Научная статья на тему 'ESP - AS A CHALLENGE FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS FOR A SPECIFIC APPROACH TO THE SUBJECT'

ESP - AS A CHALLENGE FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS FOR A SPECIFIC APPROACH TO THE SUBJECT Текст научной статьи по специальности «Языкознание и литературоведение»

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Ключевые слова
ESP / SPECIFIC VOCABULARY / KNOWLEDGE / SPECIALTY / ACADEMIC SKILLS / NATIVE SPEAKER / FIELD OF SCIENCE / COMMUNICATION SKILLS / LANGUAGE

Аннотация научной статьи по языкознанию и литературоведению, автор научной работы — Talibdjanov B.

This article explores the challenges faced by ESP students and teachers while teaching specific content and specific vocabulary of an ESP course. The main problem for teachers is often insufficient knowledge of the specialty.

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Текст научной работы на тему «ESP - AS A CHALLENGE FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS FOR A SPECIFIC APPROACH TO THE SUBJECT»

training already. The playing along with educational and work activities occupies a considerable place in the life of schoolchild. It is an important advantage of role play use and an ignoring of that moment could be a great methodological mistake. The role play removes artificiality from the teaching process, a constraint in the communication of learners, attracts them by its fidelity, adequacy to life. One should consider preliminarily what an exercise is and what its features are in order to define the place of role play in the system of exercises in the elementary stage of training, to establish whether the role play is an exercise. The following is inherent to the exercise as a type of learning activity: a) purpose; b) nature; c) organization; f) perfecting of action execution way. Is there a purpose in the role play? There is no doubt. The role play aims at the reproduction of relations between the speech partners. Is the organization inherent to the role play? Yes, it is. The organization lies in the fact that it clear outlines the spheres of real speech activity of schoolchild in the elementary stage of training; it is directed to the speech training and not only to the action; it is uninterrupted and occupies not only a

lesson or the series of lessons but more prolonged period; the organization of the role play makes itself evident in the fact that any play should combine with several previous and subsequent plays and it ensures a rapid recombining of speech material. During our classes we used role play. It was interesting and useful. I

like role plays. They stimulate students so well and, in a way, stimulate teachers; too, because there are roles to be thought over, the research tasks to be prepared. I find them very useful sine they are fun and it improves creativity and speaking. Students enjoy themselves while learning. But for smaller plays or mini-plays it is a very effective way of developing students' reaction and imagination. Role-play is an effective technique to animate the teaching and learning atmosphere, arouse the interests of learners, and make the language acquisition impressive.

References

1. Gillian Porte Ladousse, Role Play, Oxford,

1987

2. Jeremy Harmer. The Practice of English Language Teaching, Longman, 1989

3. Joanna Budden, British Council, Spain http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/role-play Role-play Submitted by TE Editor on 6 January, 2004

4. Serguey Shishkin, Role play as one of types of exercises in the elementary stage of training, 2012 http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/serguey-shishkin/role-play-one-types-exercises-elementary-stage-training http://www.teachingenglish.org/ Submitted by on 11 March

5. M. Mitrevska Role-Playing As a Way of Learning Submitted On October 19, 2010

ESP - AS A CHALLENGE FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS FOR A SPECIFIC APPROACH TO

THE SUBJECT

Talibdjanov B.

Researcher,

Namangan Institute of Engineering and Technology

Namangan, Uzbekistan

Abstract

This article explores the challenges faced by ESP students and teachers while teaching specific content and specific vocabulary of an ESP course. The main problem for teachers is often insufficient knowledge of the specialty.

Keywords: ESP, specific vocabulary, knowledge, specialty, academic skills, native speaker, field of science, communication skills, language

Everyone can agree that the language for engineering, electronics or medicine is a different language. Even if you are a native speaker with a very high level of academic skills, English for Engineering and Electronics seems like a different language to us.

ESP training is aimed at developing professional communication skills in English, depending on their field of professional activity. This means that such training should be related to the specifics of the specialization of students. Thus, English for a Specific Purpose includes specialized programs that are designed to develop the communicative use of English in a specialized field of science, work or technology.

Students learn English for specific purposes, and the goal of ESP is to train a specialist who can use a foreign language as the main means of communication when communicating and collaborating with foreign partners in the professional field and in real situations.

Therefore, ESP teaching is considered specialty-oriented as it is subject to the specific (professional) needs of the learners.

