The Design and Practice of an English Textbook for Restaurant  

Mei-jung Wang and David Goodman

Abstract

Currently, most of the English language textbooks available for college students are oriented toward general English, and are intended to help students improve their communication skills for daily life.  The contents are therefore focused on the language, and sometimes the cultures, which the learners are expected to encounter; they are often not designed for more specific needs, especially for preparatory training in different work fields.  However, there is now an increasing demand for textbooks of English which take a more specific purpose (ESP) approach.

This paper takes the ESP-based textbook Restaurant English as its object of study, and the inquiry is divided into two sections.  First, the authors investigated the design of the textbook by doing needs analyses and eliciting experts’ feedback on the contents.  Second, instructors using the textbook in their classes were asked to evaluate the book by means of an evaluation form.  In attempting a combination of multiple stakeholders’ perspectives, this study works toward a fuller understanding of the issues of design and practicality in ESP-based education.

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