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| Fortune Nwaiwu |
Scholars consider ESP as the best example of communicative language teaching. The major concern of ESP is its attention on appropriate use of language particularly in occupational and academic situations. And so, it follows that learners (for instance in a medical field) would learn appropriate medical terms or vocabulary to enable them communicate effectively with their patients and other fellows within and perhaps outside their domain of workplace.
Also, in order to meet up the needs of learners, appropriate use of language is needed to cater the learners' need. This is because if ESP program is not designed appropriately with the right register or vocabulary which the learners will use to communicate in their respective occupational domains, the learners will misfire in their target environment. For instance, around 1960s, it was discovered that most of the air crashes was caused by lack of communication between the pilots and air traffic controllers. Those pilots were not understanding the language the air traffic controllers were using to communicate and there was a communication breakdown which resulted to accident. So, there was a conscious effort made by ICAO to train those pilots and air traffic controllers to learn Aviation English, and the duty of ESP material designers was to take the appropriate use of register into consideration so that learners would communicate effectively in their place of work.
Since every discipline or occupation has its peculiar way of using English, ESP proves to be a desirable course seeing that language is learnt in a way it should be used in a given situation or occupational context.
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