Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport

College of Language and Communication (CLC)

Assignment One

Course Title: ESP Programme Management / fall 2020-2021

Course code: SP 734
Lecturer’s Name: Prof. Abeer Refky
Topic: Deciding materials in ESP
Presented by: Amira Abo Sedaa
Registration No. : 20125063

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION …………………………..………………………..….....3

2. BASIC PRINCIPLES IN ESP MATERIALS DESIGN

2.1 The role of materials in ESP………………………………..….4

2.2 Evaluating materials in ESP………………………………..….4

2.3 Adopting, adapting, and creating materials in ESP

Adopting materials in ESP……………………………………...5

Adapting materials in ESP…………………………...…………6
Creating custom materials…………………………………...….6
The five-step approach to custom materials creation…….…......7
“Just-in-time” custom materials creation….................................8

2.4 Utilizing technology in the adaption and creation of ESP

materials…………………………………………………………9

3. CONCLUSION................................................................................10

4. REFERENCES................................................................................11

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1. Introduction
Teaching ESP in the last few years has become an ideal way of adapting linguistic needs
to progressively varied professional and social demands. Accordingly, ESP teachers have
to become material designers and researchers to find suitable materials that match the new
teaching settings. On the other hand, these materials must observe certain rules to be
convenient for this type of teaching.

Learners and instructors prefer adopting a published textbook for so many reasons.
Published textbooks follow a certain set of methods that facilitate the learning and
teaching processes. From the learner's perspective, textbooks provide them with a clear
set of goals and a clear sequencing of materials designed to reach those goals. In addition,
they grant learners a familiar reference source that they can use to prepare and review for
the class. What’s more, if instructors use a well-constructed textbook, their class
preparation time can be dramatically reduced, allowing them more time to perfect their
delivery of the material.

On the other hand, most ESP instructors think that custom materials sequencing of goals
is commonly less transparent. It is also believed that custom materials serve as a poor
reference source, get mixed up or lost between classes in addition to being less
professional looking. Instructors can also be less predictable in the way they use custom
materials in class.

This argument may suggest all ESP instructors should be using published textbooks and
teaching from them. But, this is not the case, once ESP instructors understand the role of
materials in ESP, they will be able to evaluate textbooks properly to determine if they can
be used as is, need modifications, or it is necessary to create custom materials.

2. Basic principles in ESP materials design

Material design means providing students with materials that will equip them with the
knowledge they will need in their future business life. Deciding what materials should be
used in a classroom is challenging. Administrators and instructors are often confused
between adopting a published textbook, attempting to modify and adapting, or spending
time to create a custom set of materials based on or adapted from the real-world.

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2.1 The role of materials in ESP
It is first essential to understand the various roles that materials play in the ESP classroom
to decide how to design your materials, we can list these roles in levels as follows:

 Help learners to understand the target language skills by exposing them to it as used
in real-world settings, providing relevant individual, PW, and GW exercises, and
serve an in-class or self-study learning resource.
 Help learners to build their language skills by presenting the language in clearly
ordered steps, and challenging ST to stretch their learning by achievable exercises.
 Assist learners to use language skills actively. Encouragement is one-factor that
plays a huge role in assisting students. They can be encouraged to interact with their
colleagues, monitor their progress, and reflect on the value and use of the target
material in the target language setting.
 Encourage the incidental learning of target language skills by providing extra
reading materials, exercises, a list of references, and tasks.
 Help learners build a positive emotional response to the target language skills.
Learners should be introduced to interesting and useful examples, understand the
importance and usefulness of the targeted language skills and it will be more
beneficial if the instructor use fun and humor where appropriate.
 ESP materials support non-specialist instructor. It provides them with contextual
information about the targeted skills, includes supporting audio/video with
transcripts and answer key.

2.2 Evaluating materials in ESP

Once you understand the role of materials in ESP, you can evaluate them to determine if
they can be used as is, need modifications, or cannot be used or adapted to fulfill the
different roles required of ESP materials, you must then consider if it is possible to create
custom materials.

A useful summary of some of the early models of the 1980s and 1990s is provided by
Jordan (1997), who notes that a two-stage process is often recommended. Charles and

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Pecoari (2016) follow this idea in their EAP materials evaluation, which is reminiscent of
the more general model given by McDonough and Shaw (2013).
The first stage is checking the introduction, table of contents, and publisher’s description
of the existing materials, to eliminate the least likely materials. In the second stage, a more
in-depth evaluation of at least two units of the materials is done before a final decision is
made.

