Peculiarities of teaching vocabulary at esp classes

The aim of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) language course is to train specialists able to use foreign language in a real professional surrounding. ESP learners are supposed to acquire extensive terminological vocabulary related to their field of study together with developing receptive and productive skills enabling them to effectively communicate in professional surrounding. This issue was under study in the works by such domestic scholars as well as foreign ones including Still, practical aspect of teaching vocabulary at the university academic surrounding needs further investigation considering the latest research in the field.

The current research is focused on the ways of teaching professionally oriented vocabulary at the ESP classes, with an emphasis on economic terminological vocabulary taught to future economists.

Learning vocabulary involves accumulating and remembering individual items, therefore there will never be enough time in any language course to teach every word explicitly Hence, it is important to encourage ESP learners to increase their exposure to language through extensive reading or listening. It is also important for ESP teachers to enthuse students about learning vocabulary and to teach them strategies for recording and revising vocabulary.

Thus, introducing new vocabulary on the topic under sturdy, an ESP teacher should ensure to plan and conduct a number of activities to help students learn it. Presenting new vocabulary involves more than transmitting the language to the learner. Students need to be actively involved in the learning process through the use of elicitation and practice of the language. Vocabulary presentation activities in which ESP teacher elicits the language from the student before providing the form will be more successful. acquiring new vocabulary teaching

Acquiring new vocabulary at ESP class is a complex process uniting introduction of the new lexis, various practical activities and the students ' freer practice. Teaching ESP students vocabulary is of significant importance since professional lexis is the lexis which will enable them communicate efficiently in their future professional surrounding.

Key words: acquiring new vocabulary, teaching ESP, presenting the vocabulary, professional surrounding.

Гунченко Ю. В. Особливості навчання лексики на заняттях з мови

Метою мовного курсу англійської мови для спеціальних цілей (ESP) є підготовка фахівців, здатних використовувати іноземну мову в реальному професійному середовищі. Студенти, що вивчають ESP, мають засвоїти великий термінологічний словниковий запас, пов'язаний із їхньою сферою навчання, разом із розвитком рефлективних та продуктивних навичок, що дозволять їм ефективно спілкуватися в професійному середовищі. Це питання досліджувалось у працях як вітчизняних науковців, так, у тому числі, і зарубіжних, проте практичний аспект викладання лексики в академічному середовищі потребує подальшого дослідження з огляду на останні дослідження в цій галузі.

Поточне дослідження зосереджено на способах викладання професійно орієнтованої лексики на заняттях з англійської мови спеціального вжитку, з акцентом на економічній термінологічній лексиці, що вивчається майбутніми економістами.

Напрацювання словникового запасу передбачає накопичення та запам'ятовування окремих елементів, тому на будь-якому мовному курсі ніколи не буде достатньо часу, щоб чітко вивчити кожне слово. Отже, важливо заохочувати тих, хто вивчає англійську мову спеціального вжитку, опановувати мову через інтенсивне читання або аудіюван- ня. Викладачам англійської мови спеціального вжитку також потрібно мотивувати студентів до вивчення лексики та навчання їх методиці опанування нової професійно-орієнтованої лексики.

Таким чином, вводячи нову лексику за темою курсу, викладач англійської мови спеціального вжитку повинен забезпечити планування заняття та використання тих вправ, що забезпечать допомогу студентам у тому, щоб якнайкраще засвоїти нову лексику. Представлення нової лексики передбачає більше, ніж просто знайомство з новими словами. Студентів потрібно активно залучати до навчального процесу, використовуючи виразність мовних засобів і можливість практикуватися у мові. Завдання, що передбачають активне залучення студентів до роботи по введенню нової лексики, буде більш успішною, ніж пасивне сприйняття нового матеріалу, викладеного викладачем.

