Teaching Specialized English as a Foreign Language

Kompanetz Natalia, Kyiv

Several researchers believe that in an academic complex which lacks communicative and Educational tools for teaching English [1], but students do have to study their textbooks in English, there must be some materials related to reading and comprehension of specialized English. Professional English syllabus designers in such universities encounter a variety of problems. In this situation, syllabus designers should include some general and half-special textbooks to prepare students for their advanced specialized English textbooks.

There are several challenges that learning professional English is facing in universities. They could be defines as follows:

1. The time specified for the course, a two-unit course, not considering difficulty of the text, is not long enough to make the students familiar with many technical terms in English. Usually, teaching hours for auto specialized English is far less adequate to maintain ideal teaching effect. Thus, teachers are not only the spreader for text information, but also instructor for learning method. Focus should be put on developing the ability of effective study and rational learning management. However, most of the teachers spend a lot of time on vocabulary, grammar and translation, but not ability development. Consequently, students' initiative and interest for the course reduced, which deteriorates the status of specialized English.

2. The books compiled are not provided through students’ need analysis and very often a book contains passages which are of no or little use for the students. The proper or improper of course selection in the professional English teaching process directly affects the quality of the teaching effect [2]. However many problems exist in the selection of professional English teaching materials or literature materials in some universities, such as teaching materials do not coincide with the professional, the difficulty of teaching materials is improper, and the content of literature materials is unilateral etc.

3. The difficulty level of the texts usually does not match the level of the students. Many students are by no means prepared for studying English for specific purposes. Most of the students' English foundation is weak, from primary school to junior school, from high school to college, whether vocabulary, grammar or sentence structure has been their weaknesses. So we can imagine professional English also is bound to become one of their weaknesses [3].

4. Low study interest in professional English is a very common phenomenon, especially more common in science and engineering colleges. The reason for this phenomenon arc many, but they can be summarized in two: one is that the majority of students have insufficient recognition of the importance of professional English learning English and think of no use to learn English, in addition to reading graduate school or engaging in scientific research; another one is that most of the students' English foundation is too weak to study, resulting in a difficult idea of abandonment.

5. Many instructors are TESL instructors and lack the required technical knowledge and the specific field instructors who master the field mostly are poor in English. Most of the professional English teachers do not teach from the perspective of students in teaching process, leading to inappropriateness of teachers' teaching method; such as some teachers explain too meticulously, carefully analyze the main body of the articles, the use of structure and phrases, and the meaning of words, teach specialized English as public English, so as to lose the significance of professional English teaching; part of the teachers explain the English knowledge in the articles too simply or don't explain at all.

6. Finally, not many passages are covered during the timetable, making it more difficult to reach the optimal level in teaching English for specific purposes. Even for the professional English articles of the science class, there are still quite a considerable number of students failing to understand the meaning of sentences or paragraphs, and the translation of sentence is multifarious and difficult to be close to the true meaning [4].

In conclusion, we can say that in spite of the number of existing problems, all of them can be eliminated by improving the competencies of both teacher and student. The main objective of English for specific purposes is to prepare students (to read and comprehend their own field materials in English without any or at least utile difficulty.

References

1. Spector- Cohen et al., 2001 Spector- Cohen, E., Kirschner, M. & Wexler, C. (2001). Designing EAP Reading Courses at the University Level, English for Specific Purposes: An International Journal, Vol. 20, No. 4.

2. Ward, 2001 Ward, J. (2001). EST: Evading Scientific Text. Cited in English for specific purposes: An Internation al Journal, Vol. 20, No. 2.

3. Hutchinson and Waters, 1992 Hutchinson, T. & Waters, A. (1992). English for Specific Purposes: A Learning centered approach, Cambridge University Press

4. Kranshen, S.: Bilingual education: A focus on current research, NCBE Focus. (1991) Occassional Papers in Bilingual Education, 1–15