Literacy Skills among ESP Students
Lilik Ulfiati, MelatiMelati,and Radiatan Mardiah
FKIP, Universitas Jambi, Jl. Raya Jambi-Ma. Bulian KM 15,Ma. Jambi, Indonesia
Keywords: Literacy Skills, ESP.
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.
1 INTRODUCTION
The fast growth of English students for specific
purposes in their job markets has caused more
interests and needs at Senior Vocational High Schools
in Indonesia. Thus. enquiring Senior Vocational High
School students’literacy skills in English for Specific
Purposes (hereafter ESP) is very essential where they
need the skills not only for competing in the global
further jobs but also comprehending any text types
related with their job activities. Since literacy skills in
ESP context is significant topic, this research
concerned on the students’ literacy skills focused on
both reading and writing skills.
It is not deniable that Vocational High Schools
students in ESP setting are confronted with many
problems in this country. Their major problems dealt
with vocabulary, grammar, ESP contextual
constraints (the location in which it is taught), time
availability, budgeting, facilities, and teachers’
qualifications (Poedjiastutie and Oliver, 2017:4).
This present article focuses on the literacy problems
regarding reading and writing which involved
problems in comprehending English texts and
expressing their opinions into any English genres
such as descriptive, procedure, recount. Moreover,
there were problems of language components namely
structure, vocabularies, texts organisation and social
functions of the texts. In fact, there is still limited
research about literacy skill on Vocational High
School Students, especially on English for Specific
Purpose area. The research that have been done so far
usually focus on literacy on EFL learners in general
or on ESP students’ problem. Therefore, this article is
written as part of bigger scale on developing ESP
materials for Vocational high School Students in
Jambi Province setting. Obtaining the answer for the
following research questions will allow the researcher
to have adequate information in improving the
English materials:
1 What are the difficulties faced by the students
regarding the literacy skills (reading and
writing) in ESP context?
2 What are Senior Vocational High School
students’ literacy skills of English for Specific
Purposes (ESP) context with the focus on
reading and writing during learning activities in
the classroom?
224
Ulfiati, L., Melati, M. and Mardiah, R.
Literacy Skills among ESP Students.
DOI: 10.5220/0007164902240228
In Proceedings of 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 (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 224-228
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

2 LITERATURE REVIEW
Ghanbari & Rasekh (2012:112) explain that English,
the lingua-franca of almost all professional and
academic settings, has come out in EFL/ESL circles
as the English for specific purposes (ESP). This
popular catchphrase of presently English language
teaching programs, has been used to provide students
with the foreign language skill and relevant
professional knowledge necessary to succeed in their
work fields. With the rapid development of fierce
competition of business and industry, business
communities around the world have deemed English
language skills as an important tool needed to
compete in the global economy. English is one of
international language facilitating Indonesian
students to encounter external challenges in
industrilized communities and modern trades namely
in World Trade Organization (WTO), Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Community, Asia-
Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and ASEAN
Free Trade Area (AFTA). This trend has caused ESP
instruction to more greatly highlighted for the last few
years at vocational schools in Indonesia. English for
Specific Purposes (ESP) materials are considered
vital aspects to help the students using contextual and
authentic the language learning sources.
English is one of obligatory lessons learned by
Senior Vocational High School students in Indonesia.
They have limited time to learn and practice the
language in the classroom. The students cannot use
their English in everyday activities and
communication, since it is a foreign language in this
country. They learn English for ninety minutes which
can be divided into two meetings within a week
(Permendiknas No. 22 Year 2006 about Content
Standard for Primary and Secondary Education). This
condition makes English lesson difficult for
Indonesian students especially in ESP context. It is
necessary for the language students use the target
language through a real practice in their daily
activities to help them easily mastering it.
Furthermore, Margana and Widyanto (2017:26)
confirm that Vocational High Schools (VHSs) in
Indonesia which run the 2013 curriculum are
necessary in facilitating their students to learn English
for Specific Purposes in accordance with their study
programs. For example, when they take a business
and management study program, the English
materials should be related to their fields, namely
business and management development instead of
general English. Because they are oriented to be
skilful workers in reference to their fields, this
suggests that the English textbooks used by students
of SVHSs should be different in nature.
Richards and Schmidt (2010:198) define ESP as
a language course or program of pedagogical
practices which consist of the content areas and
objectives of the course with regard to the fixed
specific needs of a particular group of learners.
Referring to this statement, Vocational High School
students should have specific needs according to their
backgrounds. Since they need mastering English
speaking skills to communicate in their workplaces,
they have to acquire not only the other three skills
(listening, reading, and writing) but also the three
language components (pronunciation, vocabulary and
grammar). By having so, they are accustomed to
handle any job and being well literate due to the use
of ESP in discourse of workplaces. In relation to this
statement, Hyland (2007:155) strongly urges that
when genre-based writing courses are organized
around the texts students will need to use in a
particular target context, and these needs are easier to
identify in ESP situations. A vocationally oriented
writing course, for instance, may be organized around
the range of oral and written genres needed in a
particular workplace. He, furthermore, exemplifies a
group of laboratory technicians have to keep
inventories of materials, receive written and verbal
instructions from scientists, take notes during
experiments, write reports, etc.
