NEW APPROACHES IN TEACHING ESP

This paper deals with the presentation of the teaching methods concerning ESP and the use of additional teaching materials, according to the syllabus of the Faculty of Computer Science for Business Management. Taking into account that students come from different cultural backgrounds (Egypt, Siria, India, South Africa, Romania), firstly the teacher identifies the learners' needs based on an analysis of students' target needs, especially because the existence of the need and more precisely the awareness of the need is vital in the process of teaching ESP. The students' target needs led to new approaches in teaching ESP; "target needs" is an umbrella term and it consists of situations in terms of their necessities, lacks and wants. These terms are explained to the students and afterwards the students are asked to fill in a questionnaire for the teacher to compare their necessities, lacks and wants. Gathering this information is a matter of observing what situations the learner will need to function in, what the learner knows already so that the teacher could decide which of the necessities the students' lacks. Furthermore, the teacher takes into consideration the students' wants because the students have a clear idea of their wants and thus, by using new teaching methods, the teacher increases the students' motivation to learn, too. In conclusion the teacher has also the role of an investigator to identify the students' needs and she/he brings additional materials which cover the learners' wants, also determining the impact of their culture on the learning process.