ESP CURRICULUM AT THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL

ESP CURRICULUM AT THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL

Vučen, Nevena

The paper focuses on the former curricula for English for Special Purposes at the University of Banjaluka. Namely, the old curricula that had been used to teach ESP to students of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, and spatial planning had displayed a poor focus on the specific vocabulary. Furthermore, the main focus was one the basic grammar points so the students could not be expected to show deep understanding of specific texts. If we consider the fact that students from the target departments all use different vocabulary in their own fields, it became obvious that the target vocabulary should be included, which had not been the case. Another flaw of the former curricula was that the students did not deal with any original English texts in their subject field or with the translation. Hence, we introduced such texts in the new curriculum resulting in a better understanding of the students' own subject matter. We also considered the fact that most scientific papers and handbooks that the students use during their college years were written in English. Our suggestion was that apart from the grammar points presented to the students, their ESP curricula should more focus on their own scientific language, i.e. on the vocabulary that is typical of their own subject matter and which they might be able to use one day in their own field of research. The new curricula resulted in students being more eager to study ESP and better understand the specific target texts. Keywords: ESP, curriculum, revision, university level, teaching trends

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2014

3515