ESP: Particular reference to the teaching material at a vocational school

Abstract

This research was aimed at describing how an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) teacher provided ESP materials for the teaching of ESP at vocational school of SMTI Banda Aceh. The design of this study was a descriptive qualitative research. The research study was conducted at a vocational school specialized in industrial technology (SMTI) in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. We used documents collection to obtain the data. We classified the data into three categories of ESP material: material selection, material adaptation, or material development (Vicic, 2011) and then we analysed the content of materials suggested by Wallace (1992): (1)adequacy; (2)motivation/interesting, (3)sequence, (4) diversity, and (5) acceptability. The result of this research study showed that the ESP teacher mostly used the first way, material selection, to provide ESP materials. He selected materials from the readily-available textbooks. In addition, he did not seem to adapt nor develop any materials. His lack of knowledge of material development has restricted him from developing new and (probably) more attractive materials. Regarding to the content, generally, the textbook used was good enough and specified to ESP need. This study, however, was only limited to the process of selecting materials and describing its contents. Further research studies need to be conducted regarding to the process of teachers delivering/ teaching ESP using those materials. We, therefore, suggest other researchers to conduct a research study on this matter.