Challenges faced by ULIS senior students in adapting teaching materials in ESP methodology subject

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONALSTUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATIONGRADUATION THESIS CHALLENGES FACED BY ULIS SENIOR STUD

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONALSTUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

GRADUATION THESIS

CHALLENGES FACED BY ULIS SENIOR

STUDENTS IN ADAPTING TEACHING MATERIALS

IN ESP METHODOLOGY SUBJECT

Supervisor: Nguyen Thi Thanh Van M.Ed

Student: Nhu Thu Sang

Course: QH2017 E6

HA NOI - 2021

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

KHÓ KHĂN SINH VIÊN NĂM CUỐI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ GẶP PHẢI TRONG QUÁ TRÌNH THỰC HIỆN ĐIỀU CHỈNH TÀI LIỆU DẠY TRONG MÔN PHƯƠNG PHÁP GIẢNG DẠY TIẾNG ANH

CHUYÊN NGÀNH

Giáo viên hướng dẫn: Th.s Nguyễn Thị Thanh Vân

Sinh viên: Nhữ Thu Sang

Khoá: QH2017.F1.E6

HÀ NỘI – NĂM 2021

I herewith formally declare that I myself have written the thesis entitled

“Challenges faced by ULIS senior students in adapting teach material in ESP Methodology subject” independently along with the guidance of my supervisor In addition, the contributions of students and lecturers of FELTE, ULIS are involved

Other sources of information have been used and acknowledged

I also certify that all the data, figures, sources and literature used for the thesis have

been fully and properly cited

Hanoi, May 2021

Submitted by,

Nhu Thu Sang

I

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A completed study would not be done without any assistance Therefore, the author

who conducted this research gratefully gives acknowledgement to their support and

motivation during the time of doing this research as a requirement of completing

this graduation thesis

Initially, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to a number of people for

helping me to make this study My deepest gratitude goes first to Nguyen Thi Thanh

Van, M.Ed., my supervisor, who supported and encouraged me generously

throughout this study Without her excellent academic guidance and support, my

thesis would not have been completed

My appreciation also extends to two ESP lecturers and around ninety seniors who

have helped me by involving in my collecting data step, which plays an essential

role in the research‟s findings

Last but not least, I also wish to express my sincere thanks to my family, my best

friends and my boyfriend who constantly stayed by my side, encouraged and

assisted me in completing the research Their kind help, care and motivation was the

source of my inspiration

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ABSTRACT

This research was conducted to investigate the extrinsic and intrinsic factors

impeding senior students when doing the adapting teaching materials assignment of

the ESP Methodology subject Also, the deep roots and the solutions for these

difficulties were fully presented to provide an overview of the matter The data in

the findings section were collected through document analysis, questionnaire and

interview with under 100 participants including 2 lecturers and around 80 seniors

These instruments were used to gather and analyse the perception and notion of

both teachers and students towards these challenges

The data analyses indicated that students appeared to confront more intrinsic

challenges than extrinsic ones Most of them could individually identify the

problems themselves and figured out several feasible solutions Additionally, from

the sharing of lecturers, the similarity in the viewpoint between teachers and

students could be seen obviously Lastly, on the basis of data analysis and

discussion, some practical implications for further studies were also presented in

this field

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LIST OF TABLES AND FIRGURES

Figure 2.1.3: ELT Tree

Table 2.2.3: The ways to adapt the material

Figure 2.5: Framework of the study

Figure 4.1: The importance of materials in teaching an ESP course from the

perspective of senior students

Figure 4.1: The importance of teachers in preparing the materials for teaching an ESP course

Table 4.2.1: Intrinsic and extrinsic challenges of ESP materials adaptation faced up

by senior students

Table 4.3.1: The causes of these difficulties from the perspectives of ULIS senior students

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ABBREVIATIONS

1 English for Academic purposes (EAP)

2 English for General Purposes (EGP)

3 English for Occupational Purposes (EOP)

4 English for Specific Purposes (ESP)

5 English language teaching (ELT)

6 Faculty of English Language Teacher Education (FELTE)

7 General English (GE)

8 SD (standard deviation)

9 University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS)

10 Vietnam National University (VNU)

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1

1.2 Statement of research problems and questions 2

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

2.1 English for specific purposes (ESP) 4

2.1.1 Definition of ESP 4

2.2.2 What is ESP material adaptation? 9 2.2.3 Methods of ESP material adaptation 10

2.4 Challenges faced by senior student when 12

practicing adapting the materials as a task in class

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CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY 14

3.1.1 Description of ESP Methodology course 14

3.2.1 Seniors students of FELTE, ULIS,VNU 14

CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 18

4.1 Background of the role of material adaptation in ESP 184.2 Question 1: What are the challenges faced by senior 21

students when adapting the materials?

