ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES (ESP) FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF IRANIAN ESP TEACHERS

This study aimed to investigate English for specific purposes (ESP) teachers’ attitudes toward ESP courses. Specifically, the purpose of this study was to explore ESP teachers’ agreement with the ESP courses and their attitudes as to what ESP course objectives should be and whether those objectives are supported by ESP materials. Moreover, ESP teachers’ views about their approaches toward assessing ESP students’ learning as well as ESP teachers’ evaluation of both the materials and the ESP course were the focus of this study. The participants were 15 ESP teachers. They were asked six questions each of which was related to one of the objectives of this study. The analysis of the data revealed that first, most teachers consider ESP courses useful; second, the main objectives of ESP courses should be the translation of specialized texts and then reading comprehension of specialized texts which, in their opinion, have also been supported by the materials; third, ESP teachers reported they conducted a process-oriented approach; fourth, almost half of the teachers considered the materials useful, and finally, the majority of the ESP teachers evaluated the ESP courses to be useful.