After that, if you want to assess the suitability of existing ESP materials in fulfilling the
roles described previously, you could start by asking the initial review questions listed in
Table 6.1 before making a final decision. (See appendix A)

Next, for any materials that score a high number of ‘yes’ answers at the initial review
stage, you could proceed to ask the questions listed in Table 6.2 to probe candidate
materials in more depth before making a final decision. (See appendix B)

ESP materials pass through a very selective process of evaluation to make sure that they
can be used to fulfill the different roles required of the ESP intended course.

2.3 Adopting, adapting, and creating materials in ESP

Adopting published materials

In an ESP program setting, adopting a textbook means that this textbook can fulfill some
or most of the rules discussed earlier and that it is aligned with core ESP content standards
and essential skills requirements. This is especially true if the textbook has been created by
an experienced ESP materials developer with a good knowledge of real-world teaching and
a track record of producing quality ESP research.

There are so many benefits of adopting a textbook. From an administrative standpoint,

textbooks are always the cheapest way to distribute materials. Besides, they make tasks of
managing the program, monitoring learner progress, diagnosing problems, and evaluating
instructor performance much easier.

If you are an ESP instructor with the freedom to choose your course materials, the first
step in materials design is certainly to consider the possibility of adopting a published
textbook, especially if you lack experience in the target area. , it is important that you

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understand the administrators’ rationale for choosing the materials and report back to them
on how the materials are working in class. You should also feel able to suggest changes or
improvements to the materials based on your in-class experiences.

Adapting published material

Despite the careful design of the materials, some changes will have to be made at some
level in most teaching contexts. Many times a textbook presents the material in a way that
does not fit the reality of the ESP classroom or the current needs of the students. It is at this
point where the teacher has to define what to change, eliminate, add, or extend.

At the level of target learning objectives, selected ESP materials might present incorrect
or outdated descriptions. Moreover, the author of the materials may be unaware of the new
developments which makes the published materials obsolete. The materials might also
ignore important points or include irrelevant or confusing ones. Or, they may present points
in an overly simplistic or overly complicated manner.

At the level of exercises, published materials will need to be adapted if they are aimed
at a learner level that is too high or low for the in-class group. Another problem might be
that the exercises do not provide enough practice of particular learning skills. Sometimes,
the carrier content will need to be updated if it becomes socially or culturally inappropriate.

Finally, to address those issues, you may need to simplify, expand, delete, replace, or
reorder the materials and/or add new ones.

Creating custom material

Creating materials sometimes is the only option available. There are so many reasons
behind this decision. Many institutions demand that all materials are created in-house to
reduce the impact of outside influences on the overall management of the program. Or,
maybe existing materials contain critical flaws that prevent them from being adapted. Some
designers would rather spend time creating uniquely tailored materials from the outset than
evaluating a range of published materials.

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The five-step approach to custom materials creation
STEP 1: REVIEW PREVIOUS WORK

First, you should make a list of useful recommended ideas, after that view published
materials in the same general area to see how they introduce, explain, and develop language
skills.

STEP 2: CREATE A GENERAL PLAN

Once you have a strong knowledge base, create a general plan that is based on the learning
objectives of the course then decide what to target in the materials and how to sequence
those items. It is essential to consider the discourse analysis, genre analysis, and learning
and metacognitive skills development.

STEP 3: SELECT “CARRIER CONTENT”

After formulating a general plan, choose suitable ‘carrier content’ that will form the basis
for explaining, exemplifying, and practicing different learning points. It is recommended
to use ‘authentic’ language samples produced by members of the target discourse
community or perhaps by colleagues who are experienced in the target field. You need to
be careful that samples you use are relevant in the immediate contexts of the learners or
presented in a way that allows the learners to get insights on the target context and discourse
community in which they were created.

STEP 4: CREATE EXPLANATIONS AND EXERCISES

This is the stage in which you create explanations and exercises that allow learners to reach
their learning objectives efficiently and effectively.

Explanations of learning points, as well as exercise instructions, should be written in a

simplified language to ensure that all learners, regardless of their level, can understand the
main points and what they are supposed to do.

Exercises should be designed to allow for a balanced four-strand presentation of

meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, target language, and fluency
development as Nation and Macalister (2010) argue. You also need to ensure that exercises

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allow learners to interact with other members of the class in various ways. There is a huge
range of activities that you can adopt. For all these exercises, you can encourage greater
interaction between learners using various task designs.
When it comes to sequencing exercises, you should first introduce simple, easy exercises
that are largely supported by the instructor. Then, you can gradually introduce exercises
that require more time, higher levels of proficiency and experience, and less instructor
support.