4.2.1 Students‟ questionnaire analysis 21

4.2.2 Students‟ interview analysis 24

4.3 Question 2: What are the causes of these difficulties 27

from the perspectives of ULIS students and lecturers?

4.3.1 Students‟ questionnaire analysis 27

4.4 Question 3: What are some possible solutions for 31

these challenges?

VII

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION 34

5.2.2 Recommendations for senior students 39

5.2.3 Recommendation for the ESP Methodology

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

In the integrated community these days, the requirement of using English is essential due to its role as an international language among a number of countries This role apparently results in the contribution of many aspects including science, technology, education, employment and so on (Rao, 2019, p72) In this sense, this foreign language is regarded as a “common medium of communication” and “an access to much scientific and technical literature” (Kennedy et al.,1984) Consequently, there is a significant growth in the position of English over time

Along with the sustainable development of English, its numerous functions have been utilized for specific purposes, in particular areas, which is regularly known as English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Hutchinson and Waters (1987) illustrated that ESP is opposed to General English (GE); it is teaching English for any other purposes based on the learners' needs In this case, learners need to study English in order to meet the demand of their work or study (Robinson, 1991:2) Since the first emergence in the 1960s, it has fast “become fashionable in the language- teaching world” (Haddam, 2015, p.18) From that time, English has been used as a tool serving the purposes of many generations However, the more needs for ESP in the labor market is, the more attention needs to be paid on the quality of teaching procedure The challenge stems from the lack of sufficient training for ESP teachers who shifted from the English language teaching (ELT) area (Pham & Ta, 2016)

Mentioning difficulties faced by ESP practitioners, Dudley-Evans & St John (1998) have identified some specific roles of an ESP practitioner as a teacher, course designer and material provider, collaborator, researcher and evaluator, which

is quite different from GE teacher ESP teachers have to figure out the material, carry out adaptation and design a separate course which is based solely on the

1.2 Statement of research problems and questions

Although there are numerous projects and researches studying the difficulties

of ESP teaching progress, the number of studies analysing thoroughly the challenges in adapting materials are much fewer And even fewer products for senior ELT students are recorded

In Vietnam, it seems that there is little focus on senior ELT students due to its minor effects In the ESP Methodology course, as the role of both senior student and researcher, the author is aware of considerable challenges facing all of them As

a result, the research named “Challenges faced by ULIS senior students in

adapting teach material in ESP Methodology subject” is conducted with a view

to illustrating and analysing deeply about this term, which may be beneficial to the next generations and teachers as well

In this study, the following questions will be answered:

1 What are the challenges faced by senior students when adapting the teaching materials in ESP Methodology course?

2 What are the causes of these difficulties from the perspectives of ULIS students and lecturers?

3 What are some possible solutions for these challenges?

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1.3 Scope of the study

The research solely focuses on the material adaptation of the whole ESP teaching progress encountered by senior students of Faculty of English Language Teacher Education (FELTE), University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS), Vietnam National University (VNU) The research will be conducted based

on the viewpoints of four- year students who have experienced this subject, along with the opinions of 2 ESP teachers Therefore, the figures and results would show significant reliability

1.4 Significance of the study

This research provides the current issues with collected figures so that feasible suggestions would be put forward

The research includes a list of latest findings to the limit literature review about senior students‟ tackling adapting materials in ESP Methodology subject Also, it will go deeply to demonstrate which specific factors lead to the difficulties

of students and the reason why students find them challenging From that, learners

of this course could identify the problems and possibly solve them individually

What‟s more, the study performs as a notice for ESP lecturers to comprehend the current state so that they could make necessary adaptation to reduce the struggle

in the next ESP course

Last but not least, the research is beneficial to all the senior students especially who may participate in conducting the study They would all be aware of the matter, how it is challenging for both teachers and students in adapting future ESP materials So, with the provided feasible solutions, they could apply to experience the effectiveness of them and lessen the struggles

1.5 Organization

There are five chapters in this research:

a base for further research and discussion.

