Designing an English for Specific Purposes Course for National Handicraft Specialities at Kuressaare Regional Training Centre

Abstract

The main aim of this MA thesis is to examine different ways of teaching and learning English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and to provide a rationale for designing an ESP course for national handicraft specialities (textile, ceramics, leather craft) at Kuressaare Regional Training Centre as well as in vocational schools in Estonia together with the aims and competences set out in the national curriculum. The paper also examines various types of syllabuses and their implementation in an ESP course. The thesis is comprised of the introduction, three chapters, the conclusion, references and six appendices. In the introduction, the reasons for and the aims of the study are listed. The introduction also discusses the definitions and development of ESP and focuses on the different roles the ESP teacher has to perform in a teaching-learning process. Chapter 1 reviews the literature related to syllabus design, discusses the role of needs analysis in the course design process and different ways of conducting the needs analysis. Chapter 2 provides the results of the survey conducted among 74 students from four vocational schools in Estonia. One of the aims of this survey was to determine the ESP needs of national handicraft students without training experience abroad and of students with various specialities from different vocational schools in Estonia with training experience in a foreign country. Chapter 3 focuses on the situation analysis of the national handicraft students, presents and explains the outline of the course developed. The relevant extract from the national curriculum, the curriculum of Kuressaare Regional Training Centre, the needs analysis framework, two questionnaires and the developed ESP course syllabus are presented in the Appendices. The list of 23 sources can be found on the Reference page and the list of 12 sources of teaching materials on a separate page.