English for specific purposes journal pdf

The example of this method is provided by Jasso-Aguilar who worked three days as a trainee housekeeper, recording the language use of Waikiki hotel maids. She concluded that it was most valuable source of data for her study Jasso-Aguilar, , p. Students can make audiotapes of their own language use over a week or longer, or write down how the language course helps them to resolve language problems. This method can provide valuable insights about language needs, but is time-consuming and difficult to analyze.

He proposes that tests used in NA should measure the ability to perform target tasks, and not the abstract linguistic aptitude. For example, university EAP students could watch a graded series of lectures and answer the questions later, and future tourists could participate in a role-play shopping simulation Long, p. Long concludes that "an adequate NA will usually be a time-consuming undertaking, and one requiring some expertise in applied linguistics, including research methods".

It should employ stratified random sampling; involve insiders and domain experts and not just learners, language teachers or textbook writers Long , p. However, in everyday teaching experience that is not always possible to make full, scientifically valid NA, but it is no reason to avoid NA altogether, because it is most valuable tool in every course design.

For example, Case proposes effective and popular NA which looks at learner's needs in many different ways, has a clear purpose, fits in with the restrictions you are under and leaves a written record.

The first method used in Gilabert's study is unstructured interviews with company representatives and domain experts. He uses a series of open ended questions, e. Do you need to use English in order to do your job to identify target tasks Gilabert p.

ESP in Journalism: Needs Analysis 15 For each of the 35 task statements in the questionnaire, participants were asked to indicate the degree of frequency, difficulty, and need for language training on a five- point scale Gilabert, p.

Additionally, Gilabert employs non-participant observation, i. Finally, textual samples like articles, e-mail messages and recorded interviews were collected and analyzed. Gilabert p. Scholars who are responsible of training future journalists outlined the organization of the domain, and consequences of rapid changes in the industry, but failed to provide precise information about the tasks involved in everyday work Gilabert, , p. Company representatives involved in the hiring process stated their expectations and gave some general information about the tasks, but their task descriptions were also incomplete and included to little information about language needs Gilabert, p.

He states that domain experts were most useful sources, because they were able to describe the specific task carried out in English and provided valuable introspections about language use in those tasks.

The information was cross-checked by triangulating sources, which yielded interesting results. However, domain expert journalist explained that the routine procedure is to translate a single text, without checking other sources. For a job as a journalist, most of the participants need to possess the knowledge of the English language stated in their Curriculum Vitae; however the same has never been subject to examination.

The journalists use English language in their job for collecting information for the articles that includes mostly using the Internet, telephone calls and e- mails. However, many mistakes, due to insufficient knowledge of the English language, do happen and are subject to negative comments provided by the readers.

The journalists are aware that something needs to be done and they are motivated to improve their language skills. Since a large part of information for writing news articles has been collected from foreign sources, mainly English and American, the journalists need to improve their knowledge of English language. There have not been organized ESP courses, even though in some news agencies provide an opportunity of taking General English or Business English courses.

However, those courses are not design to cater for the journalist's needs. General English courses too often concentrate on grammatical issues alone, and Business English courses are also too general because the situational and conversational they provide rarely matches journalist's specific needs. The best way to solve all those problems would be a language course tailored for journalists, and prerequisite for designing such course is a thorough needs analysis, preferably task-based, as proposed by Long and elsewhere and employed by Gilabert There is also ground for its application to the needs of students of journalism.

Sample For the purposes of this study, the convenience sample was used. The participants were 78 journalists who are employed in several news agencies in Zagreb, working in different editorial boards, and journalistic subdomains sports, lifestyle, news, online editions, etc.

The survey encompassed those who have at least elementary knowledge of English language and were willing to participate. The participants age varied from 22 to 42, with average age being 27,6.

The majority of participants were female 53 of them , and 25 male. All the participants had different language of education, as well as knowledge of English language.

They have all been learning English as a part of their regular education, namely at elementary school, high school and at college, at least 4 and at most 16 years. Detailed distribution of the participants concerning their years of learning English is presented in Chart 1.

Classes in Foreign Language schools, Buisiness English classes or private tution. It is also interesting to note that 9 of them were English majors or students of English. The working experience helped her to gain insights of everyday English language use in journalists' work, and to determine relevant issues. However, no formal records were gathered during that time, and analyzing text-samples would be too time-consuming and beyond the scope of this study, so the main instrument was a written questionnaire survey.

Prior to conducting the research, literature on NA and ESP, especially those relevant for journalism was reviewed. The questionnaire was piloted on 5 participants of the study to make sure the questions were understandable, and some questions were eliminated to make the questionnaires more manageable. Part of the questionnaires was distributed via hand-outs in one of the news agencies, and part was sent by e-mail to journalists working in other news agencies.