Chapter three displays the Methodology It consists of 3-4 methods that the researcher will utilize along the progress of conducting the research

Chapter four provides the results collected from researching sources, the discussion around the findings and states the answers for the research questions

Chapter five concludes the research that will summarize all the content and show the reference resources

According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987), ESP is a branch of English Language Teaching (ELT), which is an approach to teach and learn English based

on learners‟ needs The notion of ESP was also clearly stated by Hutchinson and Waters (1987:19) who theorize: “ESP is an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based on the learner‟s reason for learning”

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Harmer (1983) states that the definition of ESP has a slight difference from General English ESP can be viewed as a special and specific edition of English for General Purposes (EGP) that incorporates practical linguistic skills to enable students for the successful performance of professional tasks (Potocar, 2002)

Once again, the rationale of an ESP course is based firmly on learners‟ needs analysis process In conclusion, ESP basically follows the principle: “Tell me what

do you need English for, I will tell you the English you need” (Bensafa, 2016)

2.1.2 Characteristics of ESP

ESP is a recognizable activity of English Language Teaching (ELT) with some specific characteristics Dudley-Evans and St Johns tried (1998) to apply a series of characteristics, some absolute and some variable, to outline the major features of ESP

a Absolute characteristics:

 ESP is defined to meet specific needs of the learners;

 ESP makes use of underlying methodology and activities of the discipline it serves;

 ESP is centered on the language (grammar, lexis, register), skills, discourse and genre appropriate to these activities

b Variable Characteristics:

 ESP may be related to or designed for specific disciplines;

 ESP may use, in specific teaching situations, a different methodology from that of General English;

 ESP is likely to be designed for adult learners, either at a tertiary level institution or in a professional work situation It could, however, be for learners at secondary school level;

 ESP is generally designed for intermediate or advanced students Most ESP courses assume some basic knowledge of the language systems, but it can be used with beginners

(Dudley-Evans & St John, 1998, p.4)

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2.1.3 Categories of ESP

There were numerous attempts to classify ESP in various categories, and the result was always a confusing demarcation of various subcategories and abbreviations Classically, ESP is categorized into two major branches They are English for Academic purposes (EAP) and English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) (Strevens, 1977)

 EOP is taught to those learners who will use their knowledge of language in vocational field or profession For example, EOP students can be journalists

or reporters or other technicians who may require English in their workplace

to prepare a news story, to shoot footage or to discuss with teammates

 English for Academic Purposes (EAP) is taught in academic institutions to students who require English in their studies The language covers a specific area of higher education which the learner is studying or intends to study As

a school subject, ESP flourishes both at the primary and secondary levels in technical schools and non-technical sectors simultaneously

Especially, in the ELT tree of Hutchinson & Waters (1987), there are some changes

in the division method, compared to the previous research

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Figure 2.1.3: ELT Tree (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987)

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In the ELT Tree, the division is more specific, especially with ESP branch

As can be seen in the Tree, ESP is differentiated with ELT branch ESP is broken down into three branches English for Science and Technology (EST), English for Business and Economics (EBE), and English for Social Studies (ESS) Each of these three subject is further divided into two branches: English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) An example of EOP for the EST branch is 'English for Technicians' whereas an example of EAP for the EST branch is 'English for Medical Studies'

2.2 ESP material adaptation

2.2.1 What are materials in ESP?

Basically, teaching materials are a virtual part assisting teachers with enhancing teaching quality and achieving learners‟ learning outcomes They are

“anything which can be used to facilitate the learning of a language, including course books, videos, graded readers, flash cards, games, websites and mobile phone interactions” (Tomlinson, 2012, p 143) There are 4 important issues of this term:

1) There are major and minor ESP areas/courses, and published materials are sensible to the reality Business English and Maritime English are examples of them Some courses that are tailor-made to suit a particular group of students would also fall within the minor category (for instance, English for tourism to a group of taxi drivers and policemen in a popular town for British tourists)