Cahyono and Widiati (2011:75) explain that many
secondary teachers are tempted to see writing as one
the first things to be cut back, or relegated to the end
of the English teaching or to homework. The writing
activities tend to be excluded in the classroom,
because the time allocated for writing skill was
considerably inadequate. Therefore, the Vocational
High Schools (VHSs) received not only insufficient
writing practices but also the skills. They are not
familiar with some writing processes (outlining,
drafting, etc) which can be used as their guidelines
expressing their ideas into written text genres.
The students’ reading activities such as
identifying reading topics, figuring out detailed/
important information, guessing meaning from
contexts and recognizing references in the English
texts are main concern of the reading class of this
research. Cahyono and Widiati (2011:49) assert that
the teaching of reading as a foreign language (EFL
reading) in Indonesia can be generally included in the
teaching of reading comprehension. This is because it
aims to improve the skills of learners, who have been
able to read in their first language and in EFL,
understanding the meaning of a written text.
Literacy Skills among ESP Students
225

3 METHODS
3.1 Participants
The context of current study was a Vocational High
School in Muaro Jambi Regency, Jambi Province,
Indonesia. In this school, English is as medium
instruction in the classroom only. In this study, there
were 28 students and 3 English teachers from one of
Senior Vocational High Schools in Muaro Jambi
Regency who are currently learning in Agriculture
Department. The purpose of this study was to collect
data of their literacy skills in ESP focusing on either
reading or writing and the difficulties faced by the
students. The current study made use of
questionnaires and forum group discussion as
methods of gathering and validating data.
3.2 Research Procedures
Questionnaires were distributed and analyzed to
identify problems faced by Vocational High School
students in terms of reading and writing in ESP
context. Observing students’ either reading or writing
activities/ exercises and interviews of selected
students were fundamental to answer the research
questions as well as build comprehensive and clear
explanations in the data analysis and findings in the
study.
A qualitative analysis of the 28 Vocational High
School students was carried out through the use of
questionnaire. This research instrument had three
parts; personal profile, reading and writing skills in
ESP context. It consisted of 14 items across the
following criteria of the text genres; text organization,
language features and social function. In addition,
qualitative analysis of the same participants was
carried out through observation and interview. The
observation concerned on the writing process starting
from outlining/ drafting process until the complete/
final writing paragraphs. Moreover, in reading class
the observation focused on students’ reading
activities in comprehending the ESP texts.
Interviews with 3 English teachers of Vocational
High School were done to collect more in depth
opinions, apart from seeking confirmation and
validation. It also gave chance to the researchers to
clarify, justify and explain extendedly the points that
were made by the students for the different and
similar problems that they came up with.
4 DATA ANALYSIS
4.1 Questionnaire Results and Analysis
The data analysis focused on the analyzing the results
of the present study which explored the SVHS
students’ problems of literacy skills on both reading
and writing skills. The questionnaire data were
analyzed based on three main parts; the first part was
analyzed their personal profile while the second and
third parts which was 14 items of reading and writing
criteria with their respective responses calculated the
percentage of each component and analyzed them
descriptively.
After gathering the participants’ personal profile,
the researchers continued with 14 items concerning
the students’ problems of literacy skills (reading and
writing) in ESP context. In order to ascertain the
difficulties of reading comprehension, 7 items were
took in order to answer the research questions. The
items were adapted based on the microskills for
reading comprehension. The components are
recognizing grammatical word classes, recognizing
particular meanings, recognizing transition signals,
recognizing communicative functions and purposes,
distinguishing between literal and implied meanings,
detecting culturally specific references and using both
scanning and skimming skills.
In addition, the researchers referred 7 items to
identify their writing difficulties namely organization
of the text genres, content, coherence, sentence
constructions, vocabulary, mechanics and
communicative functions of the written texts. Table 1
illustrated the results of this reading comprehension
analysis and table 2 showed the analysis of writing
problems.
Table 1: The percentage of reading comprehension
problems.
Item Statement
Percentage Level
Recognizing
grammatical word
classes
85.7 Difficult
Recognizing
particular meanings
89.2 Very dificult
Recognizing
transition signals
85.7 Very dificult
Recognizing
communicative
functions and
purposes
75 Difficult
Distinguishing
between literal and
implied meanings
92.8 Very difficult
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - 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
226

Detecting culturally
specific references
89.2 Very difficult
Using both scanning
and skimming skills
78.5 Difficult
85 Very difficult
Table 2: The percentage of writing problems analysis.
