INVESTIGATING THE TEFL/ESP PRACTITIONER’S DILEMMATIC CURRENT STATUS IN THE IRAQI KURDISTAN REGION

Abstract

As a specialist in TEFL/ESP, the writers of this research-paper submitted a proposal of a symposium about TEFL/ESP titled “Teaching ESP in Iraqi-Kurdistan Region: Reality & Prospects”, to the Deanery of the College of Languages/ Nawroz University in collaboration with the College of Administration & Economics/ Nawroz University. Four researches from three universities in Dohuk Governorate area delivered six papers on the platform of Kurdistan Hall/ Nawroz University.

Meanwhile, it was presumed in advance that the symposium attending-practitioners who usually teach the ESP programs would be of two types majoring:

• (Type 1) practitioners with TEFL-qualification, and
• (Type 2) practitioners with no TEFL-qualification but they teach ESP programs depending on the experience of using English as medium of instruction gained when they were postgraduate-students; their medium of study was English.

Hence, the writers of this research-paper in advance designed and prepared two versions of questionnaire forms to investigate the two types attending-practitioners’ readiness to teach ESP. The questionnaire versions was built upon the six dimensions (each with 3 parameters) of Kumaravadivelu’s cyclic module of TEFL (2012); aiming at investigating the extent the two types of practitioners could realize during their performances of teaching an ESP program, in order then to make a sort of comparison between the two groups’ achievements.

Two hypotheses were in mind:

• the ESP practitioners with TEFL-qualification could not fairly fulfill the objectives of teaching the scientific programs other than the TEFL programs, though they majored in English, and the ESP practitioners with non-TEFL-qualification could not fairly fulfill the objectives of their major-scientific-programs with no experience of how to use English as a medium of study. Distributing the questionnaire forms, collecting them back, analyzing the data, gathering the results, and making comparison between the 2-type-practitioners’ responses, the following findings were reached:

• The two investigated types of ESP practitioners could fairly satisfy the objectives built on Kumaravadivelu’s cyclic module.
• Significant differences were marked in favor of the type 2 practitioners, in respect of satisfying the needs of Kumaravadivelu’s cyclic module. Finally, certain recommendations were made about how to develop an advance ESP discipline.