BOUALEM Talha
Doctorant à l’université d’Oran 2
Laboratoire LDLD

Abstract: Technical vocabulary is a vital component in the ESP course. Such courses focus more on vocabulary in context as the students are learning the language integrated into their field of study in order to communicate a set of professional skills and to perform particular job-related functions (Liuolienė & Metiūnienė, 2013). However, these learners usually encounter a major hindrance in the classroom when they attempt to use technical words in solving exercises related to reading passages or any other activity .This article aims at reviewing some of the essential aspects related to ESP vocabulary, it also attempts to investigate how ICT facilitates teaching of vocabulary and the ways teachers use ICT in teaching vocabulary. We will try to offer some perspectives on what is understood by ESP vocabulary, why it is important to teach vocabulary and it concludes with an analysis of various creative practical activities teachers could use alongside ICT to expand ESP students’ vocabulary.

Keywords: ESP, vocabulary, motivation, creative activities, ICT.

1. Introduction

Over the past decades, English has integrated itself in practically every aspect of life and has emerged as the lingua franca of many fields. Science and technology are nearly exclusively circulated in English due to its prevalence in international interactions, non-native English speaking students and professionals are gradually seeking training in English for specific purposes (ESP), and such training is now offered by universities and colleges that focus exclusively on ESP. In addition, special courses are provided to those interested in learning or perfecting ESP, which is essential for the professional development.

At the international level, communication is achieved mainly in English in most domains, science, technology, medicine, aviation, the hospitality industry, business and trade. In this context, grammar is extremely important for accuracy purposes, but vocabulary is even more valuable, as, in many circumstances, whether someone uses incorrectly the simple past instead of the present perfect, the message will most certainly be grasped if the appropriate vocabulary is used. However, while vocabulary learning is regarded by some theorists and practitioners of ESP as a peripheral aspect within the language teaching process, it is seen by many others as its focal point.

Undoubtedly, technical vocabulary in teaching ESP should be a primary objective and a fundamental constituent in the course of learning, yet teaching vocabulary especially in ESP courses is turning into a challenge for English Language Teachers. Vocabulary is an inseparable part of any teaching syllabus and it should be taught in a well-planned manner and on regular basis. It is detrimental to cautiously select what vocabulary will be picked for teaching, and what approach or activities will be utilized to teach it to the students.

ESP learners are typically extremely motivated adults with knowledge and experience in their particular fields or students being trained for a future career .Their needs and thus the methods of teaching might be very distinctive from those of ordinary learners of English as a second language. Therefore we can state that ESP focuses more on vocabulary in context than on teaching grammar and langua­ge structures, as the students are learning the language integrated into their relative field of study that’s important to them “in order to communicate a set of professional skills and to perform par­ticular job-related functions” (Fiorito, 2006)

This article seeks to offer creative modern methods, materials and activities related to information-communication technologies(ICT) in teaching technical vocabulary, with an analysis of some of their advantages and benefits. Thus, the objectives of the article are to review and explore various creative ways of building ESP vocabulary, which tend to bring variety and novelty to the learning process.

2. Why accentuate vocabulary in E.S.P.?

Vocabulary is a fundamental part of ESP and it is very important for learners to build a consistent body of terms that are specific to and occur frequently in their area of study. The theorists Mohan and van Naerssen, (Mohan & van Naerssen, 1997) stated that knowledge of the vocabulary of a subject area helps learners understand better their area of study because it broadens their knowledge. Their perspectives on the matter supported by the assertions of Robyn Woodward-Kron:

Lay people may dismiss the specialist language of a discipline or profession as jargon. However, the specialist language of a discipline is intrinsic to students’ learning of disciplinary knowledge; students need to show their understanding of concepts, phenomena, relations between phenomena etc. by incorporating the specialist language and terminology of their discipline into their writing accurately. They also need to adopt the specialist language in order to make meaning and engage with disciplinary knowledge. This paper has demonstrated that adopting the specialist language of the discipline is intrinsic to learning disciplinary knowledge. (Woodward-Kron, 2008)

Learning technical vocabulary also helps learners interact with materials that would otherwise be challenging due to the language barrier, the ones like accessing English-written websites, reading journals for the latest researches, communicating with peers from other countries and exchanging ideas in their field of knowledge by using English.

