Materials and their use; planning a lesson.

Engineering texts might be too boring to generate motivation; what is needed is probably handicrafts, describing a mechanism and in general able to meet the following prerequisites:

• It should be relatively new to your students;

• It should be somehow related to the field;

• It should allow for attainment of new lexis;

• It should preferably deal with a specific problem (e.g. whether the device described would work or not; science popular magazines are ideal for the purpose

• Testing is aimed at awareness or understanding level; it is ideal when the text is necessary for follow-up projects, hands-on tasks, extensive round table discussions etc.

Motivation factors directly depend on analysis of prior learning experience (number and professional competence of teachers, opportunities for out-of-class experience, subject knowledge. ESP is intrinsically integrative.

When and where will ESP take place is no small consideration, same as whether it is concurrent with need for English (EAP) or whether it is sort of investment (EVP). EAP is always safer since 3-5 years pre-need doesn’t guarantee that competences will be preserved; so we should ensure at least that English sources are used in course papers and diploma works and lay a heavy emphasis upon systematic subject field upgrade (see work with Internet sources).

While planning for goals, one might set them as desirable, but they may prove unreachable in terms of the particular course. We should aim at skills and strategies which would go on developing after the ESP course. Its aim is not to provide a specified corpus of linguistic knowledge but to make the learners become better processors of info.

Needs analysis, if based on language or skills centered approach, reveals that ESP students need English in order to be able to read texts in their subject specialism. They do not have to write, speak or listen to English. But consider this:

1. Can the other skills and competencies help the learners to become better readers? (e.g. logical stress and modulated reading support better mastery of the content; creating rich images and writing (collages, graphs, associograms ) works to the same end.

2. There is always a problem of variety: a monoskill focus leads to lack of variety , a limited range of content and induces boredom in the learners.

3. Attitude of learners might vary through the course.

Technically it means following a number of broad recommendations:

• Avoid assembly line approach, which makes every unit look the same, with the same type of text, same kind of illustrations, same type and number of exercises (exactly what we find in most ESP course-books);

• Ensure frequent reinforcement, so that the same items are processed several times from several angles;

• Linguistics is not prevalent in ESP – for a doctor or an engineer it has little attraction.

Materials should provide a coherent framework for the integration of various aspects of learning, allowing for variety and creativity. As to background knowledge – students might lack technical language even in Russian. Topics should be chosen on a broader basis: e.g. ophthalmology – on optics, biology and sociology; psychology – on biology. Texts should necessarily be processed by the students so that the result is systemized, abridged, personal texts.

You know that genuine communication in EGP is based on creating 3 main types of gaps: information, reasoning and opinion; in ESP we should make broader use of: media gaps – transforming the text from one media to another; jigsaw gaps which foster compilation tasks and certainty gaps (What is definitely known? What can be presupposed? What info is entirely unavailable?)

As to variety, it’s still all the more important since monoskill syllabuses often prevail. Sources might be found in:

1. Variety of medium – text, tape, pictures, speech;

2. Variety of class organization; variety of learner roles – presenter, evaluator, receiver, thinker, negotiator;

3. Variety of activity;

4. Variety of skills: in many ESP classes graphic skills are singled out along with the other 4;

5. Variety of topic;

6. Variety of focus – accuracy, fluency, discourse, structure of the text, pronunciation, etc.

Due attention in ESP courses should be given to prediction. Prediction is use of existing knowledge, of a pattern or system in order to anticipate what is likely in a novel situation. It has a number of pedagogic advantages, such as building learner confidence, enabling the teacher to discover gaps in the knowledge, and especially giving students a chance for ‘self-investment’. When people are making predictions, they are investing part of their self-esteem in their decisions and choices.

Coherence is another key position. It is risky to rely on ‘remember what we did the previous time’. Every class should be comparatively autonomous, complete and product-oriented. It should be clear for every party at the start where the lesson is going.