Esp Curriculum Design Alearner-Centered Perspective

ESP has enjoyed a history of about 50 years. As a branch of language teaching, ESP has differences from and similarities to EGP. ESP course has its own characteristics, of which, learner-centeredness is the most distinguished one. China introduced ESP courses in the 1970s and until now, many universities and colleges have already set up ESP courses. However, whether these ESP courses achieve learner-centeredness is open to question. This thesis, centering round this question, does a survey in two universities in the form of questionnaire, interview and classroom observation. The thesis makes clear three points in the first part, which include what ESP is and its differences from EGP courses; what curriculum is about and the steps to design a curriculum; the features of learner-centeredness. The second part focuses on the explanations of learner-centered curriculum design from four aspects. After the explanation of basic concepts, in the third part, emphasis is laid on the status quo of ESP curriculum design. The thesis makes a simple research among 211 project universities on the internet and finds that more than half of them have ESP courses. In order to check whether the learner-centeredness has been fulfilled in ESP curriculum design, the thesis makes a survey in two universities and finds out some problems existing in nowadays' ESP curriculum. Based on the analysis of the survey result, the thesis offers some suggestions on how to improve the learner-centeredness in ESP curriculum in the fourth part.