes become fashionable.
In English for Specific Purpose, English is taught to meet the English needs in area
of specialization. The need in area of specialization are worth considering since the language we
speak and write varies from one context to another (Hutchinson and Waters, 1986: 8).
Additionally, Sprat (2005: 4) said to meet Students personal needs, teacher should choose
suitable materials, topic, speed of lesson. Activities, approach to teaching (actifity-bassed, topicbassed), treatment of individual learners, skills, interaction patterns (group, pair or individual),
and types of feedback. Meanwhile, in order for teacher to meet students learning needs, they
should choose suitable materials and topic, activities, interaction pattern, approach to teaching,
language and skill level of language and skills, learning strategies and workload.
Materials play an important role in teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and
materials writing is an indispensable element of ESP practice. For that reason Hutchinson and
Waters (2010: 107) contend that there exists already an established tradition, in keeping with

which ESP teaching practitioners design and produce in-house teaching materials which are
generally, though not always, addressed to the learners of a particular institution. This pattern of
work is considered to be something of an abuse of teachers, few of whom seem to have had any
training in the skills and techniques of materials development.
The objective of the essay is to discuss the role of materials in ESP as well as the key
aspects of their selection and development. Accordingly, the essay consists of five parts,
background and Conclusions.

B. RESEARCH PROBLEMS
Based on the background of broblem above, this essay is focuss in What is the
role of materials in ESP as well as the key aspects of their selection and development?. This
essay will divide into three questions, there are:

1. Why is material development important in ESP class?

2. How do teachers develop her/his instructional materials?
3. What do the research say about material development in ESP class?
C. LITERATURE REVIEW
A. Definition of English for Specific Purpose
English for Specific Purpose as an approach rather than product-meaning that
English For Specific Purpose (ESP) does not involve a particular kind of language,
teaching material or methodology (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 16). Widdowson
(1983:10) is of the opinion that ESP is simply a matter of describing a particular area of
language and then using this description as a course specification to impart to learners the
necessary restricted competence with this particular area.
Additionally, Johns, Paltridge, and Belcher (2004: 1) defined that English for
Specific Purpose (ESP) is an approach to foreign language teaching and learning that- as
opposed to what is known as general English or, more disparagingly, English for
Obvious Reason.
The basic question of ESP is : why does this learned need to learn a foreign
language? The purpose of learning English became the core (Johns et al, 2001: 1).
Robinsons (1991: 3) definition of ESP is based on two criteria, there are : ESP
is normally goal-directed, and ESP courses develop from needs analysis, which aim to
specify what exactly it is that students have to do through the medium of English, and a
number of characteristics which explain that ESP courses are generally constrained by a

limited time period in which their objectives have to be achieved and are taught to adults
in homogenous classes in terms of the work or specialist studies that the students are
involved in. Robinsons mention of homogenous classes as a characteristic of ESP may
lead to the same conclusion. However, much of ESP work is based on the idea of a
common-core of language and skills belonging to all academic disciplines or cutting
across the whole activity of business. ESP teaching should always reflect the underlying
concepts and activities of the discipline. Stevens (1988: 103) definiton of ESP makes a
distinction between:
a.

Absolute characteristics ( language teaching is designed to meet specified

needs of the learner; related in content to particular disciplines, occuption
and activities; centred on the language appropriate to those activites in
syntax, text, discourse, semantics, etc,. And analysis of the discourse;
designed in contrast with general English), and

b.

Two variable characteristics ( ESP may be restricted to the languae skills

to be learned).
The division of ESP into absolute and variable characteristics, in particular, is

very helpful in resoving arguments about what is and is not ESP. From the definitions
above, we can see that ESP can but is necessarily concerned with a specific discipline,
nor does it have to be aimed at certain age group or ability range. ESP should be seen
simple as an approach to teaching. Such a view echoes that of Hutchinson et al (1987: 19)
who state that ESP is an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to
content and methodd are based on the learners reason for learning.
ESP is considered as one of the most significant areas in language teaching field
which was in reality teaching languages towards learners needs in order to economize
the instruction of the language and for the optimization of the learning process (Farhady,
2005:8). According to Belcher (2004), ESP is an attempt to help learners accomplish their
academic and occupational needs and goals. Additionallty, Farhady (2005: 10) proposes a
list of theoritical underpinnings which are inherent in ESP as being based on learner
needs, being goal-directed, serving a utilitarian purpose, relating in content to a certain
MATERIALS
NEEDS

METHODS

LEARNERS

4
TEACHERS
ESP

CONTEXS

discipline, having the possibility in focusing on a particular language skill, following the
prefabricated methodology, paying attention to the instructional contexts and finally the
learner and teachers; characteristics. The following figure illustrates parameters for an
ESP course.
Zahra (2013: 3) The last source of materials is the ones from the students
which she thinks is the best help that ESP provides for language teaching methodology
which includes giving more weight to learners interest and participation and changing
the role of the instructor to a collaborator which will both enhance learners involvement
and teaching relevance.

