Qualities ESL/EFL teachers Need to Teach ESP

Week 2: Weekly Threads

This page, is part of the Weekly Threads created to document interesting and important part of the discussion of Week 2, for the convenience of this EVonline 2005 ESL2ESP session participants, and also to share with other ESP teachers in the globe, and to have FUN.
The table, below shows, the list of qualities ESL/EFL teachers need to teach ESP, created by the guest lecturer of week 2, Debby Lee.
ESP experts, professionals, and teachers particpating in the EVOnline 2005 ESL2ESP Yahoo! Group were all invited to add one or more items to the list. The idea is to provide some tips and guidlines to teachers making the trasnition from ESL/EFL to ESP in the globe.
Please note: (Some of the qualities teachers need posted by Debby are her own thoughts, "others come from great conversations or reading materials from people like Hutchinson & Waters, Robinson, or Dudley-Evans & St. John").

Qualities Teachers Need to Teach ESP

	Contributer	Specific Skill	General Skill
1.	Debby Lee	Curiosity and a willingness to learn about the content subject	The ability to share your enjoyment of language learning with your students
		Tolerance for content ambiguity (You aren't the expert and your students may not be either.)	Understanding that it is your language ability that makes you a great ESP teacher
		The willingness to let your students be experts.
		Confidence in yourself and your ability as a language, not content, teacher
		The willingness to ask for content help (i.e., your colleagues in the Science Department or a conversation with an in-field expert)
		The ability to adapt content materials to meet the levels and needs of your students
		The willingness to forego a vocabulary-driven class
		The ability to tie language to content (discourse analysis/concordancing)
2.	Evan Frendo		"the ability to focus on language as a means of communication"
3.	Buthaina Al-Othman	The willingness to let your students correct you when you are wrong.