Xu summarized the main features of ESP vocabulary as follows(Xu, 2018). Firstly, as less frequently used in everyday situations, ESP vocabulary is studied for specific usages related to technical or academic needs in a particular topic, field or discipline. Secondly, ESP vocabulary involves numerous abstract words. Thirdly, ESP vocabulary is designed around students’ needs based on their field of study. Most students feel frustrated facing a major linguistic obstacle of ESP vocabulary. It is challenging for them to correctly spell and accurately pronounce ESP vocabulary. As a result, effective ESP vocabulary teaching plays a crucial role in successfully implementing ESP programs. Vocabulary selection and vocabulary learning strategies are substantial for ESP vocabulary acquisitions (Wu, 2014)

Scholars such as McCarthy point out that “No matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express a wider range of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way” (McCarthy, 1990)

3. Vocabulary Enhancement Techniques and strategies

If vocabulary building is determined as the central purpose of the ESP class, there are countless techniques that help in this regard. Teachers can mix methodologies or select only those aspects they feel can help their learners. It is important to teach vocabulary in such a way as to help learners make sense of future problems and encourage continuous learning.

From my humble teaching experience, I can state that students face struggles while learning new English words. It is very demanding to learn words especially ESP words because they are low frequency words thus, are not encountered very often.

The effective vocabulary activity should lead learners to pay attention to language features, and help them process those features in profound and thoughtful ways. Finally, these vocabulary-focused activities should take into account the development of all the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. In the last strand, the learners’ aim is to receive and convey messages (Nation, 2007)

Vocabulary acquisition is a long-term process, requiring much work. Although some students spend a lot of time on trying to increase their lexicon: to memorize words and collocations for the purposes of oral or written communications and to understand the vocabulary while listening and reading – the results are still quite poor. One of the reasons is applying ineffective strategies of vocabulary learning. (Tskhvitava, 2016)

Azad and Kuhi (Ahmadi-Azad & Kuhi, 2016) illustrated the strategies on examining ESP material and instruction, indicating that a significant tendency in classroom activities emphasized both receptive and productive skills.

Nevertheless, continuous exposure to the specialized vocabulary remains a key, it is what precedes in importance any method or technique, as this is in itself a technique. And it matters how such exposure is planned:

It is difficult to learn words especially ESP words because they […] are not encountered very often. Vocabulary acquisition is incremental in nature and this means that words are not learned instantaneously but they are learned over a period of time. The number of words learned depends on numerous exposures to a particular word. (Xhaferi, 2009-2010)

One way of continuous exposure is repetition. The outcome is better when the exposures to the new word are separated in time than when the same number of exposures occurs back-to-back in immediate succession. Spaced repetitions typically yield better learning than massed repetitions for long-term retention (Carpenter, et al., 2012)

However, simple exposure to technical words is not enough. The activities that stress revision, consolidation and reinforcement are the ones that make the difference, as the learners see, hear and are required to use the terminology in various contexts. Most standard exercises often employed are related to ICT ones like projects, where students can use projectors for their PowerPoint presentations, same for presentations. Word maps, crosswords, puzzles, MCQ, where the teacher relies on computer programs (ones like Hot Potatoes)and many other types of vocabulary activities.

As a side note, one of the most traditional techniques is translation, it is exceptionally practical in ESP classes, as it helps both introduce and consolidate technical terms. An overview of the topic of translation in ESP was given in previous articles, like the article “A Case for the Use of Translation in ESP Classes. Journal of Languages for Specific Purposes „written by Chirobocea (Chirobocea-Tudor, 2018). Wet we can have our ICT spin on that as well through translation applications on mobile phones or using the internet to help with translation and allow sparing saving of time.

4. Creative Ways of Building ESP Vocabulary

Needless to say, that students can always follow through with one of the oldest tricks in the book. That is memorizing words from the dictionary, yet they have the ability to be a bit creative about it, either by using the paper printed one or just the phone dictionaries, Our aim was to point out the activities that would play around our student’s state of mind and in one way or another motivate them to want to learn more. In addition, modern teachers of ESP are undoubtedly of the opinion that new ESP vocabulary needs to be actively used in meaningful and interesting ways.

4.1. Texts as a Source of ESP Vocabulary

It is widely believed that reading is the main source of vocabulary growth in L1. Students with sharp reading skills who read a variety of texts may realize considerable gains when it comes to technical vocabulary, sometimes without even the direct instructions of the teacher.

Students may also achieve some minor vocabulary gains through independent reading, however, teachers should neither ignore nor rely solely upon incidental word acquisition and try to actively implement ideas to keep the reading interesting.