B. Material Development in ESP

Hutchinson and waters (1987: 107) explained that materials is help to organise
the teaching-learning process, by providing a parth through the complex mass of the
language to be learnt. Good materials should, therefore, provide a clear and coherent unit
structure which will guide teacher and learner through various activities in such a way as
to maximise the chances of learning.
The availability of ESP teaching materials designed for such

a range of

contexts of language study is limited and conditioned by marketing interes and predicted
sales, currency or import restrictions. As a result, ESP eachers are frequently confronted
with the task of either designing needs-specific materials or adapting commercially
produced ones to fit various needs nad goals. Also, in many cases, ESP course materials
are either completely replaced or only partly complemented with Web-based language
lessons.
Materials play a curcial role in ESP and have received considerable attention in
the literature of the subject. They depend on the methodologies adopted, forming with
them the interface between teaching and learning, or the points at which the course
needs, objectives and syylabuses are made tangiable to both learners and teachers
(Hyland, 2006: 89).
Materials are used to stimulate and support language instruction and their
design and/or adaptation is an important element of ESP teaching practice. Though
predominantly paper-based, they may also include audio and visual aids, computerand/or Internet-mediated resources, real objects, or performance (Hyland, 2006). Since
the objective of ESP materials is to expose learners to real language as it is used in a

range of professional and/or academic settings, they are to be closely related to students
target needs.
Material development is basically dealing with selection, adaptation, and
creation of teaching materials (Ezbieta 2013: 14 cited by nunan 1988). In practice, it
focused on evaluation, adaptation of published materials and creation (development of
teaching materials by teacher in line with the existing syllabus). The principles of
materials design by David Nunan (1988,1-14) that she thinks is appropriate in developing
ESP materials aiming at helping students of Faculty of Communication or students of
English Department who take communication courses:
Principle 1: Materials should be clearly linked to the curriculum they serve. The reading
texts should be about communication, and the topics of the texts students
must have should be relevant to their study, such as the types and definition
of communication etc.
Principle 2: Materials should be authentic in terms of text and task. Nunan (1988) says
that texts and tasks are authentic if they were designed for purposes other
than language teaching. An example of an authentic text is one taken from a
magazine and an authentic task is one that people do on their jobs. The texts
are taken from communication books that students should read in their study.
Although they might be used in class, these books are not meant for
language teaching. Therefore, they can be considered authentic text. Besides,
some assignments require the students to select readings from magazines or
newspapers. The authentic task that students should do is also given in the
course. The activities students must do should be relevant to their study and
their work later on using the four skills every time they meet because in their
work later on, they should also use the language in that way. Therefore, the
activities students do are making summaries and paraphrases, writing their
comments and opinions and evaluating other works. Because later on
students will work by themselves as well as in groups, activities are
combined, both individual and group work.
Principle 3: Materials should stimulate interaction. Student-student interaction enhances
language learning. For example, when they have to do peer correction, they
will have greater opportunity to use language. Being critical to others work,
they will be aware of their own language. Since their works are corrected by
their peers, they will have less stressful environment in using English. This
will also encourage students to help one another and work in groups. If the
result is good, they will have greater motivation to learn. To encourage

interaction, some activities in cooperative learning are also used such as:
Jigsaw, Write-Pair-Share, Write-Pair-Square etc.
Principle 4: Materials should allow learners to focus on formal aspects of language.
When students write their comments, teachers and peers will correct their
grammars and students will learn from the teachers and the peers input.
This also explains the assignments of picking up readings from newspapers
and magazines.
Principle 5: Materials should encourage learners to develop learning skills and skills in
learning. Materials should make students able to develop further their skill in
learning new things and develop their own basic knowledge to make further
progress, both in the area of communication and in the language.
Principle 6: Materials should encourage learners to apply their developing language
skills to the world beyond the classroom. As students have to write, give oral
comments and discuss texts both from magazines and newspapers or other
kind of readings, it is expected that they will be accustomed to writing,
speaking, reading and listening to comments in English in their study and
work.