The journalists were first given the questionnaire on usage and knowledge of English language, as well as self-assessment table of NA. The major part of the questionnaire consisted of 29 task statements, and the participants were asked to indicate the degree of frequency of a certain task on a five- point Likerd scale.

Concerning the knowledge of the language, the participants needed to fill in the number of years of learning English language, as well as the additional courses taken. In an open-ended question they were asked to provide some advice to future journalists regarding learning English. All the participants use English language at least occasionally in their activities related to work, while the majority 57 uses it every day.

Large number of the participants 33 believes that they could not do their job at all without knowledge of English language. The everyday job experience also serves as a means of learning English language — 42 participants feel that they are improving their English by doing their work.

Even though the participants highly graded their knowledge of English language - 4,45 average see Table 2 - a large part of them believes they should improve their knowledge. A total number of 78 journalists participated in the study. The results are presented in Table 2.

Has your education prepared you 4 8 13 27 26 3,81 sufficiently for your job? Could you do your job if you didn't speak English? This shows that English is an inevitable part of the journalist's work. The results are presented in Chart 2. Chart 2: Frequency of English usage. The average mark the participants gave themselves was 4,45, which means that the journalists consider themselves highly proficient in English.

None of participants assessed their knowledge of English as nonexistent 1 , or poor 2. Ten participants think their knowledge of English is average, 23 very good, and 45 excellent. It can be concluded that participants rate their knowledge very highly. However, most of the participants want to improve their English anyway.

Only two participants state that they do not need to work further on improving their English, 10 state that they need to work very little of their English, 20 participants think they should put some effort, 15 stated they should put much effort in it, and 31 strongly agree they should improve their English. The average rating of need for improvement was 3, It seems that although the journalists are very good at English, they are still aware there is much room for improvement, which means they could be very motivated for relevant, work-related courses.

Only one of the participants never communicates in English, 21 rarely, 31 in average frequency, 12 often, and 14 very often. The average rating was 3, The answers to the 5th question show that working in the newspapers also provides a valuable opportunity for learning English. Only 2 participants think that their job doesn't help them to improve their English, 11 thinks that it helps them a little bit, 8 averagely, 15 rated its usefulness with 4, a 42 pet.

The average rating was 4,8. The answers to the 6th question, "has your education prepared you sufficiently for your job" are graphically presented in Chart 3.

Chart 3. Average is 2,22 which means that some elementary knowledge of English is necessary for almost all people employed as journalists.

It is reasonable to assume that the necessity of English knowledge is in correlation with journalistic subdomain, e. The results are presented in Table 3. Results were then sorted by average frequency for easier analysis see table 4. Generally tasks from the reading group were rated most highly. The most common task is reading articles online 4,79 , closely followed by reading agency news. Reading magazines was the 4th place, with average result 3,96, reading work related literature was placed 9th with average rating of 3, Reading company websites was placed 13th with average rating of 2, When looking at top ten most frequently used tasks, it can be seen that the half of them come from the reading group.

So it can be stated that English reading skills are crucial for Croatian journalists. The 3 rd most frequently employed task was adapting texts from English language, rated 4,09 in average.

Word-by word translations were rated with 3,58 average, and simultaneous translation was used least frequently, rated with 1,81 average. Working as a journalist and by observing other journalists participant observation the author of the study can confirm the importance of translation skills in journalism. Interviews are widely presumed to be among the most frequent tasks employed by journalists, but the results show that there are not frequently conducted in English.

The most common way of conducting an interview was by e-mail, with average rating of 2, Telephone interviews were second most frequent with 1,94 average. Live interviews were given average rating of 1,72, and online interviews using chat, MSn, g- talk, and skype were rated 1, Social networking online was one of the most frequently employed tasks, placed 6th. Also, it is important to state again that the single most frequent activity was reading articles online, and the most common way of conducting an interview was by e-mail Requesting information by e-mail was on 11th place on the list of most frequently employed tasks, with average rating of 2, It is also interesting to note that, when analyzing the tasks from the correspondence group, requesting information by e-mail, was more commonly employed with average rating of 2,92 than telephone conversations not interviews , rated with 2, Using internet combines diverse set of skills, and it can be guessed that using the internet would be more and more important in the future, and almost inevitable in journalism-domain.

So English language courses should not lag-behind. There are opportunities for tailor-made English courses which make use of all those technologies e. The participants were asked say which English activities they deem the most important and wish to improve upon.