Опанування нової лексики на заняттях з англійської мови спеціального вжитку - це складний процес, що поєднує ознайомлення з новою лексикою, різні практичні дії та більш вільну практику студентів. Навчання студентів англійської мови спеціального вжитку має велике значення, оскільки професійна лексика - це лексика, яка дозволить їм ефективно спілкуватися в майбутньому професійному оточенні.

Ключові слова: засвоєння нового словникового запасу, навчання англійській мові, представлення лексики, професійне оточення.

Importance of teaching vocabulary at ESP class is difficult to overestimate. Lack of grammar knowledge may lead to difficulties in conveying the meaning of what is said, while insufficient vocabulary will definitely lead to misunderstanding. It is even more so when dealing with professional lexis, which in addition to being complex, is characterized by multiple meanings, difficult to percept for unprepared learners. The English language, being rich in vocabulary, is often challenging for both a student and a teacher. While the students' difficulties include necessity to memorize a vast amount of lexis in addition to being able to use it properly, the teacher's difficulties are of the other nature. Teacher of English, especially the ESP teacher is to be able to provide students with specially tailored materials, facilitate their learning with teaching methods and techniques aimed at helping students master the lexis of the language they study, which as a result will lead to mastering the language itself.

The aim of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) language course is to train specialists able to use foreign language in a real professional surrounding; therefore ESP learners are supposed to acquire extensive terminological vocabulary related to their field of study together with developing receptive and productive skills enabling them to effectively communicate in professional surrounding. Studying a vast amount of professionally oriented vocabulary may present a serious problem to the learners, that is why research on the ways of ESP vocabulary presenting and its remembering as well as using it in practice is of importance and requires special attention.

This issue was under study in the works by such domestic scholars as L. Baidak, O. Sypko and S. Kolomiiets as well as foreign ones including F. Grellet, S. Greenblatt and J. Harmer who investigated different aspects of receptive and productive skills formation and made their contribution into the study of the issue. Still, practical aspect of teaching vocabulary at the university academic surrounding needs further investigation considering the latest research in the field.

The current research is focused on the ways of teaching professionally oriented vocabulary at the ESP classes, with an emphasis on economic terminological vocabulary taught to future economists.

ESP teachers have always understood the importance of teaching vocabulary and helping students develop an extensive vocabulary. Vocabulary is regarded as vitally important to communicate meaningfully; hence the vocabulary is a learning objective in its own right. Professional lexis is an important part of a syllabus, for this reason research into lexical chunking and corpus linguistics, such as looking at word frequency and collocations, has led to an increased emphasis on vocabulary teaching [1].

Teaching professional vocabulary at ESP class is a challenge for both a teacher and a student, since knowing a word requires more than just being aware of its meaning. Students are also supposed to know the words commonly associated with it, or its collocations. To be able to successfully use a new word in the speech, ESP students will need not only to learn its meaning, but to be well-aware of the following:

- the word's written form, i.e. its spelling in order to be able to recognize it in a written form and to use in their own writing;

- the word's pronunciation in order to be able to use it in their speech;

- the word's part of speech, i.e. verb, noun etc., which considerably contributes to accuracy of the word's using;

- the word's meaning, which will enable students to use it purposefully and accurately;

- the word's synonyms and antonyms, which are both important for periphrase, required for clarifying the meaning of what is said;

- the word's multi-word units and phrasal verb, which enlarge the vocabulary and contribute to speech eloquence;

- the word's collocations, which simplify the way of the foreign language enquiry;

- the word's compounds, which are of particular importance since make enquiring the vocabulary a simpler and faster process;

- the word's idioms, aimed at enabling mutual understanding between the counterparts in the dialogue;

- the word's register, i.e. is it formal or informal speech, which is of significant importance for an ESP learner;

Unlike grammar which is a rule-based system, learning vocabulary involves accumulating and remembering

individual items, therefore there will never be enough time in any language course to teach every word explicitly; this is especially relevant for EP classes, the number of which is usually limited to two academic hours a week during two years (as supposed by the Syllabus). Hence, it is important to encourage ESP learners to increase their exposure to language through extensive reading or listening. It is also important for ESP teachers to enthuse students about learning vocabulary and to teach them strategies for recording and revising vocabulary.

