I have been looking for a questionnaire that examines ESP teachers' beliefs, but have not found any so far. Therefore, I would like to design one but I need to have some basic knowledge about their qualities and beliefs. Hope that someone here can help me. Thank you.
ESP teacher or so called ESP practitioner is confronted with mixed-ability ESP classes ,so he has to possess some qualities such as the following :
He must get an adequate training in order not to feel that the subject specific content is alien from his experience .
He must be able to select materials .
He must have an idea about the teaching methods
He must receive an adequate training in the principles of adult education since he is going to teach adults ( he must understand them and know how to motivate them ).
He needs a specialized knowledge in the target language .
There is a paper by Alexander (2012), though I think it's specifically about the beliefs of EAP teachers.
I also believe than an ESP teacher should have an adequate training to teach adults and in specific filed. Especially, he/she should be taught how to use the authentic materials from his potential students to teach them how to address the business target situation in their sector and how to make a course that fully meets the requirements of the clients in order not to loose their precious time. After mastering these skills, it is quite easy to make an ESP curriculum for university level for specific discipline.
While agreeing with many of the suggestions given above, I would like to add that ESP teachers should also be able to adapt authentic materials in the specific discipline to suit the students' level of English. I find that very often, an ESP teacher needs to design their own curriculum, based on the needs of their students. So, some experience of curriculum development is essential, in my opinion.
More important than knowing which their beliefs are is to ask what it is really that affects their decision making. And it is not only what they think about teaching and learning, there are action are also action and value schemes that affect them, which teachers are not conscious about. See Scheur and Pozo, Zeichener, Schon, Mevorach and Strauss (concept of mental models is quite interesting)
ESP practitioners have a will to conduct needs analysis, .have a passion on the field of , cooperate and discuss with the students and subject specialists.In addition to that ESP practitioners who teach at the college/vocational education are suggested to follow the development of industry and those who teach ESP at universities can arrange the syllabus of what future careers or professions that the students later want to have and discuss with the faculty management of the opportunity of having internship.
ESP teachers need to have charismatic qualities , in addition to competence in contents -based syllabus and communication skills. He must be innovative, thoughtful and above all too much caring so that he can motivate and inspire ESP learners to pursue their academic courses diligently and to outperform in their professional careers.
ESP teachers need to have a strong will in teaching those who are not majoring English as their subject. They often have difficulties in understanding a context when and where they need to apply the English. Here the ESP teachers must be creative, toughful and also helpful to bridge the needs of the students toward English. Not only good at selecting materials, but more impprtantly is good and getting the students take parts in the learning where they cqn actually make use of the skills in English based on the major of study. Once the teachers have had good raport and ability to attract and activate the learners' interest in learning, this is when the actual lelarning takes place. To sum up, willingness to teach, to deal with the learners' problems, and ability to get the involved in the learning are the ingredients of an ideal ESP teachers.
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