Approaches to Teaching Subject Content

The author has in this article summarized the characteristic features of teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) directing her attention to differences between ESP teachers and General English teachers and focusing more on methodological aspects of teaching a language of profession than on linguistic features of academic discourse and style. In contrast with General English, teaching English for Specific Purposes is designed to meet specific needs of the learners, it is goal-directed, it reflects the underlying concepts and activities of the disciplines or professions it serves. For this reason, the methodology appropriate to ESP is different from that appropriate to English language teaching; it is characterized by the shift of emphasis from the language system as end in itself to the successful use of that system in context (the communicative approach to teaching). Required specificity of texts and tasks make language teachers obtain some subject knowledge of their learners and the ability to balance content level and language level. Last but not least, ESP teachers have to acquire linguistic parameters of subject-specific language from the point of view of register analysis, discourse analysis and genre analysis.