Obviously, new ESP vocabulary is typically and traditionally drawn from textbooks and handouts, which are an important resource for teachers in assisting students’ learning. The continuity of the units in such textbooks and handouts assures that the ESP course is well structured, engaging and coherent. Thus, it would be possible to efficiently progress from learning easier vocabulary to more complicated one using preselected texts. Such texts enable students to interact with new words or ex­pressions in context. Therefore, learners remember the words better and get to know how they are used.

In E.S.P. classes learning new vocabulary is enhanced using authentic texts, as the use of such texts in an English classroom can significantly contribute to the learning experience disregard­ing the challenges of finding, understanding and developing tasks based on authentic texts (Liuolienė & Metiūnienė, 2010)

If we consider the case of using ICT with medicine student studying E.M.P. Authentic texts such as medical reports, published medical articles, written check-ups, websites and online medical journals contain authen­tic language, such materials have numerous advantages. Initially, students feel comfortable in the familiar subject area, the texts are relevant to their medical studies, and they are interesting to the stu­dents as they deal with the medical field. While reading the texts written by native speakers (Doctors), the students get a better idea about how language of their profes­sion is used in real life. They are simultaneously presented with cultural and professional background. Thus, the learners usually get motivated to read these authentic materials, as they will be able to apply what they learn in their E.S.P classes in their field of study or professional work and vice versa.

4.2. Role-plays

This activity is usually applied in classes where students are very young, yet it has proven to be an exceptionally effective tool for E.S.P classes. Typically, students reproduce dialogues that are likely to occur in everyday speech or professional context. Teachers of ESP can design activities for building vocabulary depending on the class. For example, one of such rather specific educational and enjoyable activities for medical students are Routine Check-ups ward rounds. Medical students studying to become doctors may use Routine Check-ups to experiment or practice how to reassure patients or how to use simple jargon so that patients would understand. The advantages of this challenging activity are numerous from the application of practical medical knowledge and getting familiar with check-up questions and interactions to the deve­lopment of oral skills to the fundamental understanding of the issues presented in the medical case, add to that the enhancement of interpersonal skills and grooming of oneself for the working industry. Moreover, students have to do huge prepara­tory language work as well, writing dialogues between patient and doctors, medical cases or ward reports. All of them contain immensely spe­cific vocabulary essential for students of medicine to master. Thorough preparations and rehearsals make students use the medical language precisely and accurately, focusing on the meaning and pronunciation of medical terminology. The ESP practitioner can implement these role-play every other course, once a month or even once per semester.

To note that Internet access can be of great use at the preparatory stage. It presents the guidelines on how to conduct a check-up, offers numerous authentic materials with cases, online dictionaries and other necessary aspects for this activity, which is another innovative way of using ICT.

4.3. Presentations

Another essential way of creatively erecting ESP vocabulary is integrating presentations. They have recently become widely used in lear­ning languages. Speaking to a group of people with confidence, clarity and conviction can be difficult especially if you are not using your native language (McCarthy, 2011).Even though this activity is exceptionally challenging for students, it seems to be instrumental, and many scholars emphasize the advantages of making presentations in E.S.P. classes, noting that presentations improve general English and ESP vocabulary, teaches grammar as well as presents knowledge about an ESP topic (Piccinini, 2010).

The challenging gruelling and autonomous work of preparing and making presentations considerably con­tributes to the development of different skills of ESP learners: public speaking, organizing, planning, designing, selecting the proper content and learning how to reach the target audience. Moreover, this activity requires a lot of creativity form the student in order to make an interesting and effective presentation. And if you leave the choice of the topic to students they tend to get even more motivated since it allows them to speak of something of interest within the field of study ,the example of a disease a student can relate to “ diabetes” would motivate the student and would boost his/her moral. In presentations, ESP vocabulary plays a vital role as well.

4.4 Projects

This activity is about the use of detailed and rigorous classroom projects to fa­cilitate learning and access student competence. It is an instructional method that provides stu­dents with complex tasks based on challenging questions or problems. By doing so the teaching would be involving students’ problem solving, decision making, investigative skills, and reflection that ought to be nurtured through the educator’s faculty to facili­tate.

Learning via projects, concentrates on questions that drive students to confront the central concepts and principles of a subject matter. Thus, Allowing learners to develop valuable research skills and pushes them to engage in problem solving, executive and investigative activities.