Using a foreign language, the student also acquires deep professional knowledge. Thus, it is difficult to determine where language learning ends and where subject learning begins, or vice versa.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the main issues for teachers and students of ESP in light of the thematic content, to discuss the readiness of students to learn ESP, their relationship to learning ESP, taking into account the subject approach.

Challenges for the ESP teacher. One of the characteristics or even a critical feature of ESP is that the course must include specialized language (especially terminology) and content. In most cases, ESP teachers are not specialists in the professional fields of students.

This is why the main challenge in teaching ESP is the struggle to master the language and subject. Teachers have to learn from texts whose content they know little or nothing. In addition, the ESP teacher is the curriculum developer and is responsible for teaching material and assessment.

The main problem in curriculum design is that the developer of the ESP program is not a specialist in a specific field (e.g. engineering), so he / she cannot independently decide which topics to include in the curriculum in order to provide the required terminology. He also finds it very difficult to organize topics in the most appropriate order. Care should be taken that ESP classes do not precede topics in special subjects, since the ESP teacher is not a subject matter expert, this could lead to misunderstandings. Moreover, if a topic has already been discussed in a special subject, this motivates students and gives them confidence in communication or discussion.

Another problem is the selection and adaptation of the text. Without being a specialist in a particular field, an ESP teacher cannot decide for himself how to adapt the text, which will remain the most important information in terms of the subject. The decision has to be made with regard to the texts: on the one hand, the texts should not be too difficult, because neither the ESP teacher nor the students have such a high level of professional knowledge; on the other hand, the text should not be too popular, because some students have some confidence in their professional knowledge, and if the text is too simple for them in terms of the subject, they tend to underestimate it in terms of language. The text should contain some problems that can activate the professional knowledge of students.

The lack of close collaboration and coordination between material educators and curriculum developers is a problem that still exists. Content educators should have a lot of responsibility for introducing students and teaching them in a particular discipline. Developing homework assignments or oral exam assignments together with content experts can be a great help for ESP teachers.

In addition, students study ESP in the first semester. In an ESP course, students must have at least an intermediate level of General English. In practice, we have to deal with groups of mixed abilities in terms of language proficiency and professional competencies. Some students speak English very well; other students are very well versed in professional fields (i.e., they know the content of native speakers well, but do not speak English). The first group wants to practice their general English and are quite disappointed with the style of technical English. For example, doing tedious reading tasks about diode meanings can demotivate them to learn ESP. A group that feels confident in their professional field has a much stronger motivation to learn ESP. Although, if some of them don't have a good knowledge of General English, they would like to spend a lot more time studying grammar, articles, etc.

If the English teacher is not competent in electronics, and the students are not competent in English and electronics, how can they communicate in different aspects of the educational process? How does an ESP

teacher deal with the challenges he / she faces in his / her job?

Hutchinson and Waters are part of the answer. ESP teachers do not need to study subject knowledge. They only require three things:

• Positive attitude towards the content of the ESP;

• Knowledge of the fundamental principles of the subject area;

• Awareness of how much they probably already know.

In other words, an ESP teacher should not become a subject teacher, but rather an interested student of the subject.

However, some teachers may develop sufficient knowledge of a subject to confidently teach it in specific texts. But even the most dedicated ESP teacher realizes that his knowledge of the subject has its limits and may feel the need to work more closely with the teacher of the subject area, perhaps to develop a team curriculum.

Another problem may arise later, when the ESP teacher has acquired a higher level in a special subject. An ESP teacher may tend to rate media content the same way they rate real content.

Teachers may have difficulty learning both language and content, but in the real world, people learn language and content at the same time, and teachers need to be able to deal with both language and content in their classrooms.

Another thing that ESP teachers can do is try to develop their competence in the students' specific professions. Teaching experience and knowledge of student specialties gives the confidence of an ESP teacher.

However, teaching ESP involves much more than teaching English through specific materials and content. ESP training combines the development of linguistic skills along with the acquisition of specific information. Even homework should be related to both the specialty and the specified skills.

In conclusions in a higher education setting, it is very important that ESP teachers establish channels of communication with material teachers and curriculum designers.

ESP teachers should not attempt to teach the subject itself, but should strongly encourage students to discuss the matter with their subject area instructor. Mixing skill-based and topic-based approaches seems to be more relevant to the needs of the learning situation to meet the learning needs of the ESP course.