2) Subject-matter content is fundamental to ESP materials Also known as carrier content, informative content, discipline-based knowledge, specific information which is specific to a particular discipline and which people, like students and future experts, possess in their mother tongue ESP teachers will need a reasonable understanding of the specific discipline as well as “an interest in the disciplines or professional activities the students are involved in” (Dudley-Evans and St John, 1998: 14)

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3) All too often, ESP teachers become evaluators, designers and developers

of materials, simply because “publishers are naturally reluctant to produce materials for very limited markets” (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 106) and most ESP areas conform to this reality These roles are not exclusive to ESP teachers but, if compared with EFL/ESL teachers, they are more often engaged in the task of evaluating, designing and developing materials for their classroom use It is precisely this additional role of material providers/developers that has endowed ESP teachers with the denomination of practitioners (Robinson, 1991)

4) Unlike EFL/ESL teaching, there exists a mismatch between pedagogy and research; that is, there is a gap between course books and pedagogical practice, on the one hand, and research findings, on the other hand For instance, as Harwood (2005: 150) found, there is “a lack of fit between how academic writers write and what the textbooks teach about writing”

2.2.2 What is ESP material adaptation?

Adaptation of existing materials is the result of recognizing a mismatch between the teaching materials and the needs and objectives of the classroom Also, material adaptation is one of the significant components of evaluating and designing materials for ESP Adaptation denotes that language teachers in the ESP situation should look for the best of their classes Material adaptation often has various reasons Graves (1996) points out that the effectiveness in achieving the purpose of the course and their appropriateness for the students and the teacher are two main reasons for educators to carry out adaptation She emphasizes that appropriateness includes student comfort and familiarity with the material, language level, interest, and relevance Otherwise, Cunningsworth (1995) also lists a number of factors for adapting materials:

a The dynamic of the classroom

b The personalities involved

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c The constraints imposed by syllabuses

d The availability of resources

e The expectation and motivations of the learners

Misirli‟s research findings (2010) reveals a number of reasons materials need

to be adapted before teaching: not enough grammatical input, not appropriate level, not communicative enough, not appealing to learning to learning styles, not appropriate in terms of length, etc

To adapt successfully, the following forms will be of great deal when opting for the process of materials adaptation First modifying the content by adding or deleting some parts to the material as it is a textbook, a manuscript, or a recording Second, reorganizing the content in terms of tasks by modifying or extending them based on the learners‟ needs Now, the governing condition of all what has been said above is- as stated by Marand (2011:552 citing Graves 1996) -that abundant factors need to be taken into account while adapting materials The most pivotal are: effectiveness in achieving the course objectives and appropriateness which encapsulates “student comfort and familiarity with the material, language level, interest and relevance” The last point to speak here is a frequent question asked by many ESP teachers or practitioners i.e what are the ways of material adaptation? Before, it should be stressed here that any material adaptation is based on an important previous process i.e material evaluation This last aims at investigating the deficiencies as well as the lacuna of ELT as to ESP materials Coming back to the answer of the above question, it is summarised in the following table

2.2.3 Methods of ESP material adaptation

Many different ways to divide material adaptation into particular techniques have been demonstrated According to McDonough, Shaw (1993) and Cunningsworth (1995), these techniques include: adding; extending and expanding, deleting; subtracting and abridging, simplifying, recording, and replacing materials

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Another way is illustrated specifically in the table below:

Ways for Material Adaptation adopted from (Maley, 1998:281 Cited in

Tomlinson, 1998) Way Description

Omission The teachers leave out things deemed inappropriate,

offensive, unproductive, etc., for the particular group

Addition Where there seems to be inadequate coverage, teachers

may decide to add to textbooks, either in the form of texts or exercise material

Reduction Where the teachers shorten an activity to give it less

weight or emphasis

Extension Where an activity is lengthened in order to give it an

additional dimension (For example, a vocabulary activity is extended to draw attention to some syntactic patterning.)

Rewriting/Modification Teachers may occasionally decide to rewrite material,

especially exercise material, to make it more appropriate, more “communicative”, more demanding, more accessible to their students, etc

Replacement Text or exercise material which is considered

inadequate, for whatever reason, may be replaced by more suitable material This is often culled from other resource materials

Re-ordering Teachers may decide that the order in which the

textbooks are presented is not suitable for their students They can then decide to plot a different course through

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the textbooks from the one the writer has laid down

Branching Teachers may decide to add options to the existing

activity or to suggest alternative pathways through activities (an experiential route or an analytical route.)

