Makalah ESP oleh mahasiswa Universitas Muhammadiyah Gresik Semester 6 pagi Greoup 3

ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSE (ESP)

“FUNDAMENTAL VARIABLES OF ESP”

Lecturer:
Drs. Amrin Batubara, M.A.

By group 3:
1. MARNUR RAHMAH
2. ANNA ISTIKHOMAH
3. ENY KUSTIANINGSIH
4. VIVI AGUSTININGSIH
5. KIKI PUTRI S. A
6. WARDATUL ANIFAH
7. M. MUFARIKHUL ANAM
8. ROHMATUL ULYA
9. LIGA PUSPITASARI
10. SUCI HARDANI

ENGLISH DEPARTEMENT
FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION
MUHAMMADIYAH UNIVERSITY OF GRESIK
2009

FUNDAMENTAL VARIABLES OF ESP

I. INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this paper is to set out the kind of basic information that should be available in the initial stage of course planning. This information relates both to the learners and to the context in which the teaching and learning take place.

II. DISCUSSION

1. The boundaries of information collection

· Strevens's paper is concerned with the teaching of English to native speaker of the language (ESL and EFL). He takes the starting point the argument that the teacher needs to be highly adaptable as awareness of the breadth and complexity of pedagogical situations increases. He then categorizes the variable involved in course construction as follows:

· Variable which community controlled Including:

- Cultural restrictions : material and teaching styles
- Organization and physical limits and possibilities( Example : class size, furniture, time factors, availability

- Teaching training standard
- Sociolinguistics attitude and expectation ( the relationship with achievement )
- Educational framework of TEFL ( The age at which English learning and the role of English in the educational system)

· Variables which are teacher-controlled.

· OJH Including:
- Syllabus design
- Methodology
- Material evaluation and production

· Learner variables Including:
- Reasons for learning
- Attitude
- Expectation
- Age
- Proficiency
- Educational level

2. Selected case study

Case study
· Sometimes the information is given straight away but on other occasion need to be sought out: we are concerned with what is both explicit and implicit.

· Use the check list to give advance information.

Number of participant
Number of weeks/month
Number of hours per week
Students' cultural and educational background(s)
Institution's/ sponsor's financial stipulation
Students' proficiency/ies in English
Context of English course
Institution's resources
Age of learners
Any given course requirements
Any reasonable hypothesis based on past experience

· Before trying to categorize some of the factors we must be able to make a basic observation.


3. Categories of basic data

· Data classification
The procedure chosen will depend on given priorities, the time available and the degree of familiarity with certain types of problems and teaching situations.

CONTEXT and LEARNER
CONTEXT
LEARNER
'Fixed' (e.g. govt) requirements
Time available hours per week, weeks/month
Institutional resources: space, technical, hardware, secretarial.
Teaching availability, training, mother-tongue
Financial resources
Group size
'Given' course requirement
setting native speaker, EFL?ESL overseas
Proficiency in English
Cultural background
Educational background
Age
Sex
Present/post status
Academic level
Mother-tongue
Needs
Aptitude
Motivation
Attitudes

The purpose of the paper is to point up direction for research, and to construct a theoretical model, in the author's word, 'by which the language program designer can directly relate learning objectives to resource needs in a way which will enable him to determine what objectives are reasonable, given certain resources, or what resources are required by a given objective set'.

· Patterns of responsibility

a. Learner
b. Course designer/(often) Teacher
c. government or government Agency
d. Business organization
e. Intermediary (between Institution and Sponsor)
f. Teaching Institution

The kinds of influence that the decision-maker are called upon to exert vary from one stage of course design to the next.