Finally, you should pay careful attention to how the materials will be delivered to
learners, what format you will use, are they offline materials or online, printed in black and
white or color, and the overall design which will depend on the typefaces, styles, spacing,
and visuals that you decide.

STEP 5: EVALUATE AND REVISE THE MATERIAL

Here, you need to evaluate the created materials in terms of how well they fulfill the roles
of materials described earlier. One effective way to do this is by piloting the materials with
a small group of target learners. As the class proceeds, you can take notes, and ask learners
to complete after-class surveys on their impressions of the materials.

You can also ask a small group of target instructors to compare the materials to other
materials they have used in the past. It is recommended that you do a survey or perhaps an
interview to find out what they thought worked well in class and how the materials could
be improved.

“Just-in-time” custom materials creation

In some ESP contexts, you will not always have the time or resources to carefully plan
using the five-stage process. This happens in sudden circumstances such as receiving a call
to prepare a workshop or when you teach unfamiliar learners for a couple of hours. In these
cases, the following ‘just-in-time’ materials creation process is worth knowing

STEP 1: COLLECT TARGET LANGUAGE SAMPLES

You could ask the course administrators to provide you with a stock of target language
samples in addition to some materials. One more option is getting to know your learners in
the first session by giving them some written tasks or forming role-plays.

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 STEP 2: ANALYZE AND GROUP TARGET LANGUAGE SAMPLES
After having a set of target language samples, analyze them to know what areas to address
and to evaluate individual learners. Group your samples into different focus areas and then
decide the best model of language features you want to focus on in class.

STEP 3: PRESENT AND DISCUSS TARGET LANGUAGE SAMPLES

At this stage, you can use learner-generated materials to show your student what strengths
and weaknesses they display, and how they can improve. The examples you decide to share
must be anonymized to avoid causing any embarrassment in the class.

2.4 Utilizing technology in the adaption and creation of ESP materials

Authentic language samples can serve as useful carrier content for the classroom. The
Internet now gives us access to a massive range of authentic samples of text, image, audio,
and video that can be used in ESP classes.

You can rely on Corpus tools if you need help with selecting suitable samples.
A corpus is a principled collection of authentic texts stored electronically. Besides, a text-
corpus method is a digestive approach that derives a set of abstract rules that govern a
natural language from texts in that language and explores how that language relates to other
languages. (Corpus linguistics-en.Wikipedia.or). Commonly used tools to facilitate these
tasks are AntConc (Anthony,2017 a) and ProtAnt tool (Anthony & Baker, 2017). Each one
of them has its use with authentic materials. (See appendix C)

Target explanation and instructions in custom materials are supposed to be written in a

simplified language. The finest way to do this is with an online lexical profile tool such as
AntQuickTools (Anthony, 2017 c), AntWordProfiler (Anthony, 2014), or the one in the
Compleat Lexical Tutor (Cobb, 2017). Those tools help you highlight problematic
language in your carried content and simplifying them accordingly. (See appendix D)

Distributing materials and allowing learners to engage with them are essential factors
too. There are a growing number of technologies that help in this process such as webpages,
email, messaging systems, blogs, and content management systems (CMSs). Furthermore,
social media network platforms allow learners to interact with each other and the

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instructors. Recently, elements of all these technologies have come in the form of massive
open online courses (MOOCs) such as Coursera and Future Learn, as well as a growing
number of open platforms.

3. CONCLUSION
Finally, ESP instructors should be confident in choosing effective materials for use in an
ESP classroom. At times, using a published textbook is the most effective way especially
if the instructor tested these textbooks for validity and usability. These textbooks are
carefully designed, however, sometimes, they do not serve all the learners' objectives. In
such a case, ESP instructors have to define what to change, eliminate, add, or extend.
Despite the efforts of creating custom materials, it might be the current best solution to
help learners achieve their learning objectives with corpus tools and other technologies that
can assist in preparing materials at varying degrees of authenticity.

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4. REFERENCES
Laurence Anthony (2018) Introducing English for Specific Purposes. Routledge, an
imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group.

Yogman, J., & Kaylani, C. T. (1996). ESP program design for mixed level students.
English for Specific Purposes, 15 (4), 311–324.

