AN EXPLORATION OF THE MAIN DIFFICULTIES, CHALLENGES AND REQUIREMENTS OF THE ESP TEACHING SITUATION IN ALGERIA: THE CASE OF ESP TEACHERS AT ABOU BEKR BELKAID UNIVERSITY, TLEMCEN

Abstract

This current study seeks to shed light on the main issues our language teachers encounter in an ESP teaching situation when exploring the land of ESP, particularly at the level of Abou Bekr Belkaid University, with close reference to those teachers working at the three following faculties: faculty of Exact Sciences, faculty of Economics and Commercial Sciences and faculty of Law and Political Sciences. The strategies they adopt or adapt to overcome their difficulties while at practice. The fact that those general English teachers are pointed to teach ESP within a ‘learners’ centerdness’, reveals considerable obstacles and problems to adequately achieve an ESP teaching/learning objective. The situation, here in Algeria, seems to give so much focus to the learner and almost neglect the teachers’ professional needs to cope with the actual requirements. Such a problematics requires a research design, fundamentally, based on five chapters. The first one is an introductory chapter devoted to provide the reader with a broad description of the target situation under investigation, in addition to the research questions and hypotheses, some key-terms and approaches are introduced to avoid any misunderstanding, since a number of uncovered aspects are also included. Chapter two presents an overview of ESP; through discussing its different definitions, dealing with its origins, developments and its main subdivisions. Particular characteristics of its courses are exposed, besides different roles devoted to the ESP practitioners. Chapter three is rather reserved to the methodological approach being adopted in this study. Its main focus is on the description of research design and procedure used for both processes, namely data collection and data analysis. Chapter four deals, however, with the analysis and interpretation of the main findings. In the last chapter, the researcher attempts at providing new perspectives for ESP teaching in hope to promote the ESP teaching methodology for an EFL background, and thus, open the doors for further research in this particular scope of interests.