Table 2.2.3: The ways to adapt the material

2.3 Challenges in adapting ESP materials

Due to the crucial role of materials in the language teaching process, especially in the ESP area, the adaptation step when developing courses is highly taken into account that requires a variety of knowledge and techniques Graves (1996) points out that teachers consider a variety of factors in developing, choosing,

or adapting materials Two of the most important are their effectiveness in achieving the purpose of the course and their appropriateness for the students and the teacher She emphasizes that appropriateness includes student comfort and familiarity with the material, language level, interest, and relevance Some teachers incorporate instructions in how to use unfamiliar materials as part of their course design As a result, adaptation progress is likely to take a lot of time and effort when

it always requires an educator to analyse the learner's need, level, learning style and many other elements before carrying out the next steps Besides, for experienced English teachers, preparing teaching materials may be a little bit easier However, for newly graduated teachers or novice teachers, particularly those who haven‟t taken a course on material constructions, may have difficulties in preparing, selecting teaching materials and developing the courses

2.4 Challenges faced by senior students when practicing adapting the materials as a task in class.

For senior students, when practicing adapting materials as an assignment in ESP Methodology lesson, they tend to meet similar challenges with novice teachers Lack of experience may be one of the great reasons Compared with experienced teachers, they could obtain a wider range of background knowledge related to the

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learner's job and interest Moreover, these teachers are skillful enough to deal with the differences in terms of language level, learning style, mindset and the objective between the learners and available materials Therefore, senior students surely face numerous difficulties in completing the assignment of adapting teaching materials

in class

2.5 Framework of the study

Since there is no directly- related framework for this topic, an extensive literature review performs as the foundation

Figure 2.5: Framework of the study (Giang, 2019)

Challenges in adapting the material as an assignment of ESP

Senior students of FELTE, ULIS, VNU

Intrinsic Challenges

Extrinsic Challengess

Causes of these challenges

Solutions to the problem

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CHAPTER THREE

METHODOLOGY 3.1 Context of the study

3.1.1 Description of ESP Methodology course

The ESP Methodology course lasts for 15 weeks in the first term for senior students The course provides students various knowledge about the ESP, then guides them to carry out some particular tasks including needs analysis, course design, evaluation and adaptation available materials… Especially, the method to assess ESP learners is also demonstrated in this course

3.1.2 Description of ESP task

The adapting available materials adaptation task accounts for 15 percent of the overall course assessment This task requires students to work in groups of 5-6 to deal with one chosen material Students have to utilize learnt knowledge including all the theories and need analysis skill, to figure out the mismatch features of the material From that, students would give the recommendation to improve the problem and to fit with our learners‟ targets The expected outcome is a hard copy

of the content and a presentation in class as well

3.2 Participants

The participants in this study consist of under 100 senior students from all the FELTE classes and 2-3 lecturers teaching the ESP courses in ULIS, VNU

3.2.1 Seniors students of FELTE, ULIS,VNU

No Class Number of participants

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3.2.2 Lecturers of FELTE, ULIS,VNU

Two invited lecturers are two teachers from ESP subject who have a plenty

of experience in teaching ESP and adapting materials section as well

3.3 Data collection procedure

There would be two main phases in the procedure of collecting data:

Phase 1: This duration is used for designing questionnaires and interview schedules

for participants Some versions or drafts would be prepared before the final version

is public and distributed The questionnaire is designed in English, based on theoretical background and focuses solely on three research questions so that the reliability can be ensured

The questionnaires (both online and offline) would be completed by next February – March

Phase 2: When the official questionnaire is distributed, the researcher will send the

interview invitation to some individuals (both students and teachers) who will represent to give more specific answers to some prepared questions The result of this act would be collect by the end of March so that the next step could be carried out

3.4 Data collection instrument

To come up with the causes, factors and solution of students‟ challenges in doing the assignment, three main data instruments including document analysis, questionnaires and interviews will be employed

3.4.1 Questionnaire

The Questionnaire is an instrument in the written form to provide participants with statements or questions so that they can choose the provided options or write down the answer (Burns, 2000)

According to Saul McLeod, questionnaires provide a relatively cheap, quick and efficient way of obtaining large amounts of information from a large sample of

