Student Programming School

When teaching ESP (English for Specific Purposes) or Business English, the teacher simply continues teaching all the English that they already know how to, but incorporate vocabulary, examples, topics and contexts that are relevant to the students particular needs. The term “specific” in ESP refers to the specific purpose for learning English. This may include EAP (English for Academic Purposes), which prepares students at tertiary level for further academic studies where English is used as the medium of instruction. Students approach the study of English through a field that is already known and relevant to them. This means that they are able to use what they learn in the ESP classroom right away in their work and studies. The techniques are fundamentally the same as those used when teaching general English course. If you do not have the appropriate texts, tapes etc, then it may be possible to get the students or corporate client to provide them. There are also many course books designed for ESP and Business English. These specially designed courses benefit the corporate client as they provide a flexible and responsive approach to the changing client needs, ensuring a high quality and well-balanced course.

The client also receives individual attention from a highly qualified and experienced ESL teacher. Businesses usually require custom-made courses specially designed to suit their specific requirements. Clients may include banks, government agencies, hotels and multinational companies. These ESP or Business programmes are either offered at the school, university /tertiary institution or on the company premises. These specially designed courses should be suited to new recruits, middle management, top-management executives and company front-line staff. A good starting point for an ESP (English for Specific Purposes) course is a “needs analysis” or a “client map.” It is impossible to teach a student’s specific needs until it is ascertained exactly what they are. A typical “needs analysis” might be a questionnaire that the client and teacher discuss and complete together. This may include an analysis of the client’s English usage profile, their expectations and needs, what it is they exactly want and what it is that they don’t have. The process of providing a custom-made course for a corporate client is as follows: Read the rest of this entry »

Most people still today mistakenly regard the arts and crafts of individual societies as their “culture.” Arts and crafts reflect culture but they do not create it and they do not transmit it. You can view and collect Chinese artifacts or Eskimo artifacts all your life and you will not become fully conversant with the cultures that created them.

What most of mankind has missed over the milennia has been the relationship between language and culture. Languages are, in fact, the repository as well as the transmitter of cultures. Languages are the essence, the tone, the flavor and the spirit of cultures, and serve as doorways to understanding them.

The influence that languages have on the values, attitudes and behavior of mono-lingual people is fundamental, and is one of the primary reasons why the present-day world is in a constant state of turmoil. We cannot communicate fully and effectively across the cultural barriers built into our languages.

It is fairly simple to interpret or translate technical subjects from one language into another, but translating cultural attitudes and values into another language ranges from difficult to impossible. The translations may be perfectly correct as far as the words are concerned, but they seldom if ever include all of the cultural nuances that are bound up in the words and are the essence of the mindset of the people. This results in people talking at or past each other instead of to each other-and generally neither side fully understands why they are seldom if ever in perfect agreement…why they cannot get along. Read the rest of this entry »