Challenges In Implementing Esp: A Descriptive Study Of An Esp Teacher In Aviation College

Abstract

In the Indonesian context, several studies have investigated the challenges faced by teachers in teaching ESP (e.g. Cahyani et al., 2018; Fitria, 2020; Iswati & Triastuti, 2021; Suherman & Kertawijaya, 2023). In addition, there are also some studies that investigated the context of English for Aviation (e.g. Rossydi & Masita, 2021; Marantika et al., 2022; Rochmawati et al., 2024). Although these previous studies focused on English for Aviation, they did not examine the needs analysis and syllabus design stages, they only focused on teaching methods and students’ perceptions. Therefore, this present study aims to investigate the challenges faced by an Aviation English teacher in implementing five key stages of conducting ESP teaching from Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998) which are “needs analysis, course (and syllabus) design, materials selection (and production), teaching and learning, and evaluation” (p. 121). The researcher used a descriptive qualitative method. The participant of this study is an English Aviation teacher at one of the aviation colleges in Yogyakarta. The data were collected through interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis. This study found that there were nine challenges (i.e. involving many parties, taking a lot of time, adjusting the learning needs to the current situation, adapting ESP curriculum to educational policies, limited material, large classes, students’ different characteristics, students’ diverse competence, and the results of course evaluations are sometimes not suitable when applied to students with different competence) faced by an Aviation teacher in implementing ESP based on the five key stages of conducting ESP teaching by Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998). This study suggests that prospective ESP teachers, and student teachers develop their teaching skills to overcome and minimize the challenges faced by ESP teachers during each of the five stages of ESP teaching, especially in the needs analysis and materials selection stages which is the most frequently challenging stage for the participant in this study.