Ching-Ning Chien
Dept. of Applied Linguistics and Language Studies, Chung Yuan Christian University, Taiwan

An Experiment on an ESP Program Featuring Teaching Collaboration
Because quite a great number of university students in Taiwan have good background knowledge in science but have been performing poorly in English, an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) project might be one of the best solutions to upgrading their English ability (Shao, 1992). The study investigates the effectiveness of such an ESP program which features team teaching. Forty science students were assigned to an experimental class and another forty to a control class. The students were administered the English Proficiency Test at the beginning of the first semester and the same test at the end of the second semester. They were also given a Questionnaire Survey of English Needs of University Students at the end of the second semester.

The experimental group was taught by a language teacher and a physics professor while the control group was taught by the language teacher alone. A paired t-test was used to assess how much progress sample subjects had made in the post-test, and a two-sampled t-test to compare the means and the percentage obtained from the questionnaire survey between the two groups. The most important finding indicates that the experimental group had a more positive attitude and much more motivation toward English learning by the end of the academic year.

Presenter
Ching-Ning Chien teaches in the Department of Applied Linguistics and Language Studies at Chung Yuan Christian University in Taiwan where she is an Associate Professor in TESOL. She has taught English to EFL learners for twenty-seven years in CYCU.