Lesson 6 The ESP Teacher

University of Algiers 2 \ Faculty of Foreign Languages \ Department of English\ Academic year 2022-2023
Groups: 1&11. Teacher: Ms. Salhi
Course: ESP
LESSON 6: THE TEACHER IN ESP
In ESP the term’ practitioner ‘is preferred to the term ‘teacher’ because of the scope of his roles and
activities compared to the General English teacher. Indeed, the ESP practitioner in addition to the
classroom functions of a regular teacher has many other activities like needs analysis, syllabus
design, material writing or adaptation and evaluation. Another point of divergence is the fact that
most ESP teachers have not been trained for it but learned on the job. This situation led to three
identified challenges.
1. The lack of ESP orthodoxy to provide ready-made-guides
As a relatively new branch in ELT, ESP lacks a long theoretical tradition that might have provided
some sort of stability. Indeed, ESP has frequency been the stage of conflict in ELT. For example, at
the beginning of ESP the use of authentic materials was a subject of debate, and ESP teachers had
to create their own teaching materials like in EGP. Another debatable issue is the notion of
authenticity. In ESP, the authenticity of texts is not intrinsic to the texts, so their authentic features
depend not only in the context of the desired knowledge and their use but also on the role they play
in the teaching/ learning process. This illustrates the fact that ESP teacher will often have to
orientate themselves to difficult problems with little or no guidance as they cannot turn to
linguistics and psychology to find already existing and transferable ready-made answers to find
solutions to the problems they may encounter. The teacher needs to collect answers from his\her
particular teaching circumstances .This entails that he\she needs to be open-minded and always
have degree of skepticism.
2. The fields of knowledge the ESP teacher has to cope with
ESP may imply the need for highly specialized materials. This may become a struggle for ESP
teachers who encounter new subject matters beyond their initial area of expertise like EGP or
literature teachers, leading to a sense of inadequacy to cope with specific teaching situations.
As aforementioned, the content of ESP courses may require the use of highly specialized texts
because this may increase learners ‘motivation. This means the teachers ‘competence is an essential
ingredient in the teaching-learning process as they might be course designers and material
developers.
 Expectations about ESP teachers:

 Have a positive attitude towards the ESP content.
 Have some knowledge of the fundamental principles of the subject area.
 Be aware of his prior knowledge related to the ESP content.
As a matter of fact, ESP teachers should have some common knowledge and interest that match
their ESP learners.
3. The change in the status of ELT
ESP gained a status of its own within ELT because of the change of the status of English which has
changed from being a subject of its own right to become a service for other specialisms. This
situation has made ESP practitioners more accountable than their EGP counterparts.
4. ESP teachers vs EGP teachers
Out of the context set by the previous encountered challenges, some differences can be drawn
between ESP and EGP teachers:
ESP practitioners should think about what is needed and does not follow an off-the shelf or course
book.
b) Understand the nature of their students’ subject area.
c) Work out their language needs in relation to their specialism.
d) Use authentic materials.
e) Use contexts, texts, situations from their subject context.
f) Motivate the students with variety, relevance activities. Take the classroom into the real world
and taking the real world into the classroom.
4.1 Roles of the ESP practitioner:
Given the current situation of ESP and its differences with EGP, the various activities of an ESP
practitioner has led to define new and complementary roles which are essential to simplify the
teaching-learning process in ESP. In language teaching, the term '' role '' identifies the situation of
the teacher, in which this role changes according to the kind of the activities required by the learners
in a classroom situation.
The ESP practitioner :
 As a teacher: similar to the EGP teacher.

 As A course designer and material developer
Dudley-Evans and St John report that '' the role of ESP teachers as providers of material, thus,
involves choosing suitable published material, adapting material when published material is not
suitable or even writing material where nothing suitable exists ''(1998,p. 15)
This role allows more flexibility for the ESP teacher by adapting, editing and modifying the
activities and tasks or designing new materials to suit learners' abilities, thinking and responding
according to the learning situation.
 As a researcher:
''Before designing courses or providing materials, they need to do research in order to investigate
the genres of texts, language, and skills required by the specific field of study ''(Dudley-Evans and
St John, 1998).
The role of ESP teacher as a researcher requires to establish his own way to explore and investigate
genres, skills, strategies , methods , principles , language and all what can simplify ESP teaching
process
 As a Collaborator
There are two levels of collaboration.

‘‘Coordinating with colleagues is considered to be an essential step in any educational task’’
(Nunan & Lamb ,1996). The teacher cooperates with the other teachers, in teamwork to discuss the
courses and comment of their content according to program of specialty.
The second level refers to the collaborative teaching between the subject specialist and language
teacher. ''the objective behind this cooperation is to have knowledge about the subject skills, tasks,
and syllabus and to discover how the subject integrates with the language in order to bring the
suitable material and courses for the learners ''(Dudley-Evans & St. John 1998).
 As an Evaluator
The ESP practitioner is often involved in different types of evaluation. ''The first is students’
evaluation in which the teacher assesses whether the learners have the necessary language and
skills to survive in the academic course or career, and in which he/she assesses the level of their
achievement. The second type of evaluation in ESP is evaluating the course and the teaching
materials in order to assess whether the learners have been able to make use of what they
learned and to find out what they were not prepared for ''(Bojovic, 2006).
References:
Bojovic, M. (2006). Teaching foreign language for specific purposes: teacher development. in:
WWW. Pelf. Uni. Lj. Si/atee ! 978-961-6637-06-0/487-493. Pdf.
Dudley –Evans, T& St, John. M. (1998) .Developments in English for Specific Purposes: A multi-
disciplinary approach. UK: CUP.
Hutchinson, T & Waters, A.(1987). English for specific purposes: a learning centered approach.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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University of Algiers 2 \ Faculty of Foreign Languages \ Department of English\ Academic year 2022-2023

Groups: 1&11. Teacher: Ms. Salhi

LESSON 6: THE TEACHER IN ESP

1. The lack of ESP orthodoxy to provide ready-made-guides

2. The fields of knowledge the ESP teacher has to cope with

 Expectations about ESP teachers:

3. The change in the status of ELT

4. ESP teachers vs EGP teachers

4.1 Roles of the ESP practitioner:

The ESP practitioner :

 As a teacher: similar to the EGP teacher.

There are two levels of collaboration.

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