Technology and ESP

<The images/ videos/ partial content are from the internet. These materials are for educational reference only. >

How can technologies support teaching English for specific purpose (ESP)?

1. ESP and its characteristics

ESP is a learner-centred pedagogy which emphasised the importance of needs analysis. ESP learners need to understand authentic texts and how to communicate effectively in the situations they encounter in their discipline rather than mastering field-specific terminology. ESP attempts to meet learners’ specific needs.

• ESP makes use of underlying methodology and activities of the discipline it serves.

• ESP centres on the language (grammar, lexis, register), study skills, discourse, and genre appropriate for these activities.

•ESP concerns what learners need to know in their own work contexts.

•The teaching in ESP must be authentic.

•Closely related to authenticity and learners’ needs is the appropriateness of teaching methodology.

•ESP deals with mainly adult learners who are at intermediate or advanced levels.

3 models of ESP instruction

2. Benefits of technology in ESP contexts

•Technology provides ESP teachers with a new tool to engage students in real-life communication, to bridge the intercultural gap, to collaborate in their professional community, and to access up-to-date information relevant o their discipline.

Technology assists in creating authentic contextualised materials

•In ESP instruction, there is urgent need for learning materials that are appropriate and authentic.

↓↓↓↓↓↓

•The Internet is an authentic resource for natural, context-rich, cultural-specific, up-to-date, and multimodal materials and context to see how language is used.

Technology can mediate thinking

•In ESP context, learners not only engage in the ways of thinking underpinning the discipline but also develop their own cognitive and metacognitive strategies because of the authentic tasks they conduct and the authentic audience with which they communicate.

↓↓↓↓↓↓

•The multimodality of technology materials can mediate ideas, thoughts, and thinking process, especially in network-based learning and computer-supported collaborative learning.

Technology provides a learning environment for interaction

•Interaction lies at the heart of language learning.

↓↓↓↓↓↓

•Technology can provide learners with an environment where they can engage in authentic interaction.

Technology facilitates self-directed learning

•ESP is concerned with turning learners into users. In order for self-direction to occur, the learners must have a certain degree of control over when, what, and how they study.

↓↓↓↓↓↓

•Technology can support self-paced instruction and to support self-paced review of concepts.

Technology motivates and engages learners

•Technology serves the authenticity of the task, materials, and international opportunities.

↓↓↓↓↓↓

•Learners are more motivated in engaging with learning tasks and content.

3. Principles for integrating technology in ESP

Principle 1:

Understanding the benefits and roles of technology：Teachers need to be aware that technology in general has a positive impact on language learning, but it does not do everything, and different tools have different functions.

Principle 2:

Linking technology to learners’ needs: ESP adopts a learner-centred approach, and learners’ needs are the top priority in designing and teaching a course.

Principle 3:

Integrating technology into, rather than adding it to, teaching: Technology needs to be integrated as part of pedagogy rather than an “add-on” to the existing situation.

Principle 4:

Considering the role of a teacher: Teachers need to be aware of the different roles that they perform when different kinds of technology supported activities are implemented.

Principle 5:

Enhancing authenticity of both language and task: Teachers can use technology as a tool to access authentic materials so that students are experiencing and learning the authentic discourse they are expected to encounter in their profession.

4. Technological tools for teaching ESP

Corpora

•To develop writing.

…To search how a vocabulary item is used

…To serve as a reference tool

•To study key lexis

•To develop teaching materials

Web-based materials

•To address both teachers’ professional needs and learners’ needs …To provide useful links of different categories of ESP

•Teachers can guide students to explore resources

•Students can have independent study

•Students can access the discourse of the community and participant in activities

Wikis

•To serve as powerful mediating artefacts for collaboration

…to let participants collaboratively generate, mix, edit, and synthesise subject-specific knowledge within a shared and openly accessible digital space

•Students can work collaboratively to create a discipline page

•Students can perform academic writing

•Student can collaboratively solve writing problems

CMC: email

•To address collaborative work need to exchange information and ideas

•To address the issue of lack of intertextuality in traditional textbooks and to raise students’ awareness of writing as an ongoing and dialogic process

•To raise students’ pragmatic and cultural awareness in the communication

3D and virtual worlds

•To simulating the real world to train people in various professions

•Second Life