Revision books in ESP: Myths and Reality

Revision books in ESP: Myths and Reality

Wisniewska, Halina

The term LSP is commonly used when referring to teaching and research of language in relation to the communicative needs of speakers of a second or foreign language used in a particular workplace, academic, or professional context thus LSP courses usually focus on the specific language needs of relatively homogeneous groups of learners. They may be addressed to students at, most often, tertiary level of education or to people who already completed formal education but need to use a foreign language to communicate in professional target situations. The starting point of every ESP course design is a detailed needs analysis which allows to define linguistic requirements of learners, competence gaps in relevant areas, set the required level of knowledge and specify the ways of achieving it. Therefore courses of languages for specific purposes may vary in the choice of language skills, functions and topics taught. The need for individualization of the teaching process requires also decisions regarding teaching materials to be used. McGrath (2002:4) notices that ‗ when experienced teachers teach using a course book that they know well, they will have a sense of what to use and what not to use, what to adapt and where to supplement‘. But how important for such decisions are the preferences of learners? The aim of the article is to present revision books - didactic material highly valued by learners but not so much by teachers - and to outline some of the reasons for this discrepancy.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2011-05

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