engleski

The Role of ESP Course in General English Proficiency

The purpose of the present paper is the study of the interaction between learning English for Specific Purposes (ESP), in particular, English for the Financial Sector, and general English proficiency. The research examines the effects of the ESP course being taught for a year on the students' general English proficiency. Two sets of tests were prepared for that purpose and administered to 30 first-year students of finance and law. The students took the placement test twice, at the beginning and at the end of the school year. To monitor test performance over a research period, a parallel form measuring the same competences was administered at the end of the first semester. In test development process a special consideration has been paid to the level of difficulty and the relation to the students' prior educational context. Drawing on the State Matura exams the test is set at CEFRL Level B2. As regards its content the test comprises reading comprehension tasks (multiple choice, gap-filling, sentence reordering) and grammar tasks aiming to examine lexical and grammatical competence. There were two major assumptions in this study: 1) Learning ESP can improve students' general English proficiency, and 2) There is a more substantial improvement in lexical competence as compared to the improvement in grammatical competence. There is strong evidence in support of the first hypothesis, whereas for the second one the results were ambiguous. After major findings are presented and discussed, implications for ESP teaching are given in closing.

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) ; professional English ; general English proficiency ; lexical

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