[Online]. Available: Adapting Materials: Revisiting the Needs of Learners

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND CULTURAL STUDIES ISSN
2356-5926 http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/index

[Online]. Available: An introduction to corpus linguistics, Michigan ELT (2010)

https://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/9780472033850-part1.pdf

[Online]. Available: Corpus linguistcs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpuslinguistics

[Online]. Available: AntConc toolkit

https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antconc/

[Online]. Available: ProtAnt tool

https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/protant/

[Online]. Available: AntQuickTools ( Anthony, 2017 c)

https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antquicktools/

[Online]. Available: AntWordProfiler (Anthony, 2014)

https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antwordprofiler/

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Appendix A - Materials evaluation: stage one review questions

Role of materials Questions to consider

help learners to
understand the what,
why, and how of the
target language setting
help learners to build
their language skills
assist learners to use
language skills actively
• Are the materials relevant for the target
language setting and learner group?
• Are the materials up-to-date?
• Can the materials be used with the
target number of learners?
• Do the materials provide a variety of
exercises that address learner needs?
• Is the cost of the materials acceptable
to the learners and the institution?
• Does the level of the materials match
that of the learners?
• Are the units and exercises clearly and
logically ordered?
• Can the materials be covered within the
timeframe of the course?
• Do the materials provide pair and group
exercises (in addition to instructor-
centered and individual exercises)?

encourage the incidental • Do the materials provide overviews,

learning of targeted summaries, reviews, and additional
language skills exercises, tasks, and readings?
• Do the materials include a table
of contents, an index, and a list of
references?

help learners develop Do the materials introduce interesting

a positive emotional and useful examples?
response to the targeted • Are the materials presented in a clear
language skills and professional way?

support (non-specialist) Do the materials include teachers’

instructors book?
• Do the materials including supporting
audio/video, transcripts, and/or an
answer key?
• Do the materials require specialist
knowledge?
• Do the materials require space or
resources that are unavailable?

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Appendix B - Materials evaluation: stage two in-depth review questions

Role of materials Questions to consider

help learners to Do the materials provide full coverage
understand the what, of target language skills?
why, and how of the • Are authentic examples used?
target language setting • Do exercises meet target language
and learning objectives?
• Can the materials be used in class
and also outside of class as a learning
resource?
help learners to build Can the materials be used with
their language skills learners at a range of different levels?
• Can the materials be conveniently
divided up and presented within the
designated lesson hours and the
course timeframe?

assist learners to use Does the ordering of materials match

language skills actively
encourage the incidental
learning of targeted
language skills
instructor and learner preferences?
assist learners to use
language skills actively
• Do the materials provide a suitable
balance between different exercise
types?
• Do the materials include sample texts
and model answers?
Do the materials provide clear and
comprehensive overviews, summaries,
reviews, and additional exercises,
tasks, and readings that stretch the
learners?
• Does the table of contents, index, and
list of references accurately reflect
the content of the materials?

help learners develop • Are the examples culturally or socially

a positive emotional
response to the targeted
language skills
support (non-specialist)
appropriate?
• Are the examples timely?
• Are the exercises sufficiently varied to
avoid becoming repetitive?
• Are the void of the material of any major
typos or production issues?
• Is the layout clear and attractive?
• Do the visuals help the explanation
• Is the teacher’s book suitably detailed?

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 instructors • Does the teacher’s book-match the
quality of the main materials?
• Are supporting materials of a high
quality?
• Are supporting materials correctly
indexed and referenced in the main
materials?
• Are L1 explanations available (if
necessary)

Appendix C - Tools exhibit the characteristic features of language

Toolkit name Use

AntConc (Anthony, can be used to generate keywords from a target corpus of target texts that
2017 a) can then be used to identify good candidate texts for use as carrier content
ProtAnt ( Anthony & automatically compares a set of candidate texts against a reference corpus
Baker, 2017 ) of target language, ranking the texts in terms of their prototypicality . The
highest-ranked texts should serve not only as good carrier content samples,
but also as useful samples to analyze when deciding the learning objectives
for a course

Appendix D –Tools simplify Target explanation and instructions in custom materials

Toolkit name Use

allows you to copy and paste an explanation or instruction directly into a
AntQuickTools browser window, and the tool will immediately highlight words that are
(Anthony, 2017 c) outside of the most frequent bands of English. This display gives you
direct feedback on which words might be problematic for your learners.

AntWordProfiler Can be used to profile tens, hundreds, or even thousands of individual texts in
(Anthony, 2014) one batch. The advantage of using an offline profiler is that it can be used with
sensitive data, such as the content of examinations in an EAP setting or
technical documentation in an EOP setting.

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