On Fostering Oral Skills in ESP

Abstract

Oral skills for ESP students are vital for their professional communication at seminars, workshops, student conferences and professional associations. However, the students’ oral presentations lack fluency and accuracy, which is caused by inability to process the ESP lexis spontaneously. When put under professional precision pressure, learners keep mentally translating from their native tongue before speaking and often inappropriately replace professional lexis by rudimentary vocabulary. Therefore, what is meant under oral skills in ESP is, primarily, a learner ability to produce accurate target language lexical term and word combination equivalents in impromptu situations. In this paper we concentrate on a practical aspect of learners’ language ability strategic competence. Experimental data supporting inconsistency between different types of oral versus written performance in subject-based language production is presented and analyzed. Several techniques that aid vocabulary retention and recycling, alongside with practical hints on activating appropriate for ESP oral skills, are offered. “Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed” (D. Wilkins).