English for Specific Purposes
Wrld

IS IT EAP OR ESP? THE WIND OF CHANGE

Zarina Othman

zothm@yahoo.co.uk

Centre for General Studies

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

Taufik Rashid

taufik@ukm.my

Centre for General Studies

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

ABSTRACT

The Centre for General Studies at UKM (National University of Malaysia) undertakes the duty to equip the university undergraduate students with English proficiency together with other soft skill courses. We offer English Proficiency courses in which students must to complete the University’s credit unit requirements before they exit UKM. A recent awareness amongst the practitioners trigger the need to restructure the English courses offered to the students where we decided to ‘blow a wind of change’. This paper highlights the review of English courses offered and the measures taken to map out the nature of English courses to offer in the restructuring. It is found that factors such as the allocation of English learning hours, a review on the previous English language courses, student exposure vs. students’ level of proficiency and Malaysian workplace demands are relevant and significant  in determining the nature of the courses; whether EAP or ESP.

Keywords: ESP / EAP, Academic Discipline, English Proficiency, English language teaching, Course design

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