While presenting new vocabulary at ESP class it is important to see, hear and actively use words a number of times to ensure they stand a better chance of being remembered. It is believed a learner needs to see/hear a word at least 6 times to ensure that it is retained in the long-term memory. Therefore, revising and recycling-focused vocabulary activities are extremely useful.

Thus, introducing new vocabulary on the topic under sturdy, an ESP teacher should ensure to plan and conduct a number of activities to help students learn it. Such activities may include the following:

- looking for synonyms/antonyms to the words under study;

- studying collocations/phrasal verbs with the words under study;

- learning the ways the new vocabulary can be changed with the help of word-building methods, i.e. adding prefixes, suffices, compounding etc.;

- answering focus topic-based questions which will lead to necessity of using new vocabulary, provided by the teacher when necessary or enquired by students on their own while preparing to answer;

- various matching exercises related to matching a word and its meaning, synonyms and/or antonyms, parts of sentences containing new words;

- participation in discussions, organized in such a way as to provoke a necessity of using new vocabulary;

- watching videos, in which ESP students can hear the new vocabulary.

For example, presenting a topic of Employment, an ESP teacher may face a need to present a vast amount of vocabulary related to being in work. Let's look at possible ways of vocabulary work at such a class.

1. A teachers can elicit a part of speech, similar words or collocations while learners can be encouraged to put the words in the sentences/match. The vocabulary lists 1) and 2) given below represent a possible way of introducing a range of related words to work with:

1) employ, employer, employee, employment, unemployment, getting employed // in work, out of work;

2) product, produce, producer, production, overproduction, underproduction // making, manufacturer, manufacturing.

2. Students can be asked to explain the difference between employer and employee; clarify the meaning of the words employment and unemployment, in work and out of work etc.;

3. Students can be offered to watch a video, in which the new vocabulary is used and afterwards discuss it with a teacher.

4. Students may also be offered to read a text, in which the new vocabulary is used in order to see the meaning of the words in the context.

Presenting new vocabulary involves more than transmitting the language to the learner [3]. Students need to be actively involved in the learning process through the use of elicitation and practice of the language. Vocabulary presentation activities in which ESP teacher elicits the language from the student before providing the form will be more successful. This can be done through asking students meaningful questions, answering which will possibly lead to revealing the topic under discussion.

Presenting new vocabulary may be entirely a teacher-guided process, where a teacher is the one who provides the learners with comprehensive information about the new words meaning, usage etc. [2]. This way of learning may seem to be more comfortable for the students, but does not involve much of the students' initiative and therefore is not the best way of memorizing new vocabulary. Moreover, when applied regularly, it may also lead to decrease in students' initiative that will result in negativity the course general outcomes. A more efforts-consuming, yet more efficient way of presenting new information is organizing the learning process in such a way as to make students elicit maximum possible information in new vocabulary on their own. This way requires from ESP teacher creating such a situation in which the students will have to guess/ look up for the meaning/synonyms/antonyms themselves, which though more time and efforts-consuming still leads to better and faster remembering of the studied material.

Acquiring new vocabulary at ESP class is a complex process uniting introduction of the new lexis, various practical activities and the students' freer practice. Learning new vocabulary through reading is an efficient way to learn not only because ESP texts are a rich source of vocabulary, especially those that include lexical sets written in context, but also due to the fact that students can find relationships between different words used in a meaningful context. ESP texts can include authentic texts, e.g. announcements, advertisements, CVs, reports etc.; newspaper articles or course materials. Vocabulary can also be presented in a variety of different ways, including using:

• Visual aids, which due to enabling the learners to percept information both audibly and visually provide better understanding and therefore memorizing the material;

• Context, which in addition to meaningful textual information provides students with the possibility of understanding new lexical units functional use;

• Brainstorming, while enabling the learners' development of their spontaneous speaking skills, also ensures their involvement into the class further discussion;

• Definitions, which facilitate better perception and memorizing of a new learning material;

• Texts, which when used to the full, can serve as an endless source of various text-based activities, facilitating and promoting the language active use.