D. DISCUSSION
1. Why is material development important in ESP class?
Material development in ESP class is very crucial and it shows the effort and
creativity of the course designers as well as the teachers. Material can be defined as
anything or any source that can be used to assists the students in the process of language
learning. It can be textbooks, workbooks, audio, video, photocopied hand outs, paper
cutting or anything that informs the language being learned (tomlinson, 2008: 2).
Materials too can also be in the form of instructional, experiential, elicitative or
exploratory (Tomlison; 2001: 2).
Materials are used to scaffold learners understandings of language use. This
function implies that the materials provided to learners are meant to support their
evolving control of different texts and engage them in thinking about and using the
language. Well-selected and designed materials give learners a chance to get acquainted
with a variety of language samples that do not follow a rigid format, but provide the
opportunity to discuss, write, analyze and manipulate language salient structures and/or
vocabulary. When graded according to the learners proficiency level and well-matched to
their current learning needs, materials offer constructive feedback on individual linguistic
development.

Using material development in ESP class has been influential over the past two
decades. Moreover, many practitioners involved in foreign language teaching and
research have argued about the benefits of and important of using material development
materials (Shrum and Glisan, 2000:paltridge, 2001; Guariento & Morley, 2001; Kelly &
Kelly & Offner & Vorland, 2002). Materials designed for teaching ESP are directly
targeted at a particular learner group and/or related to their reality. For that reason, it is
necessary that the materials developer determine particular features of the target language
that should be taught to a particular learner or learner group.
An important characteristic of developing material in class of ESP, which is of
great significance within communicative approach, and which seems of particular
relevance for ESP, is that of authenticity. According to Gilmore (2004), interest in
authentic materials is associated with the name of Henry Sweet (1899) and its
contemporary reappearance goes back to the discussion on the issue of communicative
competence that was initiated by Chomsky (1965) and Hymes (1966).
The writer conclude that material development in ESP class is the most
important part in the establishment of any ESP courses or class. Students or learners as
well as sponsors needs will be answered in the Needs Analysis forms given to them. If
there is a gap between the respondents, the ESP practitioner or the syllabus designers will
have to look at the middle point or the happy mean to satisfy both parties.

2. How do teachers develop her/his instructional materials?

When teaching ESP courses, course designers as well as materials designers
should be able to reach to different target audience. This is because having different target
audience can lead to having a variety of materials because the need to cater to their
different needs. For example materials for English for Tourism and English for Aviation
would be totally different. This does not only happened when it comes to developing
materials but same goes to methods and teaching approaches such as lexical, task based,
communicative and problem solving.
Ezbieta (2013: 46) explained that developments in teaching English to preexperienced adult students at the tertiary level of education which include:
(1) Content-and-language integrated learning,
(2) Use of didactic case studies,
(3) Corpus studies conducted for teaching purposes and aimed at identifying high
frequency language elements: terms, specialized lexis items, collocations, phrases,
formulae, acronyms, etc., that need to be prioritized in language courses,

(4) More effective course-books with higher terminology indexes,

(5) Extended use of online materials,
(6) Teaching writing for specific purposes, and
(7) Teaching professional culture and non-linguistic skills.
Discussing the issue of teacher-generated material, Hutchinson and Waters
(2010) propose a materials design model, which provides a coherent framework for the
integration of various aspects of learning: input, content, language and task.
INPUT

CONTENT

LANGUAGE

TASK
INPUT : This may be a text, dialogue, video-recording, diagram or any piece of
communication data, depending on the needs of teachers in providing variety to
the lessons.
CONTENT FOCUS : Language is not an end in itself, but a means of
conveying information and feelings about something. Non-linguistic content
should be exploited to generate meaning-ful communication in the classroom.
LANGUAGE FOCUS : Here learners have a chance to take the language to
pieces.
TASK : The ultimate purpose of language learning is language use. Materials
content and language knowledge built up through the unit are used in the task.
On journal of michael johnson (2015: 87) explained that type, content, and
characteristics of instructional materials were observed to play important roles in
language learning engagement, and that classroom variables, including individual and
group characteristics, also contributed to engagement.

INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS

TYPE

CONTENT

CHARACTER

ACTIVITY TYPES: in this study activity and task types included warm-up,
cloze, discussion, dialogue, vocabulary, listening, and speaking activities. The
different types of activities were observed to produce varying degrees of
engagement.
CONTENT: content was observed to play an important role in the degree of
student engagement with the instructional both holistically, and in terms of
individual types of activities.
CHARACTHERS: Characteristics refer to design or qualitative features of the
activities and tasks comprising the instructional materials. The most prevalent
observed characteristic was the relative degree openness of tasks and activities.
Three main characteristics or factors that need to be considered or look into
seriously when designing ESP materials are, first, criteria of implementing or modifying
materials, subjective criteria on what teachers and students want from that material and
lastly objective criteria, which is what the material really offers (Hutchinson & Waters,
1987: 126). This is really important because then only the author would be able to
produce a good set of materials that will make the learners as well as the teachers
teaching the specific course at ease throughout the whole process of language and
knowledge learning.

3. What do the research say about material development in ESP class?

In the process of designing ESP materials, there are also many suggestions on
the factors that shaped a good set of ESP materials. Among them, are for authors to look
at topics or specialty. Learners situation, general and specific proficiency of the language
at entry and exit levels, students previous educational and cultural experience. Authors
should also look at types of skills to be developed and expected outcomes of the learning
goals
Hyland (2006: 106) argues that though the materials development process can
vary widely, depending on local circumstances, it typically begins with the identified
need for materials, e.g. students require further practice in a particular area, which is
followed by the teacher exploring a given area in order to gain a better understanding of
the particular skill(s) or feature(s) involved. Next, an appropriate input source is located,
e.g. a text or video, and exploited to design interesting and credible activities or tasks that
relate to learners target needs. Finally, after being used in the classroom, the materials are
evaluated for their success in meeting the needs identified at the onset of the materials
design process, typically through teacher judgments and/or learner questionnaires.

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Materials used should benefit students or learners so that when they go out to
the real world they will be not only able to function well in the real world but also they
should be able to use English in their working life. (Harding, 2007, p 10 -11) suggested
three recommendations to consider while coming up with a set of materials:
a.

Use context, texts, and situations from the students subject area Whether
they are real or stimulated they will naturally involve the language the
students need.

b.

Exploit authentic materials that students use in their specialism or vocation

Do not be put off by the fact that it may not look like normal English.

c.

Make the tasks authentic as well as the tasks Get the students doing
things with the materials that they actually need to di their wok

Bojovic (____: 493) Said that the material (the content) should be provided by
the professors or experts in the subject. It should always be authentic (the main purpose
of teaching skills is to enable students to deal with authentic information despite their
level of English), up-to-date (the informational exchange is growing more intense), and
relevant for the students specializations (they ought to be given the information
representative for their target language use situation).
To get students attention in learning English in their context is not easy hence
students should find the materials challenging, interesting and usable in order to attract
their attention and also to motivate the students or learners to learn. This is one of the
principles of social constructivist approach to language learning as suggested by Wilson
and Yang (2007). Shahin (2013:4) cited by Swales (1990) suggested that when materials
are not available, adaptation and simplifications by eliminating dense contents are
desirable to make text more semi authentic. These changes can be done by slightly
modifying the style, register and vocabulary. This has given many materials designers,
rooms and space in coming up with authentic materials. Most of the time sponsors would
like to see authentic materials that their staffs relate it straight away with their working
life.

E. CONCLUSSION
In conclude, using skills as a framework of ESP, The teachers are provided with
the necessary knowledge and tools to deal with their own students spesializations. Must
rememberd that ESP teacher are not specialists in the field, but in teaching English, their
subject is English for the proffesion but not the proffesion in English. They help students,
who know their subject better tnhan the teachers do, develop the essential skills in

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understanding, using, and/or presenting authentic information in their profession. The

teacher must able to necessary tools, frameworks, and principles of course design to apply
them to new material.
This can be done if the designers and authors begin the whole process of
developing materials with Needs Analysis. It is the most important part in the establishment
of any ESP courses. Students or learners as well as sponsors needs will be answered in the
Needs Analysis forms given to them. If there is a gap between the respondents, the ESP
practitioner or the syllabus designers will have to look at the middle point or the happy
mean to satisfy both parties.
Another factor in developing materials is the level of authenticity of the
material itself. Designers should consider using real life, authentic materials that reflect the
target audience specialization. This will help students who are weak in the English Language
to at least comprehend reading text for example due to the background knowledge that they
have. ESP is not merely teaching grammar, reading, listening and speaking without any
context in it. All these four skills are important for the learners or the students but it should
be integrated with their field of study so that the background knowledge that they have will
help them in understanding terms and jargons easily. By using real life materials, students
too will be happy and will feel.

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Selangor International Islamic University College, Malaysia, Department of
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