Teacher’s Role in Teaching English for Legal Purposes（ELP）
中国政法大学外国语学院 刘艳
Abstract:The paper is aimed at discussing the role of the ELP（English for Legal Purposes）teachers.It first defines and categorizes the English for Specific Purposes（ESP）in English Language Teaching（ELT）.Then, the characteristics of ELPcourses and needs analysis of the students are presented.Finally, different roles of an ELPteacher, who as an organizer, motivator, student and researcher, are explored.Taking into account of the most challenging features of the ELPcourse, the paper is suggesting the kinds of roles for the teacher to assume so as to help them adapt to the new requirements.
Keywords:English for Specifi c Purposes（ESP）; English for Legal Purposes（ELP）; The teacher’s role
1.Introduction
The rapidly increasing need for English has given rise to the new trends of the teaching of English for Specifi c Purposes（ESP）in English language teaching（ELT）.ESPis a subcategory of English as a second or foreign language.Focusing on content-based instruction in view of the discipline or professional area, it includes two major areas.They are English for Occupational Purposes（EOP）and English for Academic Purposes（EAP）.EOPis concerned with“the preparation for the professional occupations students are likely to go into when they graduate”（Flowerdew, Peacock 2001：11）, including English for Professional Purposes（EPP）and English for Vocational Purposes（EVP）.EAP, on the other hand, refers to any English teaching that relates to a study purpose（Dudley-Evans, St.John 1998）, involving English for（Academic）Science and Technology（EST）, English for（Academic）Medical Purposes（EMP）, English for Management,Finance and Economics and English for（Academic）Legal Purposes（ELP）.English for Occupational Purposes（EOP）is particularly concerned with enhancing job-related language skills so as to better communicate in job-related contexts.English for Academic Purposes（EAP）specially focuses on those students whose eventual purpose is to improve their language skills for their education including studying abroad.
English for Legal Purposes（ELP）is designed for learners who need to use English in the legal profession.As China commits itself to opening its legal service market internationally, it will undoubtedly have a significant impact on most aspects of the legal and judicial systems.Meanwhile, English has always acquired the status of an international lingua franca in the international legal community.Against such a background, many university law schools even require their students to study at least one course in a foreign language for legal purposes.
Demand has therefore never been so great for English for Legal Purposes（ELP）.
2.Characteristics of ELPCourses
When it comes to the teacher’s role in ELPteaching, we need to look into the characteristics of ELPcourses.There are three features as far as ESPcourses are concerned.
2.1 Authentic materials
Authentic materials have been approached from different perspectives.They are defined as red-life texts, not written for pedagogic purpose（Wallace 1994：145）.Beckman and Klinghammer（2006：84）defi ne authentic materials as those used in the target culture for actual communicative needs.They should enable the learner to hear, read and produce language as it is used in the target culture.Alejandro G.Martinez（2002）also deals with the term.Authentic materials are sometimes called“authentic”or“contextualized”; real-life materials are those that a student encounters in everyday life but that weren’t created for educational purposes.They include newspapers, magazines, and websites, as well as drivers’ manuals, utility bills, pill bottles, and clothing labels.”They are“…materials that have been produced to fulfi l some social purpose in the language community.”（Peacock（1997）, as opposed to non-authentic materials that are especially designed for language learning purposes.In one word, authentic materials are materials created for native speakers of the language and used in a class in its original form and design.
As ELPindicates a medium to a high degree of specialization, authentic materials are particularly used in the courses which are designed to prepare students for the specifi c discipline of law.By bringing students into direct touch with English of a reality level, this real language has not been made especially easy for learners as it is used by law people for communication.For ELPteaching, contracts, agreements, judgments, etc.are good examples of authentic materials.
