Oral communication skills in the esp classroom

Contents
Introduction……………………………………………………………….3
Chapter I.

1. 
   . Role of speaking in ESP education…………………………5
   
2. 
   . Oral communication skills in the ESP classroom………………………..12
   
3. 
   . Synchronous and asynchronous communication tools……………….14
   
4. 
   . Developing speaking skills with synchronous tools and its advantages of language communication……………………………………………………………..21
   

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….23
References..........................................................................................25

Introduction.
Nowadays, when face-to-face human interactions are restricted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students have fewer opportunities to put their oral communicative abilities to the test. Under these circumstances, technology becomes an ally of both teachers and learners. While synchronous tools enable students to communicate with one another in real time, asynchronous tools allow them, among others, to record their utterances for review and self-evaluation. This paper aims to indicate which technological solutions could help teachers increase learners’ oral production in the ESP classroom (with particular emphasis on Medical and Business English) and which ones could help students improve their speaking skills independently.

Speaking is frequently regarded as the most challenging skill to develop in the foreign language classroom. This also applies to English for Specific Purposes (ESP) instruction, which aims to prepare students to master the language used in various professional and workplace settings to accomplish specific purposes (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). ESP courses are primarily designed for learners who have to carry out specific communicative tasks prescribed by their academic or workplace contexts. The tasks may include conference presentations and discussing research results for academic purposes, medical history taking or giving a nursing handover for medical purposes, reporting ideas and designs for engineering purposes, or negotiating with suppliers for business purposes. This complexity of ESP content is observed by Orr (2001, p. 207), who denes specialist language learners as those who re-quire special skills “to carry out highly specialised tasks for which general English may not prove suffcient”. They commonly seek to develop their linguistic competence in English in order to be able to communicate professional information and to perform job-related tasks. Significantly, in ESP programmes it is needs analysis that guides curriculum development and determines which language skills are useful for the learners in order to accomplish certain professional tasks. ESP instruction is “an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based on the learner’s reason for learning” (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987, p. 19). Thus, con-ducting a needs analysis is imperative to determine what students need to achieve through the medium of English (Huhta, Vogt, Johnson, Tulkki, & Hall, 2013). Speaking skills are defined as skills which allow us to communicate effectively. These skills give us the ability to convey information verbally and in a way that the listener can understand. Speaking is an interactive process where information is shared, and if necessary, acted upon by the listener. So, it's important to develop both speaking and listening skills in order to communicate effectively. Speaking English allows you to actually broaden your world, from job opportunities to the ability to relate to people from every country. Knowing the language makes it much more interesting every trip. In the classroom, speaking skills enable individual children to ask questions, to offer information, and to say if they do or do not understand. The classroom can be the child's most important environment for learning how to express their own ideas and to hear the ideas of others. Speaking skill is a skill of using language to communicate using verbal or nonverbal symbols orally in different context that can be improved through learning language. Speaking skills are the skills that give us the ability to communicate effectively. These skills allow the speaker, to convey his message in a passionate, thoughtful, and convincing manner. Speaking skills also help to assure that one won't be misunderstood by those who are listening. Clear speech is especially important for people with hearing loss – and helps avoid misunderstandings. But it helps everyone. It's easy to mumble or talk without looking at the person you're speaking to. This can make it harder to understand what you're saying. There are five components of speaking that must be paid attention by the students if they want to speak well. They are grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, fluency and comprehension. Speeches are built by identifying the main points to be communicated and by following five structural elements (attention statement, introduction, body, conclusion, and residual message).