English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is the teaching and learning of English as a second or foreign language where the general aim is for the learners to use English in a particular area. In the past, the teaching of English for specific purposes was basically prompted by the need to communicate across languages in areas such as trade and technology. Hitherto, ESP has now expanded to encompass other areas such as English for academic purposes (EAP), English for occupational purposes (EOP), English for vocational purposes (EVP), English for medical purposes (EMP), English for business purposes (EBP) and English for legal purposes (ELP) (Belcher,2009). In teaching ESP courses, it would be good if ESP practitioners have both language skills and content knowledge to meet specific needs of the learners.
1. Review of related literature
Stern (1989, 1992) opines that there are four types of ESP teaching objectives: proficiency, knowledge, affective, and transfer. Basturkmen (2006), on the other hand, identifies five objectives in ESP teaching: (i) to reveal subject-specific language use; (ii) to develop target performance competencies; (iii) to teach underlying knowledge; (iv) to develop strategic competence; and (v) to foster critical awareness. In meeting the aforementioned objectives, Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998) propound that the ESP teacher or practitioner has the following roles to play: as a Teacher; as Course Designer and Material Provider; as Researcher; as Evaluator; and as Collaborator. Fulfilling these roles can sometimes be a bit daunting for the ESP practitioner.
Basturkmen (2010) cautions us that language instructors may be teaching an ESP course that they have little knowledge of the subject matter. In their study on the readiness level of 62 English lecturers in Malaysian Polytechnics to teach ESP courses, Sarimah and Sanmugam (2015) discovered that more than 80 per cent of the respondents say they are not ready for the task and need further training. This scenario is not restricted to Malaysia alone but occurs in other countries as well (Abdulaziz et al., 2012; Li , 2012; Venkatraman & Prema, 2007). So, what can ESP trainers do to prepare themselves to teach in this seemingly formidable area of specialization?
As mentioned earlier, one of the roles of the ESP practitioner is to be a Collaborator. According to Bojović (2006), subject-specific work is normally best approached through cooperation with subject specialist. Collaboration can be where ESP trainer tries to know more about the subject syllabus in an academic context or the tasks that students have to do in a work ambience. It can also comprise specific partnership so that there is some assimilation between specialist studies or activities and the language. It might involve the language teacher specifically preparing learners for the language of subject lectures or business presentations. Another option is that a specialist checks and comments on the content of teaching materials that the ESP teacher has prepared. The ultimate teamwork is where a subject expert and a language teacher pair up to teach a class, but this can have its downside.
According to Hargreave and McMillan (1994), collaboration can unite and create a rift for those teaching the language and their subject specialist counterparts when it comes to team-teaching effort. According to Davison (2006), collaboration between ESL and mainstream teachers can take many forms. Some of these are: integrating definite goals for ESL development into the curriculum; evaluation planning procedures; undertaking a common understanding of teacher tasks and responsibilities; embracing collective curriculum design processes; and forming organized instruments for monitoring evaluation and feedback. He, however, claimed that identifying these elements is not much of a problem but finding them present in an institution can be somewhat elusive.
Little (1990) opined that “effective collaboration between teachers is not only rare, but extremely difficult to sustain. The closer one gets to the questions of curriculum and instruction, there are fewer recorded instances of rigorous and meaningful collaboration” (p. 512). Davison (2006), too, suggested for a strong emphasis on instituting clear expectations for both the general education and the ESL teachers and says that experience “ demonstrates that all too often collaborative teaching is seen as simply a case of another pair of hands; an attitude that two teachers are better than one.” According to him, “teachers are simply doubled rather than differentiated” (p. 456).
One form of collaboration is inclusive practices where ESL teachers join the mainstream class during ESL time and co-teach with the mainstream teacher (Villa, Thousand & Nevin, 2008). Inclusive practices, according to Watnick and Sacks (2006), are intended to adjust the classroom situation so that all students get educational supports suitable to their needs without being taken out from the general education classroom. Duke and Mabbot (2001) expounded on the necessity for shared preparation time and the necessity to have cooperative teams of teachers willing to collaborate. They contend that an inclusion model can reduce scheduling preparations and transition headaches for students.
Coltrane (2002) recognized the “territorial challenges” that can result from inclusive co-teaching. He states that ESL teachers may unintentionally adopt the role of “classroom paraprofessional” as it can be problematic for some teachers to have an equal playing field of collaboration. Creese (2002) explored collaboration between ESL and content teachers and witnessed subject teachers exhibiting command and possession of their subject area while the observed ESL teachers did not show similar sense of ownership of language objectives in the content area classroom. She also noticed that ESL teachers were assuming the role of accelerating learning rather than teaching their own language content. This is certainly not desirable.
2. Discussion
According to Ahmed (2014), the ESP teacher is not one who specializes in content-specific field, but in the teaching of English, and research findings by Sarimah and Sanmugam (2015) show that ESP teachers lack the technical knowledge and the confidence to teach ESP courses. In such wise, Basturkmen (2010) reminds us that ESP teachers may find themselves engaged in dealing with content in an area of study that they themselves have scant or zero knowledge of. She gives the example of ESP for nursing program where course content might involve items such as medical terminology, patterns of nurse–patient interaction, and written genres such as patient records. Therefore, she says “we need ESP teachers who know how to design courses in a conceptual area that one has not mastered and develop the ability to analyze and describe specific texts” (p. 9).The ESP practitioners have several options to meet the needs of teaching ESP-related courses. They can collaborate with content instructors on curriculum design and choosing suitable course materials and even co-teach a class. However, Coltrane (2002) and Creese (2002) cautioned us that collaboration within the sphere of ESP between language teachers and content instructors like inclusive teaching or class sharing and pull-out classes can have its fair share of problems.
Research has shown that the quality of teachers who engage in joint activities will improve over time with support from the management (Little, 2002). The university can set a policy where those who attend these presentation sessions for a certain amount of time or period can be considered as attending an in-house training session and those content specialists who conduct the sessions as presenters can be presented with a certificate of appreciation or be given marks in their yearly appraisal. This arrangement definitely has tremendous structural effect on policy implementation. It is worth considering.
Another thrust of the research is to identify the willingness to engage in collaborative research effort between ESP practitioners and content specialists and results show that 43 out of the 50 respondents indicate their willingness to do so. This definitely augurs well for the institution. If results had shown otherwise, then this lack of willingness to engage in such activities would definitely be a cause of concern for the management. Working on an interdisciplinary action research can help instructors from diverse areas of specialization see common issues which are interconnected and can benefit both lecturers and students in the long run. The willingness of these lecturers to work together is in line with Senge’s (1990) idea of the “learning organization.” He described it as an organisation where “people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together” (p. 3).