SUXO CHOQUE GABRIELA WARA THESIS WORKSHOP II L2

DATE: 05/07/2022
TASK: WRITING PROJECT # 2: WRITING THE THEORY OF MY RESEARCH
TOPIC

For the modality that I intend to develop for the end of my undergraduate studies and to
acquire my degree, I have decided on guided work. My proposal project is a guided work
that have as a tentative title “The innovation of the legal English course in the career of law
at UMSA La Paz city 2022” and the main topic of my proposal is the ELP (English for
legal purposes) that is part of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) that will be implemented
in the career of law UMSA.

Guided Work is one of the Graduation modalities, an essential requirement for obtaining an
academic degree at the Universidad Mayor de San Andres UMSA. It is an intellectual
research work that allows identifying a specific management need or problem in an
organization in order to propose a practical and feasible solution through the application of
academic knowledge acquired during the master's degree.

To understand more about the topic is important define some concepts that are central for
my proposal. English for specific purposes (ESP) is considered as a new trend in English
Language Teaching, ESP consists of English language teaching which is designed to meet
specified needs of the learner; centered on the language appropriate to those activities in
syntax, lexis, discourse, semantics, etc., and analysis of this discourse; in contrast with
General English (EGP). In the other hand General English (EGP) is a course that provided
to pupils as compulsory module at schools, their unique purpose is to succeed in the
examinations. The most important EGP features are that it focuses is often on education as
SUXO CHOQUE GABRIELA WARA THESIS WORKSHOP II L2
DATE: 05/07/2022
the learner’s future needs are impossible to predict the course contents more difficult to
select and due to this point it is important for the content in the syllabus to have high

surrender value. This image lists the main features of ESP and EGP.

For that the present study will be in academic Department of Law, UMSA and it is based
on the importance of language skills, students’ and teachers’ attitudes towards an ESP
course and the importance of needs analysis.

Needs analysis (NA) is regarded as critical to ESP (Robinson, 2001, p.98). Need analysis is
an important step in the ESP process since it will allow us to collect information that will
serve as the basis for developing a study plan according to the needs of our students. As to
Graves (1996), needs analysis is: “An ongoing process of gathering information about
students’ needs and preferences, interpreting the information, and then making course
decisions based on the interpretation in order to meet the needs”.

This project will use the ELP English for legal purpose because this kind of courses are
designed for law students at university who are obviously pre-experience learners of
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DATE: 05/07/2022
English. The legal English course normally runs parallel to law courses so that students can
associate their subject knowledge they have learned with the legal English context
whenever relevant. Since the Legal English course is among compulsory subjects, the
students ‘performance is evaluated at the end of the semester. It focuses broadly on the four
basic language skills of listening, reading, writing and speaking because it is unrealistic for
the students to predict which specific skill their future jobs require. In the follow link there
is a video that can explain better the ELP https://youtu.be/QCSmwW-sr9A .

The fundamental importance of legal English teaching is to enhance the balanced

development of the learners ‘subject knowledge and English proficiency, enable them to
become active in thinking and broad in vision, and ultimately, have a positive impact on the
learners ‘employment prospect. Thus this work is important for the two careers law and
linguistics because for linguistic I implement a ELP course in order that students can work
in more areas, and for law students can have an English course specialized in their career.
This proposal comes from the necessity of students of law, since I studied law and I would
like to apply my English in law and is difficult to find specified English courses.

Law students are expected to become familiar with legal terminology and write adeptly in
English by the end of the course. They should, for instance, be able to write simple legal
documents, e-mails as well as a resume of high quality. Moreover, they should be capable
of understanding intermediate legal articles and documents, conducting common
professional conversation orally and maintaining relationships with the international
community in their specific area.

The reason of this research was started because the English classes in the career of law have
to be improved to give the students a better training to learn the English language with a
specific purpose in this case teach with the objective that students can apply in their works
the English.

The purpose of this research is to improve their techniques based on the different programs,
models, and rules that we learned as students of the Linguistics department at the UMSA.
The English outside the classroom is important, especially for the law, sometimes law
could be complex and the undergraduates must be training to interpret the law also in
English because that can give them more opportunities to work better as a lawyer.
SUXO CHOQUE GABRIELA WARA THESIS WORKSHOP II L2
DATE: 05/07/2022

The main theories for this project besides ESP EGP and ELP, also there are Definition of
basic terms, Methods of teaching and learning, Factors that influence the English language
teaching- learning process, and these tittles are divided in subtitles that will be explain in
the next paragraphs in order to understand the project.

According the factors that influence the English language teaching-learning (which is
important in this project because the ESP is based on need analysis of student) the first goal
of factors are internal and external

According Internal factors Ellis (1986) claims that internal factors consist of age, aptitude,
motivation and personality. They are factors which come from inside the individual.
According to Brown (2007), these factors are specified by the individual students like
motivation, attitude, personal practice and study habits. Each of these factors is an
individual element of learners′ ability to acquire a foreign language but each component
also interacts with another.

Motivation according to Motivation is the combination of effort plus desire to achieve the
goal of learning the language and favorable attitudes toward learning the language. Intrinsic
SUXO CHOQUE GABRIELA WARA THESIS WORKSHOP II L2
DATE: 05/07/2022
motivation occurs when students engage in actions for their own sake and without coercion
such as satisfaction, interest, learning, and challenge...

The motivation will help to encourage students to learn in a good way, it is also to look for
strategies, look for relevant materials that will help them in the future, know the needs of
the students and be guided by that information.

The Attitude according to the author, attitudes are the interests that students show, thus they
come to show good results. As mentioned above, it is closely related to motivation. It
shows a favorable behavior.

Aptitude Language aptitude refers to the potential that a person has for learning languages.
This potential is often evaluated using formal aptitude tests, which predict the degree of
success the candidate will have with a new language. Aptitude tests vary but many include
evaluation of ability to manage sounds, grammatical structures, infer rules, and memory.

The External Factors are those that characterize a particular learning situation, consisting of
social factors, input, and interaction. Based on Browns′ definition (2007), external factors
can be different for each individual, but their common attribute is that they are based solely
on the circumstances outside of the control and influence of the learner.

Until the moment I read around twelve or fifteen books that help me to complete more the
information that I need for these project. I try to search definition in many books to get
more information and read to be able to write about the subtitles. So the concepts that I
explain are just a bit about the things that I have read about the topic of my thesis, I am
planning to read more topics and obviously include them in the final draft so I can improve
and do a complete work. I plan to also include the information I have read on English
textbooks, workbooks ad dictionaries of course which are the ones that basically helped me
to identify the problem and do the proper translation to exemplify the point of this research.
SUXO CHOQUE GABRIELA WARA THESIS WORKSHOP II L2
DATE: 05/07/2022
REFERENCES

• Alderman, M. K. (2004). Motivation for Achievement: Possibilities for

Teaching and Learning. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Graves, K. (1996). Teachers as Course Developers. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
• Language aptitude (2010) The United Kingdom's international organization
for cultural relations and educational opportunities
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/language-
aptitude#:~:text=Language%20aptitude%20refers%20to%20the,have
%20with%20a%20new%20language.
• Mirhadizadeh, N (2016). Internal and External Factors in Language
Learning
• Robinson, P. (2001). Task complexity, cognitive resources, and syllabus
design: a triadic framework for examining task influences on SLA. In
Robinson, P. Cognitionand Second Language Instruction. Cambridge:
Cambridge University.
• The Effects Of Aptitude On Language Learning English Language Essay
(2022) Uk.Essays
https://www.ukessays.com/essays/english-language/the-effects-of-aptitude-
on-language-learning-english-language-essay.php