Republic of the Philippines

Mountain Province State Polytechnic College

Bontoc, Mountain Province

ESP COURSE DESIGN

A series specific process-need analysis, interpreting need analysis, creating syllabus, material
writing, classroom teaching, and evaluation of English.

It is the process of interpreting the raw need analysis data to produce “an integrated series of
learning experiences to lead learners to a particular state of knowledge (Hutchinson and Waters 1987:54),
ESP courses are determined in all essential by the prior analysis of the communication needs of the
learners (Munby 1978)

APPROACHES TO ESP COURSE DESIGN

1. language centered course design

The simplest kind of course design process and one most familiar to English
teachers. It aims to draw as direct a connection as possible between analysis of the target
situation and the content of the ESP course, (Hutchinson and Waters 1987). It proceeds as
follows

Identify learners’ target Select theoretical

situation language

Identify linguistic feature of

target situation

Create a syllabus

Design material to
exemplify syllabus items

Establish evaluation procedures to test

acquisition of syllabus items

Figure 1. A language centered approach to course design

The figure above shows that this approach starts at identifying learners target
situation and then select theoretical language to identify the linguistic features that the learners need.
Based on the identified data, syllabus created. The next step is designing material based on the syllabus,
then establishing evaluation to see the successfulness of the course.

2. Skilled – centered course design

a reaction both to the idea of specific registers of English as a basis for ESP and to
the practical constraints on learning imposed by limited time and resources. It aims not to
provide a specific corpus of linguistic knowledge but to make the learners into better
processor of information.

English for Specific Purpose

Prepared by: JWG ESP subject v.1, s 2019
TTh 1-2:30pm 201 ESP Course Design
Curriculum and Syllabus
 Theoretical
views Select text
Establish evaluation
and write
procedures which
Analyses skills exercises
requires the use of
Identify target strategies Write to focus on
skills strategies in
situation required to syllabus skills/
syllabus
cope in target strategies
situation in syllabus

Theoretical views
of learning

Figure 3. Skill centered approach

Skilled centered approach starts at identifying target situation based on the data
from target situation. Based on the data from target situation analysis, it is determined theoretical views
of language, skill required to cope target situation, and theoretical view of learning. Based on all data the
syllabus is created. Based on the syllabus, then material is developed and then conducting evaluation.

3. Learner centered approach

It is based on the principle that learning is totally determined by learners even
though teacher can influence what is taught but what the learner learn is determined by the
learner alone. Learning is seen as a process in which, what is the learners’ knowledge and
skill have in order to make sense of the flow of new information. Learning therefore, is an
internal process, which is crucially dependent upon the knowledge that the learner already
has and their ability and motivation to use it. The following is the process in learner centered
model:

Analyze students

Formulating goals and objectives

Content

Selecting teaching material

Planning the course

Evaluating the course

Figure 3. A learner- centered approach to course design

4. Integrated approach
An approach that integrate teacher centered learning, learner centered learning
and learning centered approach. It is based on the principle that learner in learning process
must be guided by the teachers to learn optimally. Not all the learning source comes from
the learner, but the learning process can be processed optimally if the all components of the
learning process function well.

English for Specific Purpose

Prepared by: JWG ESP subject v.1, s 2019
TTh 1-2:30pm 201 ESP Course Design
Curriculum and Syllabus
 Need analysis

Identify learner Identifying Identifying Target Needs

present situantion learning need

stakeholder learners Teachers Expert

TARGET NEED

LEARNING NEED

CREATING INTEGRATED SYLLABUS

Learner centered DEVELOPING INTEGRATED MATERIAL Teacher guided

TEACHING

EVALUATING

Figure 6. Integrated approach

Integrated approach in analysis means integrated three components of need analysis, PSA, TSA
and LSA, which are involved integrated source of data - stakeholder, learner, teacher and expert.

The next step is creating syllabus which integrate more than two kinds of syllabus

The third step in the course design is material development. In this step course designer
integrates content material and functional language.

Teaching ESP must integrate student centered and teacher guided. In teaching process, the
main factor determining the failure or successfulness are learners and teachers. The teacher is nor the
only source of material, but the teacher play key role to facilitate learners to learn.

