LSP university teaching: Cooperation between LSP teacher and subject teachers

Abstract

Language for specific purposes (LSP) is a special variety of general language which has substantial influence on the scientific field to which it belongs. If a LSP course is to be purposeful and closely linked to subjects of the discipline it is necessary to design, perform and evaluate it through the cooperation between the language teacher and subject teachers. The aim of our research was to determine whether, to what extent, and in which forms there is cooperation between subject teachers and foreign language teachers, whether and in which forms subject teachers perceive usefulness of such cooperation for their subjects. The research was conducted by surveying selected subject teachers at the University in Belgrade. The data were gathered by the use of a questionnaire construed for this research. The results show that cooperation is infrequent and informal, and that few subject teachers see any benefit of including LSP teachers in their subject courses. Possible and optimal forms of cooperation are seen to be out-of-course activities (proofreading, editing, translating) which indicates underdeveloped awareness of subject teachers of academic LSP courses and the role of LSP teachers. The obtained results show that in our community the importance of cooperation which would significantly enhance the educational process and equip students with skills for professional functioning is not fully recognized as yet.

Keywords

• language for specific purposes
• subject teachers
• LSP teachers
• language learning
• learning through language
• the analysis of the lesson language