ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES DESIGN PROCESS: A BRIEF RESEARCH REVIEW

This article aimed at stating some important steps to consider when we think of English for specific purposes design in educational contexts. In fact, designing a suitable learning curriculum and thinking about appropriate ways of dealing with that in the context of English for specific purposes (ESP) has been among the most challenging issues in the field for a long time. Establishing a balance between the outlines, content including the language units to integrate in the course and methods to be used in teaching and assessing learning is not an easy task for course designers and teachers of English for specific purposes. Therefore, sharing some helpful information about different steps to go through in order to have a successful ESP course is crucial. It should be stressed that all the stages in an ESP course design are correlated and they work together to produce a learning curriculum focused on course content well selected and organized with suitable methods of teaching and evaluating skills of involved learners. One must remember that not paying a close attention to stages involved in ESP design will result in an unsuccessful course leading to a lack of interest from learners. To that end, the only way that can help all the people involved in the ESP educational process to make ESP courses more effective and interesting is to comply with all the requirements mentioned in each step of the ESP design process suggested in this article. Pieces of information provided in this article are mainly from some literature review on ESP design and the personal experience of the author.