THE ROLE OF TEACHER KNOWLEDGE IN ESP COURSE DESIGN

• Authors: Bożena Górska-Poręcka
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

English for specific purposes (ESP) has been conceptualized by its leading scholars, like Hutchinson and Waters (1987) or Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998), as a multi-stage process, where the ESP practitioner fulfils a variety of roles, including that of learner needs researcher, course designer, language instructor, learning assessor, and course evaluator. The performance of these roles requires considerable knowledge of a linguistic, socio-cultural and pedagogical nature, necessary to inform the teacher’s cognitive processes, par- ticularly those involved in course decision making. The necessary professional knowledge of the ESP teacher, which is gained through professional school- ing, teacher training, and teaching experience, comprises both relevant theo- retical concepts (knowing what) and performance skills (knowing how). It di- rectly impacts on all stages of the ESP process, namely the planning, design, teaching, assessment and evaluation of a course, largely determining its quality. The present paper focuses on ESP teacher cognition, especially those cognitions (i.e. knowledge and beliefs) that are involved in course design, informing the teacher’s choices of course parameters and instructional practices. Elaborating on the concepts developed by language cognition scholars, like Shulman (1987), Andrews (e.g. 2007), and Borg (e.g. 2006), the author tries to outline the in- ternal structure of ESP teacher cognition and describe the function of each subordinate knowledge base. The paper also presents the preliminary results of a small-scale exploratory study into the professional cognition of 13 teachers of Legal and Business English employed at the University of Warsaw.

Keywords

EN

English for specific purposes; teacher cognition; teacher knowledge; professional knowledge base; teacher decision making; course design

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 34
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 27-42

Dates

published

2013-10-01

online

2013-12-31

Contributors

author

Bożena Górska-Poręcka

• The University of Warsaw

References

• Andrews, S. (1997). Metalinguistic awareness and teacher explanation. LanguageAwareness, 6 (2/3), 147-61.
• Andrews, S. (2001). The language awareness of the L2 teacher: Its impact upon pedagogical practice. Language Awareness, 13 (3), 75-90.[Crossref]
• Andrews, S. (2003). Teacher language awareness and the professional knowledge base of the L2 teacher. Language awareness, 12 (2), 81-95.[Crossref]
• Andrews, S. (2007). Teacher Language Awareness. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press.
• Belcher, D. (2009).What ESP Is and Can Be: An Introduction. In D. Belcher (Ed.), English for Specific Purposes in Theory and Practice. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Borg, S. (2003). Teacher cognition in language teaching: A review of research on what language teachers think, know, believe, and do. Language Teaching, 36, 81-109.
• Borg, S. (2006). Teacher Cognition and Language Education. London: Continuum.
• Dudley-Evans, T., & St. John, M. (1998). Developments in English for SpecificPurposes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology for Success. New York: Random House Publishing.
• Gorska-Poręcka, B. (2011). Towards a less dry and more effective Legal English classroom. The Teacher, 1 (85), 38-45.
• Hutchinson, T., & Waters, R. (1987). English for Specific Purposes: A learning-centered approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hales, T. (1997). Exploring data-driven language awareness. ELT Journal, 51 (2), 217-23.
• Harvey, L., & Knight, P. (1996). Transforming Higher Education. Buckingham: Open University Press and the Society for Research into Higher Education.
• Krashen, S. (1985). Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications. New York: Longman.
• Robinson, P. (1991). ESP today. London: Prentice Hall.
• Shulman, L. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundation of the new reform. Har-vard Educational Review, 57 (1), 1-22.
• Thornbury, S. (1997). About Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Turner-Bisset, R. (1999). The knowledge bases of the expert teacher. British Edu-cational Research Journal, 25 (1), 39-55.
• Van Lier, L. (1995). Introducing language awareness. London: Penguin.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/slgr-2013-0021