English for Specific Purposes
Keith Harding
Oxford University Press 2007
ISBN 978-0-19-442575-9
In recent years there has been a considerable increase in the demand for materials on English for Specific Purposes (ESP). But has supply been able to meet that demand? While books and courses for general English have been aplenty, materials for ESP have tended to be somewhat scant. Up until now, that is. One of a series of Oxford's Resource Books for Teachers, English for Specific Purposes is an activities book packed with materials and ideas and tips and techniques for specific English language needs.
Virtually gone are the days of 2-columned cramming: these 70-plus activities have been developed to give students the opportunity to process and practise target language in the ESP classroom. This is contextualised learning at a premium.
Organised into 8 sections reflecting shared concepts (e.g. developing an interactive needs analysis, using numbers and figures, or teaching customer care), each is preceded by a mini-introduction setting out the objectives of the following activities. The last chapter, for example, highlights the value of continuous evaluation before introducing activities designed to help students review their achievements and set new targets.
Given that ESP centres around the practical application of language skills, it is appropriate that the activities involve the students in real-life situations. There are role-plays for flight attendants, activities to equip a builder with the spoken skills needed on the building site, and exercises to help office staff practise the language of diplomacy when dealing with awkward customers. Should your students work in trade or in many other sectors there are activities based on everything from central heating systems, the language of health and safety and the world of money, machines and measurements. Many of the exercises are suitable for small groups of students in large classes as well as on a one-to-one basis.
Each activity is labelled with the suggested appropriate level (from elementary to advanced thus giving teachers wide scope for adapting and extending); indicates the aim of each activity, e.g. to establish strategies for learning specialist vocabulary; gives you the estimated time it takes to complete the task; suggests what preparations you will need to do, and offers variations on the theme and follow-up activities as well as optional extras.
For my particular teaching purposes, I was especially interested in the activity designed to help students develop their own personal learning dictionaries. If, for example, they were learning English for engineers, they might take a word like 'engineer' as a head- word and then create a number of sub-headings such as definition, pronunciation, part of speech, etymology, antonyms and sample sentences. You can then encourage students to add their own sub-headings: a translation perhaps or synonyms, and any other aspect that might be useful including the appropriate register and whether the term carries positive, negative or neutral connotations. Clearly, this is an activity which adapted appropriately is suitable for all levels of English in all areas of expertise.
If I had one quibble it would be about the adoption of the word 'specialism' and [worse] specialisms, used to refer to a student's area of expertise. Could we not just say 'area of expertise'?
That aside, another favourite activity is 'word step' which aims to give the students more practice in word building. And then there is the ten question quiz that has the students writing the questions rather than the answers. Intrigued? Then this is the book to add to your 'must have' list and enjoy!
English for Specific Purposes is supported by a Resource Books for Teachers website at http://www.oup.com/elt/catalogue/teacher sites/rbt
Alison Wiebalck