Implementing projects challenges students to think for themselves, conduct research, unravel authentic problems, meet deadlines, manage much of their own learning and employ innovative and constructive thinking as well as previously gained computer and linguistic skills. And aside from the macro skills that learning English highlights , such activities emphasises other micro skills, one that are highly demanded in the industry, so in other words the learning process becomes a harnessing opportunity.

So it is essential to guide students into authentic research, employing the knowledge of other related subjects, students have to assemble information using methods such as questionnaires , conducting interviews and carrying out surveys, library and Web searches. After having compiled the required in­formation, working in groups. Students assess, organize and process the data they have accumulated, keeping in mind the language requirements necessary for presenting information orally.

Appointing projects to groups of students sets a framework mentality that leads to the development of the cooperation between the teacher and the students and mo­tivates the students to explore the field, to work is a team ,to learn new things and to improve their professional vocabulary. If structured well, group projects can promote important intellectual and social skills.

When the project is delivered, the outcome is often authenticity of experience, improved language and content knowledge, increased metacognitive awareness, enhanced critical thinking and decision-making abilities, intensity of motivation and engagement, improved social skills, and a familiarity with target language re­sources (Alan & Stoller, 2005).

4.5. Using ICT

One of technologies greatest assets is the Internet .Considered to be one of the best means of studying new ESP vocabulary. Numerous articles on methodology and teaching ESP testify that ESP teachers are also very well aware that the use of authentic Web materials in the ESP classroom can significantly enrich the learning experience (Liuolienė & Žuvininkaitė, 2008)brighten the class and create a more positive attitude toward learning, “immersing the student in a multidi­mensional English experience” (Kelly, et al., 2002). Nowadays, the resources offered by various websi­tes on the Internet are infinite, allowing students to practice vocabulary by performing countless tasks: fill in the gaps, multiple choices and matching. All of them being interactive and on top of that it allows students to find out their results and achievements immediately, so that they can work individually at their own time and pace. Online dictionaries are available and they tend to be very handy during class by saving time and helping students assimilate vocabulary in their own way either by translating to native tongue or reading a description in English or even checking pictures to help cementing the meaning with an image ,making the teacher a mere facilitator and designer of study materials. The Internet has endless possibilities to develop coherent and fully integrated authentic materials suitable for building ESP vocabulary using ICT (Krois-Lindner, 2008).

Nowadays ,Online courses are abundant on the internet, where most of them demand payment , some of them are for free ,In the modules of these course students cannot help but use new vocabulary and recycle it through different tasks. Such mul­timedia courses illustrate endless possibilities of designing effective integrated tasks based on authentic texts via the Internet.

Left to note that, teachers could easily enrich their classes by designing interactive exercises on medical vocabu­lary via special computer programmes that would enable the instructors to create interac­tive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises. Such programmes are instrumental for teaching vocabu­lary, developing students’ skills. Even learners themselves can create tasks based on authentic texts or recordings as most of them prefer using ICT to traditional textbooks.

4.6. Interactive Games

Teachers can help solidify new vocabulary in long-term memory by creating regular opportunities in the learning process for the repetition and retrieval of new items. Such opportunities encourage students to make form-meaning connections of new vocabulary items, and in my experience, this is best achieved by organizing fun, competitive, and motivating activities.

There are numerous ways of enhancing student’s vocabulary most of which focus on boosting their engagement and amusement, harnessing therefore, their motivation. Such activities could be addressed as games, ones like vocabulary scramble where students get letters but are only allowed to use technical terms learned previously during the semester, and this activity would help them with revision, consolidation and reinforcement of knowledge. Other examples might include The Hang man, where the teacher sets a technical term and let the students brainstorm and interact to try to get the correct answer. Memory Challenge is another game, where we put the students into small groups. Give them a time limit and ask them to write down as many technical words, phrases, and/or expressions as they can from the previous courses on topic X. The group that can remember the most items wins, such activities will bring amusement and enjoyment to the class, especially if it contains highly competitive students. This might even invite students to attend classes where the attendance is not mandatory.

There are various other games ones like crosswords, the odd one out, Scrambled Letters, Categories (aka The Alphabet Game) and debate the quote. All of which are extremely engaging and allow students to reflect on what they learned and try to implement it in a class setting.

Such take on learning vocabulary can prove to be very engaging and motivating specially if the learning are competitive, and if you can get the full attention and energy of a student then the all in all objectives of the course would be met.

