The challenges of teaching ESP in Bangladesh: a critical observation

Abstract

The main aim of this study is to investigate the most common challenges and difficulties of the ESP teachers when they conduct any ESP course for the students of different levels and different backgrounds at the same classroom setting. To achieve the best outcome of this paper, some of the major ESP theories directly and indirectly related to this study are presented and analyzed. It was found that the most common challenges of an ESP teacher are selecting materials, designing syllabuses, lack of involvement in the course, lack of knowledge of the course objectives and also teacher-student relationship which discussed clearly in this paper. On the other hand this study tries to provide possible solutions to overcome the challenges obtained from the online data collection and also from the literature review and theoretical framework. Moreover, this study tries to clarify the importance of the in depth needs analysis and teachers’ training which can be carried out before the ESP courses. The main source of this study was the survey which was carried out among the ESP teachers from different work field and the students of different backgrounds of different private universities in Dhaka city.