Item Statement
Percentage Level
Organization of
the text genres
85.7 Difficult
Content
92.8 Very difficult
Coherence
89.3 Very difficult
Sentence
constructions
85.7 Very difficult
Vocabulary
92.8 Difficult
Using of
mechanics
82.1 Difficult
Communicative
functions of the
written texts
92.8 Very difficult
85.7 Very difficult
It is pretty obvious, that Senior Vocational High
School students in Muaro Jambi Regency have
difficulties regarding the literacy skills (reading and
writing) in ESP context as the total percentage was
85.7%. It can be inferred from the results above that
the students literacy skills ( for the two skills) are not
good. Such results are due to the fact that English
lesson is still have limited time allocation in the
school. Especially in teaching reading students have
not much more comprehensive reading activities to
help them comprehend the English texts effectively.
In addition, teaching writing skills is almost neglected
by English teacher. This result confirms with
Cahyono and Widiati research on 2011 regarding the
teaching of writing. In their study, they found that
English teacher did give sufficient time for students
to do pre-writing activities, like brainstorming ideas,
making the outline, and drafting the writing.
However, when it comes to the main writing practice,
the teachers would ask the students to do the rest of
writing activities at home or outside the class. The
teachers think that the students can do it by
themselves. Consequently, there is not enough
feedback that the students can obtain from the
teachers in order to improve their writing.
4.2 Results of Observation Analysis
Since the focus of this research was Senior
Vocational High School students’ students literacy
skills, it is necessary to observe their both reading
activities and writing process in the classroom. The
literacy skills were taught integratively and allocated
for 90 minutes within a week. In the reading class, it
was found that the students were guided to read the
English texts loudly, facilitated to figure out the
unfamiliar vocabularies, translated the texts and
answer the comprehension questions together with
their classmates. In Margana and Widyanto’s study
about developing English Textbook for VHS
(2017:26), they found that Students of SVHS do not
practice to acquire the micro-skills of reading
comprehension of ESP texts which are needed in their
daily reading practice not only in the school but also
for their future jobs.
Moreover, from the observation it was identified
that the students had no writing practices or activities
instead of completing the paragraphs, arranging
jumbled sentences, dictating sentences, translating
from Bahasa Indonesia into English, etc. The time
allocation was too limited which could not be
designed the meaningful writing activities. The
students did not have any model how to express their
feelings or opinions into English written texts. The
teachers did not present and show some strategies to
teach writing skills.
4.3 Interview Results and Analysis
In the interview session, the researchers started
concerning on the teachers’ knowledge of literacy
skills in ESP context to identify their understanding
about the concept. While the three interviewees
admitted to their understanding on certain level of
literacy skills, teacher A highlighted “I teach English
based on the available students’ worksheets which are
suggested by the headmaster. I do not pay attention to
the literacy skills of ESP context especially for Senior
Vocational High Schools students, because the
syllabus do not specify them.
Teacher B, moreover, confirmed that she has
been familiar with what literacy skills are in ESP
context. She tried teaching English with this ESP
learning materials, but the National Examination does
not concern on ESP context. Therefore, they were
worry to have the ESP learning materials.
In addition, teacher C explained that their students
have lack of motivation to learn English because they
believe that learning this language is for the sake of
passing National Examination only. The teacher used
the ESP context in their English class, but the students
have poor vocabulary level and grammar
competences.
Overal, every teacher has similar cases which are
related between one another. The teachers do not have
authority to give specific English learning materials
Literacy Skills among ESP Students
227

such as ESP which relevant with their specific study
major. Since the syllabus do not recommend them to
do so, they refer to their teaching guidelines.
Eventhough they know that literacy skills for ESP
context is relevant nowadays.
To sum up, part of this research confirm previous
research that has been done on the area of literacy in
High Schools context, regarding the limited time of
practice. Meanwhile, another part of this research
concerning the ESP area is somehow require further
investigation on why students’ performance on
writing and reading on ESP texts are considered low.
One explanation that might account for this situation
is that the students are almost rarely being exposed to
ESP materials.
5 CONCLUSION
This research focused on analyzing the Senior
Vocational High School students’ difficulties
regarding their literacy skills (reading and writing) in
ESP context. The data analysis from the questionnaire
demonstrated that more than 85% of the students in
Muaro Jambi Regency dealt with problems in
implementing the two literacy skills in ESP context.
Their reading comprehension problems were
consisted of recognizing grammatical word classes,
recognizing particular meanings, recognizing
transition signals, recognizing communicative
functions and purposes, distinguishing between literal
and implied meanings, detecting culturally specific
references and using both scanning and skimming
skills.The writing difficulties, then, were namely
organization of the text genres, content, coherence,
sentence constructions, vocabulary, mechanics and
communicative functions of the written texts.
More than 85% students had poor literacy skills
in ESP context, as they did not practice to acquire the
micro-skills of reading comprehension of ESP texts
which are needed in their daily reading practice not
only in the school but also for their future jobs. The
students had no writing practices or activities instead
of completing the paragraphs, arranging jumbled
sentences, dictating sentences, translating from
Bahasa Indonesia into English, etc. The time
allocation was too limited which could not be
designed the meaningful writing activities. The
students did not have any model how to express their
feelings or opinions into English written texts. The
teachers did not present and show some strategies to
teach writing skills.
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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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