ABSTRACT
This chapter examines methodology in ESP and describes four macrostrategies used in teaching. The term macrostrategy was coined by Stern (1992) to refer to an overriding methodological principle covering a wide variety of classroom techniques and procedures at the planned level of teaching. The chapter illustrates strategies found in ESP teaching, using instructional materials and lesson plans developed by teachers for speci c classes. Some of the materials have subsequently been published. Instructional materials and lesson plans embody views of learning (Tomlinson, 1998). These views of learning can be inferred from the activities the materials and plans propose and how they are sequenced. For example, three different teachers of English for Business Purposes develop instructional materials with a common focus-a role play about dealing with dif cult customers in a service encounter. The material developed by one teacher incorporates a ‘language focus’ stage (ways to express acknowledgement) prior to a role-play task. The material developed by the second teacher does not include a language focus stage at all, and that of the third teacher does include a language focus stage (again, ways to express acknowledgment) but sequenced after the role-play stage and in the form of a debrie ng. The material of the rst teacher incorporated a language description stage before a student production stage (the role play). It may be inferred from this that the teacher expects that drawing the students’ attention to language forms prior to production work may result in the students using those forms in their production. The teacher sees these stages and sequencing as bene cial for learning. The material of the second teacher involves a student production task (the role play) only. The material of the third teacher includes a language description stage but it is sequenced after the role play. The teacher may expect that when students have rst struggled to produce their own language in the role play they will be mentally receptive to a description of
language that highlights language they needed but lacked for the role play. In this chapter I link ideas in the literature on second language acquisition to materials developed by ESP teachers. The links I describe are based on inferences I have made.