Evaluation is a final in course design. In order the information gathered maximum so the
method for collecting data for evaluation must also be collected

ESP CURRICUM AND SYLLABUS

Curriculum

Is defined as the guideline of the chapters and academic content covered by an educational
system while undergoing a particular course or program. In theoretical sense, curriculum refers to what is
offered by the school or college, however, practically it has a wider scope which covers the knowledge
attitude, behavior, manner, performance and skill that are imparted or inculcated in a student. It contains
the teaching methods, lessons assignments, physical and mental exercise, activies, project, study material,
tutorials, presentation, assessment, test series, learning objectives and so on. Shurbi S. (2017)

Syllabus

Is defined as the documents that consist of topics or portion covered in a particular

subject. It is determined by examination board and created by professors. The professors are responsible
for the quality of the course. It is made available to the studentrs by the teachers, either in hard copy or
electronic form to bring their attention towards the subject and take their study seriously. It helps the
student to know about the subject in detail. Shurbi S. (2017)

English for Specific Purpose

Prepared by: JWG ESP subject v.1, s 2019
TTh 1-2:30pm 201 ESP Course Design
Curriculum and Syllabus
 BASIS FOR COMPARISON SYLLABUS CURRICULUM
Meaning Syllabus is the document that Curriculum is overall content,
contains all the portion of the taught in an educational system
concepts covered in a subject. or a course
Set for A subject A course
nature descriptive prescriptive
scope narrow wide
set out by exam board government or the
administration of school college
or institute
term for a fixed term normally a year till the course last
uniformity varies from teacher to teacher same for all teacher

TYPE OF SYLLABUS

Grammatical: is a list of grammatical structures, and usually divided into graded according to difficulty
and/ importance.

Lexical: a list of lexical items, with associate collocation and idioms, usually divide into graded section.
One such syllabus, based on a corpus (a computerized collocation of samples of authentic language) is
described in Willis, (1990).

Grammatical-lexical: is a very common kind of syllabus: both structure and lexis are specified together in
the section correspond to the units of a course, or in two separate lists.

Situational: is the syllabus that takes the real life context of language uses as their basis: section would be
headed by names of situation or location.

Topic Based: This is almost the same as Situational Syllabus, except that the heading is broadly topic-
based which usually indicate fairly clear set of vocabulary items,

Notional: notion is the concept that language can express. General Notion may include number, time,
place, color, specific notions look more like vocabulary items: man woman, afternoon.

Procedural: is the syllabus that focus on task to be done rather than language itself or even in the
meaning. Example of can be: map reading, scientific experiment or story writing

Mixed or multi-strand: increasingly, modern syllabus is combining different aspect in order to be

maximally comprehensive and helpful to teacher and learners; in these you may find specification of
topics, tasks, functions and notion, as well as grammar and vocabulary.

Process: is the only syllabus which is not pre-set. The content of the is negotiated with the learner at the
beginning of the course and during it, and actually listed only retrospectivity.

IMPORTANCE OF SYLLABUS

it is a device to facilitate learning (Nunan1988:6) which organizes classroom activities according

to learners aims and requirements after the process of needs identification and analysis.

The syllabus lays out your expectation for the quality of wok you expect from your student and
shows student how should they prepare in class example the syllabus can explain whether the students
are supposed to do the reading before or after class. Mansbach J. (2016)

REFFRENCES

Dudley-Evans, T., and M.J. St. John, Development in English for Specific Purpose, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Hutchinson, T., and A. Waters, English for Specific Purpose: a learning-centered Approach,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Lin J. et al, Integrating Curriculum Design Theory into ESP Course Construction: Aviation English for Aircraft
Engineering,
Vol.4, No 2, Tianjin China: Nankai University, 2014
S.S, Difference between Syllabus and Curriculum, http://keydifference.com. Retrieved September 29,2019

English for Specific Purpose

Prepared by: JWG ESP subject v.1, s 2019
TTh 1-2:30pm 201 ESP Course Design
Curriculum and Syllabus