The five point Likerd scale was also used here. The results were entered in Excel table see Table 5 , and average values are presented in the Chart 5. The second need were vocabulary skills 3,22 , followed by pronunciation 3,13 , grammar 3,01 writing 3,0 , and listening 2, Reading were deemed least important, rated with 2,06 average.

But at the same time, Table 5 shows that tasks which involve reading are most frequent in journalists' job. It is possible that the journalists develop their reading skills sufficiently by doing their job or during their formal education. Nevertheless, further studies are needed to check if the reading skills of journalists are really sufficient for complete understanding of English texts or is this self-assessment unreliable.

On the other hand, speaking, which journalists consider the most important area of improvement, was rarely employed in their everyday tasks. It was meant to check their habits, determine how resourceful they are and to further gauge their needs for learning vocabulary skills. The results are presented in Table 6.

This was followed by asking colleagues 3,14 , and improvisation 2, The printed dictionary was the least used. It is a cause for concern because printed dictionaries are most reliable source of this kind of information, and all other sources can lead to missinpretation of the English texts used in everyday work.

This stresses the need of building vocabulary skills in English courses tailored for journalists. Where and how to learn, how important English is in journalist's job Some of their suggestions are presented in the table 7. Those who did provide answer, agree on that that learning English is important, and advise future journalist to take language courses, travel to English speaking countries, and read a lot in English.

If you don't have an opportunity to spend some time in an English-speaking country, you should watch movies and TV-shows without subtitles and read books in English. It is good for learning everything, not just English. I recommend reading foreign media and using on-line dictionaries.

If your knowledge of English grammar is lacking, you should take an English course. Improving your knowledge always pays of. We all think we are good in English, but that is not always enough for work.

I highly benefited from conversational course in a foreign language school. Conclusion In order to identify the language needs of Croatian journalists, i.

The majority of the participants were advanced English language learners. Their needs were determined using a written questionnaire. The study could serve as a basis for developing task-based English language course for journalists, but it also limited in several ways. The major limitation of the study is the sampling problem. The majority of the participants were selected from a single newspaper company, so the data obtained is not representative enough for all the journalists, especially because it encompassed only those working on written articles — no television or radio-journalists participated in the study.

The number of the participants was relatively small and they were not randomly selected. The preferred sampling method for this type of study is stratified random sampling, but it was not possible to do because there were not enough intersected participants to choose from.

The method employed was written questionnaire and, to a limited extent, participant observation. Triangulation by methods e. After analyzing the data obtained, the following conclusions can be drawn: 1 The results suggest that journalists use English to a great extent in they everyday work, and they are interested in improving it. This book was written for tourists and it was published in Romo, This early phase of ESP lasted roughly till the start of and whatever ESP material was produced during this period, it mainly consisted of authentic material related to different fields of specialization Hutchinson and Waters, Most of the linguists declared that the real beginning of ESP set in about in the sixties of twentieth century Dudley-Evans and St.

John 19 mentioned that "it was undoubtedly in the mid- to late 's, however, that various influences came together to generate the need and enthusiasm for developing ESP as a discipline".

John, cf. Howett, Hutchinson and Waters enumerated three main reasons for this rapid growth. Hymes identified the rapid expansion in scientific, technical and economic activities in English speaking countries and the linguistic trends as the main contributing factors in this regard. Hutchinson and Waters specified two important historical factors that were largely instrumental in the rapid expansion of the scope and range of ESP.

According to Hutchinson and Waters , p. In the post SWW era, the USA became the hub of scientific, technical and economic activities and, consequently, English was assigned the role of an international language to facilitate all these activities.

Oil-rich countries opened their doors to the Western knowledge and wealth and naturally a new era of ELT commenced in the gulf region. As it was mainly scientific and technical knowledge that was needed to be transferred, ESP emerged as the most appropriate discipline to accept the challenge. John pointed out that late 's and early 's was the period that consolidated ESP. This period witnessed a transformation of traditional linguistics of merely describing the features of language into the study of Register Analysis RA which focused on the ways language was used in real communication.

Hutchinson and Waters highlighted the difference between written and spoken language as an example of RA. Mainly scientific and technical English was focused more in this second phase of ESP. RA was carried out on the assumption that certain grammatical and lexical forms were more frequently used in scientific and technical language as compared to General English Hutchinson and Waters, ; Dudley-Evans and St.

John, Hutchinson and Waters elaborated the process of RA in identifying these specified forms and developing teaching materials based on these forms. The main objective of those ESP books was to acquaint the learners with the language forms that were relevant to their various fields of specializations.