When planning vocabulary lessons, there needs to be a balance between words a teacher assumes students know as well as the target language [5]. If all the language material provided at the lesson is new, there is a danger of swamping the learners with too much vocabulary. In such case, the learners' outcomes will be much lower than expected due to learners; memory overloading [4]. If all the language can be elicited, than probably a teacher is not really providing the learners with any new language to help extend their vocabulary. Therefore, there is always a need to carefully plan a vocabulary-based lesson both in general as well as its separate stages, in order to make a good use of the learners' existing vocabulary and at the same time providing them with new necessary material. Needless to mention the need to extend the learners' existing vocabulary, while widening and enlarging it with both new lexical units and new ways of using already familiar ones.

Practical activities related to reading may include various exercises aimed at clarifying meaning, like the following:

- providing an example sentence or sentences;

- giving synonyms, antonyms or superordinate terms,

- giving a full definition etc.

Presenting and practicing vocabulary often go hand-in-hand. New language is presented to the class; the learners are given explanation through a variety of methods, then an opportunity to practice. It is then revised before new vocabulary is introduced. Vocabulary needs to be practiced in different ways to ensure it is retained and placed in the long-term memory.

Practicing vocabulary may be done through different means. One of essential ones include training ESP students in how to use dictionaries and record vocabulary as well as including a wide variety of recycling activities are all important to learn and retain vocabulary.

1) Decision-making tasks, including identifying, selecting, matching, sorting, ranking and sequencing may be applied to ensure better remembering the vocabulary.

2) Identifying a word, this means finding words in texts. Examples include counting or listening to the number of times a word appears in a text; finding all words connected with a lexical set in a text.

3) Odd one out - students find the odd one out. For example, company/firm/ office - office is the odd one out as it does not relate to the lexical set Organization.

4) Matching tasks that involve recognizing words and pairing them with others, for example matching collocations, in which students have a list of verbs and a separate list of nouns and need to make collocations.

5) Sorting activities, which require learners to sort words into different categories. For example, students can be provided with a list of 20 jumbled words, 5 words for 4 different categories. Learners then sort the words into different categories.

Production activities play an important role in ESP learning, helping students incorporate language into different kinds of speaking or writing activity.

Production tasks may include sentences and texts completion, and sentences and texts creation.

Completion activities are teacher-guided activities and generally known as gap-fills. The context is provided and ESP learners need to slot in the right word. There are open and closed completion activities. In closed completion activities, learners are given a choice of words to place in the gap while in open activities, learners need to rely on their own mental lexicon. Examples of completion activities include the following:

- completing a text by writing the correct word in the space;

- choosing the best word from a list to complete sentences;

- choosing words from a text to complete sentences and multiple choice activities.

Creation tasks are more cognitively challenging as ESP learners need to create the context for the words. These usually include the following:

- using words learned to make a sentence;

- writing a short narrative or dialogue including five words they have learned;

- creating a questionnaire or survey using some of the vocabulary items the students have learned.

While reading texts on professional topics, ESP students can sometimes face idioms, which usually are not understandable to them due to the lack of knowledge, therefore they may be highly motivated to learn these expressions. Learning idioms in ESP course in best to be done when they are grouped according to the topic they relate to, for example, business idioms, used to speak about the market competition may include the following: a major player - the leading company in the field; be neck and neck - be equal; move the goal posts - change the rules; flogging a dead horse - hopeful business, etc.

It is often a good idea to teach these thematically and make an emphasis on those, students would naturally use.