INTRODUCTION

As English continues to dominate as the lingua franca of business, media,

technology, medicine, education, and research, the demand for English for Special
Purposes (ESP) is growing rapidly over the past thirty years or so. In response to the
great demand for English in academic, vocational, and professional contexts, more
and more Moroccan private higher education institutions are offering ESP courses to meet
the global trend as well as to meet students future professional needs.
The spread of science and technology all over the world, together with the
globalization of the economy necessitates the evolvement of new trends in English
Language Teaching that would cater for the constantly changing needs of learners. Orr
(2002: 1) points out that ESP is an exciting movement in English language education that
is opening up rich opportunities for English teachers and researchers in new professional
domains. As a result, this demand for ESP has led some higher education authorities
and administrators in Moroccan private higher education to include business English as an
essential school subject for different types of trainings.
The objective of this research paper is to investigate the situation of ESP in general
and Business English (BE) in particular within the Moroccan context. My intention is to
examine the main teaching methods that Moroccan ESP teachers use and the main
activities that they focus on to develop students communicative skills in BE. In addition,
the paper aims at unveiling the learners needs and the extent to which does it match the
teaching methods. Also, as textbooks have a great role in accomplishing the learning
objectives; the paper examines the role of Business English textbooks and the main
activities that are designed for achieving the course aims.
The research has been carried out to obtain answers to the following questions.

INTRODUCTION

Does the teaching of ESP require background knowledge of EGP and does this
educational background have an impact on learning special types of English?
Does ESP simply mean learning a set of specific jargon related to a particular area
or does it involve the development of other specific skills?
Which types of tasks and activities do ESP teachers focus more on in order to
enhance their learners linguistic performance?
What are the essential characteristics of an effective syllabus designing and who is
directly involved in ESP course designing?
What is the role of the ESP teacher and what are the different characteristics of the
ESP practitioner?
The central hypothesis of the study is that teaching Business English transcend
providing learners with a list of vocabulary and related jargon. It rather extends to arming
the learners with different types of skills that seek to develop the communicative
competence of the learners to be able to perform better in their potential working area.
The data is collected from a variety of resources and by different means. The most
important means of data collection is the use of two types of questionnaires; one for the
ESP teachers and the others is directed to Business English learners from five private high
institutions. Each questionnaire is composed of fifteen questions. The questions are
designed and constructed to tackle different areas of the research including questions about
the role of EGP, the skills, activities, learning needs, textbook, course design, learners
involvement and forms of assessment. The second source of data is based on class
observation. I have attended eight classes in three different institutions in order to see the
different class activities and to spot out the skills that ESP teachers focus more on. After
each class observation, I have had a discussion with the ESP teachers about the objectives
of each class and the different obstacles that teachers usually face to meet the learning
objectives. Finally, I have chosen the Market Leader which is considered one of the widely
used business reference throughout the world to examine the different activities and skills

INTRODUCTION

in order to see whether they match the students learning needs. I have relied on Munbys
(1978) method of textbook analysis to evaluate the Market Leader textbook.
The questionnaires were filled out by 90 students and 13 teachers. Frequencies and
percentages were calculated for each group of respondents and for each question. The
results are briefly described and interpreted later in the discussion part.
My work is divided into two main parts: the theoretical part and practical part. The
theoretical part contains theoretical background concerning ESP, its definitions,
characteristic features, teaching material, types of activities, the role of the teacher,
evaluation methods and learning obstacles. Section two, the practical part, is also divided
into two main sections. The growth of ESP as a discipline has given birth to a wave of
books in different fields such as Marketing, Business, Medicine, Law and engineering. In
the first part, an evaluation of the Market Leader, a widely used Business English textbook
with the objective of investigating the different activities and skills that book authors focus
on and the way these activities are presented. In addition, the book evaluation seeks to
examine the extent to which these activities meet the students learning objectives and
needs. Two units out of the fourteen units that constitute the textbook were chosen as
sample for a detailed examination of the different designed activities. The second part
consists of the analysis of students and teachers questionnaires. The two types of
questionnaire aim at investigating the teachers and students attitudes towards the teaching
of Business English in Moroccan higher education. Students questionnaire seeks to study
students views on the ESP course and whether it caters not only to their immediate needs
but to their wants and desires for English in the future. The teachers questionnaire on the
other hand investigates the teachers attitudes and practices to fulfill the class objectives
and types of material they use, adopt or designed.

INTRODUCTION

The last part of the research deals with the analysis and discussion of the findings
in relation to the research questions. The discussion is based on the analysis of the two
types of questionnaires in addition to class observation and discussion with teachers after
classes as well as by my personal teaching experience as an EFL teacher. Some
recommendations and suggestions are made by the end of the research paper with the
objective of developing the teaching practices of Business English in Morocco.

INTRODUCTION