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Contextualizing ESP

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As discussed before, ESP (English for Specific Purposes) is not a new approach in the teaching area; yet it is becoming more and more influential in English teaching because it takes into account the real needs of students instead of the teachers' assumptions. But, what role do these needs have in teaching? What difference do they make in the process?  According to Anthony “ESP is an approach to language teaching that targets the current and/or future academic or occupational needs of learners, focuses on the necessary language, genres, and skills to address these needs, and assists learners in meeting these needs through the use of general and/or discipline specific teaching materials and methods.” (Anthony & Routledge, 2018) Consequently, the students’ needs are the key point in deciding where a course is going. Now, there has to be an analysis of those needs in order to fulfill them appropriately because even though ESP does not normally focus on language, that may b

From ESL to ESP

According to different studies there is a lot of information related to the history of the English instruction and the methodologies used in order to have a more meaningful teaching and learning process. It is important to mention that education is a field that is always changing to adapt to what people need in a specific moment in time to fulfill society’s needs and the shifting environment. The bottom line is that everyone is looking for better ways or tools for a successful class. It is the instructor's job to create a good teaching- learning environment and promote motivation within the group. This cannot be done if they keep doing what they did 50 years ago. As a result, teachers continuously try to find the best way to teach and then share the experiences and the material used in order to receive feedback and provide others with everything that has been learned. For this, academics must be flexible, not only to adapt to the needs, environments, objectives, and basically lead