Literacy Skills among ESP Students

Lilik Ulfiati, Melati Melati, Radiatan Mardiah

2017

Abstract

This paper presents the issue of second language literacy skill among English for Specific Purposes (ESP) learners. It is widely believed that ESP learners in Indonesia often struggle to acquire the target language competences. It is due to the artificial learning materials and activities leading to a gap between what the learners have in the classroom and in the learners’ real life. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to analyze English literacy skills of senior vocational school students in Muaro Jambi District both on reading and writing skills. The results reveal that more than 85% of the senior vocational high school students have problems in comprehending English passages and expressing their ideas into English written texts. Based on the descriptive analysis, it is also found that using commercial worksheet, limited time allocation for English lesson, learning General English for the sake of National Examination and big classroom size are the problems that contribute to the phenomenon. The learners need to be introduced to the authentic materials and activities which are in line with their major in order to be more literate in their field of study. In conclusion, ESP learning materials and contextual English use are important language learning component for ESP setting.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Ulfiati L., Melati M. and Mardiah R. (2017). Literacy Skills among ESP Students.In The Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and The Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with The First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education - Volume 1: CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE, ISBN 978-989-758-332-2, pages 224-228. DOI: 10.5220/0007164902240228

in Bibtex Style

@conference{conaplin and icollite17,
author={Lilik Ulfiati and Melati Melati and Radiatan Mardiah},
title={Literacy Skills among ESP Students},
booktitle={The Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and The Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with The First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education - Volume 1: CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE,},
year={2017},
pages={224-228},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0007164902240228},
isbn={978-989-758-332-2},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - The Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and The Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with The First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education - Volume 1: CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE,
TI - Literacy Skills among ESP Students
SN - 978-989-758-332-2
AU - Ulfiati L.
AU - Melati M.
AU - Mardiah R.
PY - 2017
SP - 224
EP - 228
DO - 10.5220/0007164902240228