engleski

Interdepartmental Co-operation in ELP Curriculum Development

Courses of foreign languages for special purposes provided in tertiary education are generally focused on developing students' foreign language competence with a view to their use in their future professions. Course design also generally follows this line of reasoning. However, foreign language competences might also be useful to students for meeting the requirements of the courses pertaining to their field of study. Foreign language competences are often taken to be of relatively low importance in the legal profession, which is largely restricted to a single jurisdiction and thus to the national language. On the other hand, the accession of the Republic of Croatia to the European Union and to the single market, including the market of legal services, are likely to change both this perception and the reality. This clearly points to the need of updating the content of the curriculum of the Legal English courses provided by the Foreign Language Department of the Faculty of Law in Zagreb bearing in mind these considerations. Relevant input for this purpose can be provided from multiple sources. Having already conducted a needs assessment survey among the students, the authors have endeavoured to acquire additional information relevant to course design. A survey was conducted among the teaching staff of all departments of the Faculty with a view to discovering several relevant points, among which are their attitudes and opinions regarding the importance of English for law students and particularly for their subjects, information regarding any material used in their courses in English language, and areas and topics which should be included in the curriculum of the Legal English courses. In this paper, the findings of this survey are presented and analysed, along with their implications for course design.

curriculum development; English for Legal Purposes; language skills

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