Name : Nining SyafitriStudent’s Number : P0600214005English for Specific Purposes (ESP)

“Communication Skill in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) for Learners”

A. Introduction

In Developments in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) book, it is in chapter 1 page 1 in paragraph 2 line 3 – 5, Dudley-Evan and John (1998, 1) states that “the main concerns of ESP have always been … with… preparing learners to communicate effectively in … their study or work situation.” The statement inspires the writer to take “Communication Skill in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) for Learners” as the topic to be discussed and the reason comes from the writer’s view which concerns to competitiveness and globalization era, they get a serious attention from human being which consider to be a good human resource quality for getting a qualification in their disciplines. So, in this paper the writer will discuss more about the role of ESP for communication skill in their certain discipline with its relevance to the writer’s past experiences.

B. Discussion

According to Oxford Learner’s Pocket Dictionary (2008), communication is activity of giving people information and skill is having enough ability to be able to do something well. So, the writer can say that communication skill is an ability to interact with other people to convey information. Afterwards, according to Paltridge and Starfield (2013), English for Specific Purposes refers to the teaching and learning of English as a second or foreign language where the goal of the learners is to use English in a particular domain and learner is a person who is still learning something (Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary Third Edition, 2008). Communication skill, ESP and learner are three words that become main points in this paper and they have connection each other in order to affect a quality of performance to the learner through using English as a medium to communicate.

One of objectives in teaching ESP that be offered by Basturkmen (2006) is to develop target performance competencies. Here, the writer sees the competence deals with communication skill. Moreover, Ünal (2014) states that the ESP approach is playing its own part in the development of communicative language teaching. These statements explain that how ESP can achieve the learners’ needs in learning English so the learners feel helpful to improve their ability in communication, especially the learners can use English appropriately accordance with their own works situation so it can facilitate the learners to communicate effectively. Ünal (2014) also gives the statement that the essential peculiarity of ESP is English to be taught is in a direct relation with the real worlds of students in terms of content and it is not taught as a distinctive subject out of their real worlds. Therefore, it can be said that there are preparation forms must be paid attention, such as suitable material and methods of the program which is provided by a teacher to gain the goals of ESP program.

Based on the explanation above, the writer has a relevant experience when she was a student of Dayanu Ikhsanuddin University (Unidayan) in English Education study program. In the

accreditation document of English Education study program (2013), it states that one of the visions was … mampu menciptakan tenaga guru bahasa Inggris yang … berjiwa wirausaha dengan menjunjung tinggi nilai-nilai moral dalam menjawab tantangan era globalisasi. This vision implies that not only preparing a learner to have English ability to be an educator, but also to be an entrepreneur. As Ünal (2014) said that it has become used widely among non-native speakers because of the rapid development of the global economy and technology, so it can be inferred that the stakeholder of study program were aware towards this current situation in the world how important the entrepreneurship is. Therefore, the study program has a course related to entrepreneurship, such as Business English. As the student, the courses were very helpful because it gives a chance to deepen English learning in term of business area besides learning general English. One of examples was the materials concerned to how to apply a job in a company and the introduction of business and economic terms. At the time, the writer was taught to make a curriculum vitae (CV) then she had an assignment to make it. Later, there was a job vacancy to be a translator in Lembaga Pengembangan Masyarakat Madani and one of the conditions were the curriculum vitae application. Because the writer had gotten the way of making CV in the course, she made it as a person who wanted to apply a job. This gave a real example to the role of ESP to build a good communication, especially in business area.

In different case, there is a situation when the writer had an experience in term of the translation of medical and mathematics journal articles. It is known that the background knowledge of the writer is learning general English, so when she translated the journal articles from English into Indonesian language, she did not feel comfortable, sometimes she found some sentences did not have enough connection to other sentences. It was caused by the lack of ability to the meaning of terms of those discipline. One day, her sister asked to the writer to translate her mathematics journal article into English, but her sister was disappointed with the writer because her translation was unable to understand, so her sister tried to translate by herself. Here, the writer did not have any capability to communicate herself to the text so she cannot convey the information from that journal article clearly.

From these two different cases, at the first experience it is shown that ESP has the important role toward the learner’s need to prepare themselves for building good communication skill so they can develop their qualifications in their studies or works situation. Meanwhile, at the second experience describes the communication skill does not develop well because ESP is not able to meet the learners’ needs. As Basturkmen (2010) explained that ESP courses set out to teach the language and communication skills that specific groups of language learners need or will need to function effectively in their disciplines of study, professions or workplaces. In addition, Wang and Sun (2014) did a study towards university students in hotel-related fields that entitled Development of Students’ ESP Competence in the Hotel Industry, they said that one of its pedagogical implications was the hotel-related courses should be revised to better prepare students to access their target workplace and create an optimal linguistic environment in the target specialist language. These statements imply that ESP course is designed properly to be used by the learners in using English based on the right needs of learners.

C. Conclusion

As a course, ESP shows its power to guide the learners to meet their needs to use English appropriately in communication, so it will occur a preparation for the course through the material and the method of the course based on the learners’ needs. It is accordance with the explanation from Basturkmen in term of one of objectives of teaching ESP that concerns to performance the learners. So, the role of ESP is very important to develop the learner’s performance especially communication skill in their study or work situation to get a high qualification so the learners can adapt with their abilities and keep standing in a situation where the competitiveness and globalization era exist.

Bibliography

Armada. 2008. Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary Third Edition on CD-ROM. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Basturkmen, Helen. 2006. Ideas and Options in English for Specific Purposes. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers.

-----------------------. 2010. Developing Courses in English for Specific Purposes. United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bull, Victoria. 2008. Oxford Learner’s Pocket Dictionary Fourth Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dudley-Evans & Maggie John. 1998. Developments in English for Specific Purposes: A multi-disciplinary approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

FKIP Unidayan. 2013. Borang Akreditasi Prodi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris. Baubau. Not published.

Paltridge, Brian and Sue Starfield. 2013. The Handbook of English for Specific Purpose. UK: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Ünal, Abdulkadir. 2014. The Problems Encountered in English for Specific Purposes: Business Department Case. The Clute Institute International Academic Conference. Germany.

Wang, Mei-jung and Lou-hon Sun. 2014. Development of students’ ESP competence in the hotel industry. Asian ESP Journal Special Issue. p.101 – 126.