References

1. Jurate Helsvig. Vilniauskolegija

2. Hutchinson T., Waters A. English for Specific Purposes: 1996

3. Jordan R.R. English for Academic Purposes. Cambridge University Press. 1997

4. Harmer, J. (1998). How to teach English: An introduction to the practice of English language teaching. Edinburgh Gate, Harlow, England: Addison Wesley Longman. Hyland, K. (2003). Writing and teaching writing.

5. In J.C. Richards (Ed.), Second language writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kroll, B.

(1990). Second language writing: research insights for the classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

6. Leki, L. (1992). Understanding ESL writers: A guide for teachers. Portsmouth, NH: Hein Hemann.

Matsuda, P.K. (2003). Second language writing in the twentieth century: A situated history perspective.

7. In B. Kroll (Ed.) Exploring the dynamics of second language writing (pp. 15-34). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

TEACHING SUBJECT MATTER THROUGH ENGLISH AS THE MEDIUM OF INSTRUCTION

Tillaboyeva O.

Researcher,

Namangan Institute of Engineering and Technology

Namangan, Uzbekistan

Abstract

Learners are thus entitled to be taught the required competences and equally, the expectations that they can use such competences put on learners in other subjects are justified if they are to be successful in learning. Teaching different subject in English is useful for students because they improve and know about many professors ideas in different countries also they take deeply knowledge by their subject. They can understand their specialty in English and explain this language. Some groups of learners need particular help because they do not have in their environment the support needed to acquire ordinary language competence and even less, academic language of schooling.

Keywords: communication, competences, EMI, linguistic forms, particular, ordinary language, modes of communication, different subjects.

During the period of integration of the world community into the process of globalization, the Republic of Uzbekistan is developing on the path of independence and development, finding its rightful place in the international arena, training competitive personnel, ensuring the independent development of our country. It is carrying out profound reforms in the socio-political, economic, cultural and educational spheres.

The effectiveness of these reforms in the interests of society and the individual directly depends on the intelligence, skills and qualifications of the professionals trained in the education system. The rapid development of information and communication technologies, the popularity of the Internet requires the acquisition of modern knowledge in all areas, the elimination of cultural and economic barriers. This, in turn, requires a deep focus on mastering foreign languages and training foreign-speaking professionals.

Language and other modes of communication are crucial to learning in subjects in schooling other than Language as Subject. There are many implicit expectations of learners in other subjects with respect to their communicative competences and these competences are an integral part of learning. Learners are thus entitled to be taught the required competences and equally, the expectations that they can use such competences put on learners in other subjects are justified if they are to be successful in learning. The language needed is more than the ordinary communicative skills developed in everyday life and academic language has to be taught and learnt deliberately. Other semiotic competences are also required as subjects are taught with the help of for example graphs or statistical tables. Some groups of learners need particular help because they do not have in their environment the support needed to acquire ordinary language competence and even less, academic lan-

guage of schooling. There are implications for curriculum policy and design and for teaching methods which include cooperation and a holistic view of language learning in schools.

Whatever the subject, all knowledge building in the school context involves working with language. The purpose of this article is to suggest a general approach enabling different levels of specification of these language dimensions to be classed in transversal descriptive categories. The aim is to describe the process leading from units for analysis of actual uses to the identification of linguistic forms and mechanisms appropriate to those uses. It is aimed not only at the authors of curricula and textbooks and the designers of tests, but also at teachers, and especially teachers of subjects sometimes quite wrongly described as "non-linguistic", to draw their attention to the language components of work in their subject. It is also relevant to teacher trainers, particularly those responsible for the teaching of disciplines other than languages taught as a subject.

Our institute members believed EMI programmes should only use English, but many also said that students' mother tongue could be a useful pedagogical tool within an EMI course. Teachers seemed to regard EMI more as a way to teach the content, rather than as a tool for learning English. Because they saw their main goal as delivering the subject matter, they did not see the use of the students' mother tongue from time to time as being detrimental to their learning.

In contrast, the students in the study preferred only English to be used (Uzbek students more than other students), because they saw EMI as a way to improve their English. The students were aware that they often found it hard to understand the content, but despite this, they still wanted to be taught in English, as they viewed improving their English as the primary aim of the EMI course. However, the interviews also showed that, although students preferred

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