Masaryk university, brno faculty of education

Fig. 2.
Factors Affecting ESP Course Design 
Source:
Adapted from Hutchinson and Waters (1987, p. 22). 
ESP 
COURSE 
WHAT? 
Language 
descriptions 
HOW? 
Learning 
theories 
WHO? 
WHY? 
WHERE? 
WHEN? 
Needs analysis 
Methodology 
Syllabus 
Nature of particular target 
and situation
 

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From figure 2. it is apparent that there are many factors that have to be carefully 
considerated concerning all the language skills. Further in this chapter, special focus will be 
given on questions related to teaching speaking skills in ESP classes. 
As far as the language descriptions are concerned, the main question that needs to be 
answered is what is going to be taught and learnt. Based on the survey, the teacher has to find 
areas of language necessary to comply with the needs of the learners and then contextualize 
them, to put it simply, to create a list of materials that will be motivating and will provide useful 
and meaningful conversational opportunities to practise speaking skills. For this, he first needs 
to elaborate a course syllabus, which is defined by Hutchinson and Waters (1987) as “a 
document which says what will (or at least should) be learnt” (p. 80). 
The ESP teacher also needs to answer the question of how he wants to teach, in other 
words what methodological approaches, methods, techniques and principles he will use in the 
ESP course. A number of various approaches can be applied in the lessons, on the other hand 
for teaching speaking, there should be a special focus on methods allowing learners to practise 
their fluency skills without worrying about mistakes they might make during their spoken 
production. From this point of view, methods such as Communicative Approach or Task-based 
Learning might be preferred as they both aim at practising real situations. To keep students 
motivated and involved in the lesson, Hutchinson and Waters (1987) suggest using a wide range 
of techniques like information gaps, variety of activites, topics or learner roles and many others 
(pp. 139-140).
As for the needs analysis, Hutchinson and Waters (1987) see the biggest difference 
between teaching General English and ESP in “The awareness of the target situation – a 
definable need to communicate in English” (p. 54). They further distinguish between the target 
needs and learning needs (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987, p. 54). The first one answers the 
question of what target situation needs to be achieved by learning English, whereas the second 
rather tells us how the target situation can be achieved. Every good ESP teacher must create 
analysis of target situation and learning needs which includes sets of questions that allow the 
teacher to specify the course needs.

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