Replacing EGP by ESP at Iranian Universities: Student and Faculty Perceptions

Abstract

This paper reports the opinions and attitudes of university students and English instructors toward English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and ESP-related issues. In this study, a modified version of a questionnaire by Tsao (2011) was employed as the framework and as the only data collection instrument of enquiry. The results of this study revealed that: (1) students in general favor ESP more than English for general purposes (EGP) while teachers, in contrast, are more reserved about the idea of replacing general English education with ESP. (2) Although both faculty and students recognize the importance of ESP, neither considers students’ English proficiency up to the level needed to cope with the ESP course requirements. The two parties alike agree that students need to have a satisfactory grounding in basic English skills before they advance to ESP learning. (3) Both parties agree that although ESP courses should differ from EGP in their objectives, materials and approaches, they should still focus on the training of language skills while integrating specialized terms and discipline content into the course. (4) While both parties agree that ESP instructors should possess English-teaching competency and subject content knowledge, there is a difference of opinions about whether English should be the only medium of instruction, to which the students give stronger support than the teachers. (5) Both parties are concerned over the potential problems facing ESP, including shortage of qualified teachers, limited hours of instruction, lack of opportunities to apply English in daily life and the workplace, and the possibility of ESP courses being limited to the learning of specific lexicon and the translation of content-specific texts. Based on the findings, this paper provided some pedagogical implications and suggestions for future research.