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people Moreover, Wilkinson and Birmingham (2003) said that questionnaires offer three primary benefits for researchers: “they are usually inexpensive to administer; very little training is needed to develop them; and they can be easily and quickly analyzed once completed” (Wilkinson & Birmingham, 2003 p.8)

Often a questionnaire uses both open and closed questions to collect data This is beneficial as it means both quantitative and qualitative data can be obtained

In this case, the quantitative method is likely to be useful as the data need to be clear enough to analyse effectively in the next part

There are 3 main types of questions that can be used in a questionnaire including closed questions, multiple-choice or ranking questions, and open-ended questions While closed questions and multiple-choice questions can limit participant‟s options to give their opinions, open-end questions include items asking for the answers by filling the blank Therefore, I decided to apply multiple choice questions and open-end questions in this study so that the questionnaires can be convenient for the participants without limiting their opinions

With a view to investigating the perception of students towards provided items, it employs the Likert Scale (5 levels) in 2 key questions about challenges and their roots

3.4.2 Interview

Due to the drawbacks questionnaires, interviews will be employed to analyze the results from the questionnaires in more depth By employing the interview method, researchers can identify the underlying reasons behind the respondent's answers

Interviewing, Dörnyei (2007) argues, is „a naturally and socially acceptable‟ way of collecting data as it can be used in various situations covering a variety of topics

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In this study, the interview would include 2 ESP lecturers and a small group

of senior students, who represent the rest to express more thoroughly about provided questions Also, the interview allows participants to describe in detail what exactly the challenges are along with the reasons, explanations and even examples.Therefore, the interviewer here would be more “keen to follow up interesting developments and to let the interviewee elaborate on various issues” (Dörnyei, 2007: 136)

In this study, the collected data and figures would be calculated into numerical form using SPSS After that, these data would be divided into different categories based on literature review and researcher‟s intention The outcome data will be presented in table and chart so that the findings and discussion would definitely be clear and reliable

3.5.2 Interview

The consent form will be privately delivered to volunteer interviewees After receiving the permission, the short recording will be carried out in both online or offline form After that, data from the interviews will be gathered and summarized

to create charts and tables to become the evidence for further analysis of researcher

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CHAPTER FOUR

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, all the data collected by the mentioned- above instruments would

be demonstrated specifically along with detail analysis, which contributes to the answers of three principal questions of this research:

1 What are the challenges faced by senior students when adapting the materials?

2 What are the causes of these difficulties from the perspectives of ULIS students and lecturers?

3 What are some possible solutions for these challenges?

Due to several objective factors, all the research methods including questionnaire and interview, were carried out online Thanks to the support from teachers and students from FELTE, ULIS the amount of collected data is generally sufficient with around 80 responses of online questionnaires and 10 participants (both teachers and students) in the interview instrument

4.1 Background of the role of material adaptation in ESP from senior

students’ perception

Before analysing three research questions, there are two questions asking students to evaluate the role of materials in teaching an ESP course as well as the role of teachers in preparing the materials for teaching an ESP course These two questions would reveal the significance of adapting materials in the form of both assignment and real teaching environment

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Figure 4.1: The importance of materials in teaching an ESP course from the

perspective of senior students

As we can see from the chart, none of the participants (0%) agreed that materials are unimportant or slightly important in teaching an ESP course Instead, most of them considered that materials play a crucial role when “very important” option accounts for the highest proportion (63%), followed by “important” option, which occupies 35% overall Only 2% of the participants thought it is moderately important for the course Therefore, it can be concluded that almost all senior students were highly aware of the role of ESP teaching materials

The next question continuously investigates students‟ awareness about the role of teachers in preparing the materials for teaching an ESP course And the collected result is illustrated in the following pie chart

is “important” 3% of the participants chose the “moderately important” option when there are no students supposing it is “slightly important” or “unimportant” at all In short, beside the role of ESP teaching materials, all the seniors dignify the role of teachers in the ESP material preparation process.

To sum up, it can clearly be pointed out that all FELTE senior students have comprehended the significance of materials in an ESP project after experiencing an ESP Methodology course in the first semester That is the virtual reason for conducting the research, which displays numerous useful information related to the challenges, causes and solutions in adapting materials for both students and ESP teachers to take into account