4. Summary of major trends

· Learners
- The majority of learners who are studying English not purely for its own sake but in order to use it for a special purpose are adult, from young 'adult' onward, since it is only by that age that they have developed a specialism or job preference.
- As far as the specialism or job/ profession is concerned, we can observe rather superficially that the learners are likely to be either in some sense 'in training', or have completed their training to a professional level. The 'in training' learners are found in both academic and job settings. The former may be undergraduate or postgraduate, with a distinct but by no means exclusive tendency to be studying in an area of science or technology or, to a somewhat lesser extend, in the social sciences.
- Cultural background is obviously related to the learners' mother-tongue and to his/her educational background, and is somewhat controversial.
- It is difficult to discuss learners' mother tongues out of context. Obviously, very-large scale statistical studies of learners' native languages are an extremely difficult and speculative undertaking, particularly in an area as wide-ranging as ESP, and the value of such studies
- Learners' proficiency is an advance variable, but also has considerable impact later on, at the stage of design and implementation.
- In countries when some form of English language teaching is a requirement and teaching operations are on a large scale, placement according to level is possibility. However, in situations with learners of mixed proficiency and varying specialisms, solutions are less easily found. We shall take up the whole question again much later, when discussing how typical ESP groups can be 'structured' in the classroom its self.
- The final factor for consideration here is motivation.
- It is difficult to categorize whole groups of learners in this way, but we might observe that some tertiary level students, who have come to Britain to study their own specialism, actively recent the requirement to attend language classes. So, might students studying overseas object to English as an examination requirement.

· Context

- We can divide contexts into ‘wealthy’, intermediate’, and ‘poor’

· Setting
- Setting refers to the institutional environments in which language learning is to take place, whether in an English-speaking environments or overseas where English is a second or foreign language.
- It may be broken down as follows:

1. Specific language learning environment

- Academic-based language centers
- Language school
- Language training centers

2. Separate but ‘on site’
- Some academic courses
- Firms with language provision

3. Integral on-site learning

· Time
- The predominant view of ‘time’ as major variable in ESP context is bound up with the notion of short, intensive courses, where time is at a premium, and where programmers must optionally be tailored to fit into a limited number of moth or week.
- The list is endless, and the nature and organization of the language items, jobs or study skill, topic and settings, and all the paraphernalia of course design, will have to be adjusted to suit the time factor.
- It is often the case that learners have only limited time to spare, but that they can spare it over a longer period.
- We are ignoring for present purposes the type of course which is both intensive and of relatively long duration, because although decisions as to course structure and methodology will have to be equally principled, time is not a major restrictive factor.

· Institutional and financial resources
- This is not the kind of information that is difficult to come by in advance, even if teachers are unable to have much influence.
- A rather harassing pedagogical situation occurred when some kind of group work was felt to be methodologically appropriate and teacher and learners were in the right place in the right time.
- Most teachers work somewhere in the middle of the scale, with adequate resources which work most of the time, and are unlikely to be called upon to operate at the extremes of their ingenuity.

5. Relationship between variable

- The intention of this chapter has simply been to engage in an operation at the surface, to attempt to set up a taxonomy which might be useful for checking of the presence or absence of certain factors in the early stages of programme design.
- However useful such an exercise is in practical term, it could be objected that the taxonomy gives little more than a number of static reference points.
- attern of interaction between such variables as:

Learners’ ages: with time available
with institutional resources
with setting
with ‘given’ requirement
with numbers
with motivation, and so on

III. CONCLUSION

From this paper, we can conclude that before doing the course planning knowing the key factors involved is very important. We can categorize the categories as follow:
· The boundaries of information collection
· Selected case Study
· Categories of Basic Data
We have already stated or implied pattern of interaction between such variable as:
· with time available
· with institutional resources
·
Learners' ages:
with setting
· with 'given' requirement
· with numbers
· with motivation, etc


REFERENCES
McDonough. Jo.1984. ESP in perspective. Collin ELT: London
Hutgchinson.Tom. 1987. English for specific purpose. Cambrige University Press:London

Questions:

1. What are categorizes of variables involved in course constriction?
- In variable which community controlled
- variable which are teacher controlled
- learner’s variable

2. What are relationships between variables?
Learners' ages:
with time available
- with institutional resources
- with setting
- with 'given' requirement
- with numbers
- with motivation