ESP AS AN APPROACH OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING IN ITS

Abstrak

According to National Curriculum Preparation Guideline 2004 – 2009, teaching
English in ITS is classified into General Studies ( MKU ) and distributed into “
Personality Development – Related subject “ ( MPK – Mata Kuliah
Pengembangan Kepribadian ). However, English as subject has been redundantly
placed within the ITS curriculum. While under the curriculum preparation
guideline the subject falls into the category of Personality – Development related
subjects, the course content involves a significant degree of skills that are required
by the students during learning process at ITS. The teaching of English at ITS
should therefore be designed to meet the demands for personality development, as
well as knowledge and skills improvement. In the attempt of meeting these
demands, the English teaching staff have agreed to adopt the ESP approach.
The popular principle of English for Specific Purposes ( ESP ) is “ Tell me what
you need English for and I will tell you the English that you need”. This principle
suggests that ESP is an approach to language teaching which is oriented to fulfil
learners’needs. So teaching English at the tertiary level for non English
Department such as in ITS is still mostly concentrated on the need for the
capability of reading relevant text books. The teaching of English is focused on
the reading skill specialized in relevant text books which will reinforce the
mastery of basic vocabulary and grammar because mastering reading skill is
determined mostly by those two elements. However, this shift to gives other study
skills such as note taking, group discussion, presentation and academic writing.