Those register analysis-based ESP textbooks relieved the learners of the unnecessary burden of irrelevant grammatical and lexical items. As a result, materials produced under the banner of RA focused on a restricted range of grammar and vocabulary instead of language use and communication Dudley-Evans and St. This stage was the initial phase of NA where the general needs of specific subjects were considered for the development of ESP course contents Gatehouse, cf.

The ESP material produced during that period mainly concentrated on specific grammatical and lexical items instead of real communication Dudley-Evans and St.

Allan and Widdowson, 3. Hutchinson and Waters , p. Mackey and Mountford recognized defining, identifying, comparing, classifying etc. Hutchinson and Waters, , p. Mo reported that this stage did not confine itself to the teaching of language but rather addressed to the thought processes as well.

The main objective of ESP course contents was thus to make the learners achieve linguistic competence by enabling them to acquire the ability to use language accurately and efficiently in different situations. It was stated that linguistic competence included grammatical, cultural, pragmatic, strategic and communicative sub-competencies.

This discussion offered useful insights into the reasons that why learner and his specific social and psychological situations were also given due importance to achieve the target learning outcomes.

Similarly, it was recognized that not only different specializations medicine, humanities, physics, geology, business etc. The linguistic needs of a lab assistant in a hospital would be different from the needs of a nurse, a receptionist, a ward boy and an X-ray technician. These precise linguistic needs were the key factors in determining the type of curriculum necessary for ESP courses.

According to Hutchinson and Waters , fifth stage of ESP growth was marked with the mental processes which implied the use of language and ESP curricula focused on developing the skills and strategies learners needed to acquire a second language instead of depending upon the surface form of the language. The focus shifted to the underlying strategies that would help the learner extract meaning from the external forms. Hutchinson and Waters quoted the ability to guess meaning of a word from the context as an example of applying underlying strategies to the external form of the lexical items.

They suggested that all ESP curricula should involve the learners from the beginning to determine their learning needs and LS so that they might be able to effectively apply underlying strategies to achieve their learning objectives.

Bowyers, presented various reports about the success of different ESP courses during 's and 's. They have mentioned that ESP has been transformed From grammatical, functional and notional syllabuses to a more eclectic and task-based approach ESP today is much broader activity in which English for Business Purposes EBP has become increasingly important ibid.

Much research has suggested that ESP program should be aim-directed, learner-directed and situation-directed. Goonetilleke , p. Chantrupanth , p. Chen, , p. Chen cf. Robinson, , p. Characteristics of ESP Courses The researchers who have discussed the characteristics of ESP do not seem to disagree on this particular issue and most of them Strevens, ; Bojovic, ; Dudley-Evans, ; Gatehouse, have supported the main characteristics proposed by Carter Carter, , p.

This material may include books, forms, charts, graphs etc. Authentic material will be an appropriate choice if ESP courses are offered to advanced or intermediate level as proposed by Dudley- Evans, He further mentioned that the learners who were taught language for employment in health services were mainly evaluated through a lot of independent study assignments given to them in their chosen area of interest.

The students were encouraged to utilize various resources to complete their research assignments. Purpose-related orientation Gatehouse, cf. Carter, has been identified as the simulation of different communicative tasks to prepare the learners for different target situations. The learners are given practice through simulation to enable them to handle various linguistic roles in the target situation. Carter reported student simulation of different tasks which were required for a conference.

These tasks included preparation of papers, reading of papers, note taking etc. He narrated the proceedings of health science program at his institute.

Wales , p. Johns and Dudley-Evans , p. Inclusion of contents of target subjects seems an integral part of any ESP program. Adamson , p. The same attitude has been more candidly defined as follows: Languages at tertiary level are often treated as second-rate subjects. Gvardjancic, , p. Peters and Saxon , p. Sagliano et al. Smoak, , p. An ESP program that is strictly confined to the specialized subject content is also undesirable and Cozens 10 cf.

Hutchinson and Waters have also reported that ESP is not restricted to teaching only specialized varieties of English. This seemed to offer valuable insights into the fact that an ideal ESP course should strike a balance between these two extremes: general English courses and strictly content-based language courses. This comprehensive objective can be effectively achieved through an ESP course that includes subject contents and general English.

This practice is essential for the success of ESP courses. A proper NA is required to decide about the percentage of specialized contents and general English. Such a balanced ESP course can also show the students that their perceived needs are being addressed and persuade them that the language classes are both important and relevant to their final goal to sum up, there is no perfect answer to the question, but the inclusion of content in any ESP course is important Cozens, , p.

References [1] Abbot, G. Association of Teaching Education in Europe. Portoroz, Slovenia. October 26, The ESP Journal, 2, pp. April, pp.