5. Conclusions

In order to help the students with the challenges of retaining vocabulary and using it with appropriateness and precision for an efficient communication in the ESP domain, the instructors need to address the set of the following challenges :to evaluate the learning technique, characteristics of the ESP course, and the learner’s level of subject matter knowledge. Modern teachers of ESP attempt to approach these challenges using creative and innovative methods and activities that are based on ICT, such as using Authentic texts, Internet, Role plays, Project, Presentations and even Interactive games. Since, by participating in the vocabulary activities, the students were able to focus on special terms, understand their meanings and functions, and learn more vocabularies (Nejad, et al., 2014).

Good command of English, as well as fluency, are acquired through vocabulary building using the exposure to a carefully selected body of authentic materials and to real-life situations .All the while, maintaining the students engaged and motivated about the learning process .

How this exposure occurs and the choice of techniques used to sustain such engagement are very pivotal, as they will make the difference in the acquisition of specialized vocabulary.

6. Bibliography

Ahmadi-Azad, S. & Kuhi, D., 2016. ESP VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION: A COMPARISON OF CBI VS. GTM FOR IRANIAN MANAGEMENT STUDENTS. Asian Journal of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education, 8(2), pp. 35-50.

Alan, B. & Stoller, F. L., 2005. Maximizing the Benefits of Project Work in Foreign Language Classroom. English Teaching Forum, 43(4), p. 12.

Carpenter, S. et al., 2012. Using Spacing to Enhance Diverse Forms of Learning: Review of Recent Research and Implications for Instruction. Educational Psychology Review, Volume 24, pp. 369-378.

Chirobocea-Tudor, O., 2018. A Case for the Use of Translation in ESP Classes. Journal of Languages for Specific Purposes. Issue 05, pp. 67-76.

Fiorito, . L., 2006. Teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP). using english, 12 12.

Kelly, C., Kelly, L., Offner, M. & Vorland, B., 2002. Effective Ways to Use Authentic Materials with ESL/EFL Students. The Internet TESL Journal, 11 11, Volume 8.

Krois-Lindner, A., 2008. Using Authentic Texts for Authentic Discourse in the Legal English Classroom. Cambridge university press.

Liuolienė , A. & Metiūnienė, R., 2013. Creativity in Building ESP Vocabulary in the Context Of ICT. Santalka. Filologija. Edulokogija., 05, Volume 21, pp. 45-53.

Liuolienė, A. & Metiūnienė, R., 2010. Using Authentic Materials, in ESP. Specialybės kalba: sakinys ir teks¬tas. Vilnius: MRU, pp. 111-119.

Liuolienė, A. & Žuvininkaitė, D., 2008. in New Language Teaching, New Language Learning. Collection of scientific articles, pp. 85-91.

McCarthy, C., 2011. ecenglish. [Online]
Available at: https://www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/lessons/business-english-ec

McCarthy, M., 1990. Vocabulary. Oxford University Press Oxford.

Mohan, B. & van Naerssen, M., 1997. Understanding Cause-Effect: Learning Through Language.. 10-12.35(4).

Nation, I., 2001. Learning Vocabulary in Another Language (Cambridge Applied Linguistics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nation, P., 2007. The Four Strands. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching. Victoria University of Wellington, 1(1), pp. 2-13.

Nejad, S. et al., 2014. The Impact of Vocabulary Enhancement Activities on Vocabulary Acquisition and Retention among Male and Female EFL Learners in Iran. English Language Teaching, 7(10), p. 126.

Piccinini, V., 2010. The Importance of giving Oral Presentations in English (ESP).

Tskhvitava, T., 2016. Vocabulary Learning Strategies of English for Specific Purposes Students at Agricultural University of Georgia. Journal of Education in Black Sea Region, 2(1), pp. 130-138.

Woodward-Kron, R., 2008. More than just jargon – the nature and role of specialist language in learning disciplinary knowledge. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 10(04), pp. 234-249.

Wu, L.-F., 2014. Technical College Students’ Perceptions of English for Specific Purposes Vocabulary Learning and Teaching. International Journal of English Language Education, 2(176).

Xhaferi, B., 2009-2010. Teaching and Learning ESP Vocabulary. Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos, pp. 229-255.

Xu, L., 2018. Learning and Retaining Technical Vocabulary with Enhancement Activities in an ESP Course. English Language Teaching, 11(10).