Developing Teaching Materials for ESP Courses: The Last Option Many ESP Teachers Resort To

Abstract

Contrary to the claim made by Hutchinson and Waters (1987) that designing teaching materials should be the last option considered, Basturkmen and Bocanegra-Valle (2018) remind that many ESP teachers are very frequently directly involved in designing teaching materials as commercially published coursebooks and other materials tend not to be relevant to the needs of their specialized groups of learners.This paper offers an insight into the key aspects as well as the sequence of ESP materials design. It outlines the main beliefs and principles which constitute the general framework for teaching materials development and summarizes the major explicit and implicit teachers’ beliefs which inevitably reflect on the process of materials design. This paper also tackles the issues of assumed abilities and training for developing and/or adapting teaching materials offered to ESP teachers in the attempt to answer the everlasting question whether being a good ESP teacher automatically implies being a good materials designer.