Practicing ESP Reading Skills in the Academic Environment: A Case Study at Ovidius University of Constanta - Students’ Perspective

Ionela Ionitiu
Additional contact information
Ionela Ionitiu: Ovidius University of Constanta, Romania

Economics and Applied Informatics, 2024, issue 2, 33-40

Abstract: English for Civil and Mechanical Engineering is a rather understudied and less explored facet of English for Specific/Academic Purposes, yet one that is still in emergence. When it comes to English for Specific Purposes, one of the most crucial skills is the ability to read professionally-oriented materials. This paper attempts to provide an overview of why reading, among all the skills, is so important when teaching ESP. Forasmuch as reading is unanimously considered a cognitive process focusing on language acquisition, communication, and exchanging information and ideas, ESP teachers now have a distinctive viewpoint on the importance of reading in the language classroom and the types of texts that can be used in instruction. Since language education and ESP, in particular, adopt a communicative approach, we think that our recommendations could be useful, flexible enough to fit into, or even modified for different purposes. A case study focusing on the observation and evaluation of student's academic performance was part of the research method. Students were questioned concerning their educational backgrounds, reading comprehension skills, and reading motivation. To create a well-designed curriculum, we started by assessing our students’ needs, wants, and lacks through a questionnaire and by attempting to manage the intricacy of civil and mechanical engineering sciences to gather data that might aid in the creation of a powerful, meaningful ESP course.

Keywords: Reading skills; needs analysis; English for Specific Purposes; Theme and Tasked-based learning; Computer-networked instruction; Present situation analysis; Target situation analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://eia.feaa.ugal.ro/images/eia/2024_2/Ionitiu.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ddj:fseeai:y:2024:i:2:p:33-40

DOI: 10.35219/eai15840409408

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economics and Applied Informatics from "Dunarea de Jos" University of Galati, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gianina Mihai ().