O’zbekiston respublikasi oliy ta’lim, fan va innovatsiyalar vazirligi andijon davlat chet tillari instituti ingliz tili o’qitishning integrallashgan kursi kafedrasi chet tillarni o’qitishning integrallashgan kursi

2 Materials selection
As Ellis and Johnson (1994: 115) emphasize, the choice of materials has a majorimpact on what happens in the course. This impact is demonstrated on the following
three levels:
- It “determines what kind of language the learners will be exposed to and, as aconsequence, the substance of what they will learn in terms of vocabulary,structures, and functions”;
- It “has implications for the methods and techniques by which the learners willlearn”;
- Last but not least, “the subject of or content of the materials is an essentialcomponent of the package from the point of view of relevance andmotivation”.
The selection of ESP materials should thus above all depend on the needs of thelearners in relation to their future or present jobs: that is, materials should focus onthe appropriate topics and include “tasks and activities that practise the target skillsareas” (Ellis and Johnson, 1994: 115). Another important criterion that should betaken into account when selecting materials is the level of language knowledgestudents have already acquired and the target level they will need to communicate successfully in their jobs ESP is predominantly student-centred, and consequently students’ considerationsshould be at the top of the list of selection criteria. According to Lewis and Hill,students’ considerations include the following:
- Will the materials be useful to the students?
- Do they stimulate students’ curiosity?
- Are the materials relevant to the students and their needs?
- Are they fun to do?
- Will the students find the tasks and activities worth doing
(adapted from Lewis and Hill, 1993: 52-53)?
To sum up, after analysing learner needs and setting objectives for the course, theESP teacher has to select materials that will help the students achieve the courseobjectives (Ellis and Johnson, 1994). These materials should also relate closely to thelearners’ specific skills and content needs, which is an important precondition for fullexploitation of the materials as well as the learners’ motivation.
2.2 Readily available textbooks vs. tailor-made materials
The decision on whether to use a readily available textbook or tailor-made materialsis primarily based on the learners’ subject area. If their subject area is more general,the likelihood of finding suitable published materials is much higher. Accordingly, ESPteachers will most often select suitable materials from existing printed materials. Inthe case of more specific subject areas, the most widely accepted view is that ESPteachers should also first “question whether the learners’ needs are significantly
different from those of other groups” and, if possible, select from existing printedmaterials and resort to writing materials “when all other possibilities of providingmaterials have been exhausted” (Hutchinson and Waters, 1994: 125). The findingsof research conducted by Djurić, Godnič Vičič and Jurković (2008), in Sloveniaindicate that another decisive factor in materials selection or writing is theinstitution’s view on materials writing. If the institution encourages teachers to
develop tailor-made materials and if there are several teachers of foreign languagesfor specific purposes, the institutions are more likely to provide their students withtailor-made materials. These writers also point out that the number of tailor-madematerials for LSP in Slovenian higher education institutions is relatively high, duemainly to the fact that teachers here strive to cater for the specific needs of theprofessional language they teach. To meet this end, they either adapt commercialtextbooks to the specific needs of the specific subject area and to the level ofstudents’ language knowledge or prepare in-house materials if no suitable printedmaterials are available in the market (Djurić, Godnič Vičič and Jurković 2008).If a teacher resorts to using a readily available textbook, the selection of structures,vocabulary, skills, functions, and so on is conditioned by the textbook to a largeextent and can be extended into other areas teachers find relevant to their students.Tailor-made materials, on the other hand, provide the teacher with the opportunity
to decide on combinations of vocabulary, functions and structures and to develop materials that will introduce most relevant vocabulary and related functions andstructures.
A final but significant factor is that psychologically a textbook represents somethingconcrete and thus gives a measure of progress and achievement throughout thecourse (Haycraft, 1987). Consequently, when designing materials teachers shouldbear this in mind and prepare materials that present a logical whole and in which thesequence of units is logical and enables the students to see and evaluate theirprogress.
Although learners can undoubtedly learn most of the needed skills, functions and to agreat extent also general terminology from general business textbooks, they willundoubtedly gain even more when using tailor-made materials or a combination of ageneral business textbook and tailor-made materials because these two options aremore likely to provide them with directly applicable knowledge.