ESP extra

The article looks at materials from the News lessons, Lesson share, Skills, Vocabulary and Materials for the teacher sections of onestopenglish.

We also include ideas that can be used for students studying the following subjects:

• Aviation
• Banking and Finance
• Catering
• Health and Safety
• Journalism
• Law
• Marketing
• Media studies
• Medical English / Healthcare
• Travel and Tourism

News Lessons

I’m going to start by looking at the News Lessons. Although not all the lessons will be suitable for your ESP classes, there are lots that will be. Some of the key reasons for checking out the News Lessons are that they are up-to-date, they are topical (meaning your students might even be talking about the same issues and stories that they read in newspapers or seen on TV) and because there are four different levels – a monthly elementary lesson, and weekly pre-intermediate intermediate and advanced lessons – so you won't need to rewrite or edit anything in order to make it suitable for their level of English.

The weekly Guardian news lessons are available on onestopenglish for a year in order to keep the topics current and relevant to your students. New news lessons are published every Thursday, so there will be plenty of new lessons throughout the year that are useful and relevant in ESP classes. 

Lesson Share

This is useful – but don’t just stick to the lessons clearly marked as ESP! It’s worth checking out the other sections as well because there is material that can be useful. In the ESOL section there’s a fantastic lesson called A for Alpha – great for a number of different ESP classes and really easy to use. And in the same section there is a lesson on HIV and AIDS awareness which is really good for healthcare classes.

In the Grammar section there’s a lovely lesson to help students practise making comparisons. This works really well for students studying subjects like travel and tourism.

And finally, in the speaking subsection, I found this lesson on answering awkward questions. Although the lesson was written with general English classes in mind, there are lots of situations in which ESP students need the same kinds of skills – such as the ones covered in this lesson.

Skills

Here is a listening lesson on advertising suitable for elementary level students studying media or marketing, which you might want to use. 

If you teach lawyers or legal English, you may want to use a reading and speaking lesson that includes some key vocabulary. If so you could try this worksheet called What's your verdict?

There’s also some other great reading material in the Reading skills section. For example, a lesson suitable for people studying banking or finance or a great lesson for students studying tourism. The great thing with both of these lessons is that they come at two different levels, making it easier to find something that will work with your students.

You could follow up the reading lesson on tourism with a speaking lesson from the Speaking skills section.

Some speaking lessons can be used in different ESP fields. For example, here’s a lesson on censorship  that can be used in media classes or for students studying law.

And what about writing? Well, if you teach the subject of journalism, why not try to get your students to write their own magazine by using the ideas in the ‘One World’ magazine? There are also some great one-off writing lessons like this one for writing a company newsletter or this one on writing statistical reports.

Vocabulary

Within the vocabulary section there are some lessons that immediately strike me as being of relevance and use for ESP students. For example, here’s one that you could use for journalism classes, and why not compare the British perspective with newspapers in the countries your students come from?

For students studying banking, finance or business why not try this interesting lesson about money? And finally, for any students studying Medical English why not try this vocabulary lesson?

Materials for the teacher 

Onestopenglish is not simply about materials that can be used straight away in the classroom; it also contains articles aimed at helping teachers with their professional development including articles on aspects of teaching Business English or this one on teaching one-to-one.

The Teaching tips section has a number of really useful articles such as this one on addressing the SP in ESP and another article on teaching one-to-one.

And in the Ask the experts section there’s an article on how to motivate students who miss classes or one on public speaking which is something some ESP students need to practise, especially if they have to give presentations. There’s also this article on using CLIL to teach students studying in a technology college.

Conclusion

As you can see, with a little digging you’ll find even more material that you can use for your ESP classes. Another suggestion would be to check out all the CLIL resources available in the CLIL section, as many of these might be useful to you. For example, you could use this lesson about the human body if you teach medical students, or this lesson on using pie charts to show data if you teach marketing classes.

It’s also important to remember that new content is being added to the site all the time. Don't forget to keep checking out the site!

Have a good time teaching.

Adrian Tennant