2.2 Content-based orientation
Content is interpreted as the use of subject matter as a vehicle for second or foreign language teaching or learning.Content-based orientation draws emphasis on the topic or subject matter,i.e., language comes second to content.The topics could be anything that interests students in thefi eld of law, such as organ transplant, death penalty, animal rights, gun control, etc.Students learn about the subject using the language they are trying to learn, rather than their native language,as a tool to develop their knowledge and so they develop their linguistic ability in the target language.It is thought to be a more natural way of developing the students’ language ability and the way that corresponds more to the way we originally learn our fi rst language.It is important to note that English ends up as a subordinate material, although the teacher must recognize it and be prepared to help students with their language skills.
2.3 Simulation of communicative tasks
Simulations are goal-oriented activities in which students use language to perform authentic relevant tasks in communicative situations.The fundamental purpose of a simulation is to make the participants gain the experience of certain aspects of the real world by recreating social situations in which students are encouraged to use language spontaneously.Carter（1983）cites the student simulation of a conference, which involves the preparation of papers, reading, notetaking, and writing.
In the context of ELP, students need to practice their linguistic ability in the legal fi eld of study.Usually the form of projects is designed and it includes the use of the necessary computing and information gathering techniques at their disposal.
In view of the above features, ELPis intended to help the law students who are planning to study law in English.Therefore, attention should be paid to students’ needs.
3.Students’ Needs Analysis
Needs analysis was introduced into language teaching and learning through the ESPmovement in the 1960s（Richards 2001）.In the foreign language teaching and learning, needs analysis is a necessary starting step for designing and carrying out the language curriculum.
English for General Purposes（EGP）does not specify needs traditionally as there is always identifi able need of sorts.However, ELPis distinguished by its high awareness of needs due to the content.As an ELPteacher, a major part of his or her job is to collect and analyze a large amount of information in order to make sure that the teaching is as effective and efficient as possible.Students’ needs analysis can show two sorts of information.The fi rst sort refl ects the learners’ heeds“possession”— their current level in L2-ELP.The second sort stands for what learners want to achieve — what traditionally has been called the“ESPneeds.”Fortunately,ELPpractitioners have developed a number of tools and techniques which are of help, such as questionnaires, interviews, observation, task-based assessment, target situation analysis, corpus analysis and discourse analysis, etc.
Needs analysis has a vital role in the process of designing and carrying out any language course, whether it is ESPor general English course, and its centrality has been acknowledged by several scholars and authors（Munby, 1978；Richterich and Chancerel, 1987；Hutchinson and Waters 1987；Berwick 1989；Brindley 1989；Tarone and Yule 1989；Robinson 1991；Johns 1991；West 1994；Allison et al.（1994））
4.The Teacher’s Role in Teaching ELP
Ellis and Mcclintock define“role”as the part taken by a participant in any act of communication（Huang Shuyun 2004）.Jack Croft Richards states that when roles are compared,they have the following characteristics:they involve different kinds of work and different levels of responsibility; they involve different kinds of relationships and different patterns of interaction and communication; they involve different power relationships（Huang Shuyun 2004）.
ESPteachers are almost always the teachers of English for General Purposes, and their switch into this fi eld is sudden（Strevens 1988）.Making decisions on what to teach and how to do it with students with different needs constitutes a great challenge for any teacher.What is more,the highly technical nature of legal discourse poses great challenges for English teachers because of their potential lack of expertise in this domain.The ELPteacher is supposed to face and tackle the problem of semantic interpretations over the laws and statutes associated with the taught content.
On the basis of the conceptions of what ELPreally is and on that of the different needs from various students, the ELPteacher should assume the following roles:organizer, motivator, student and researcher.
4.1 As an organizer
The teacher’s job is to set long-term goals and short-term objectives and then transform them into an instructional scheme with the timing of various communicative activities.Bearing in mind the potential of the students, the ELPteacher is responsible for designing a syllabus with realistic goals that takes into account the students’ concern in the learning of legal knowledge.
The ELPteacher also needs to design courses and provide learning materials.Anthony（1998）argues that choosing a published textbook is not in line with the basic principles of ESP.Unless a teacher is extremely fortunate, no published textbook will exactly match the needs of the target students or the goals of a particular course.What is more, the materials are quite different in the grammatical structures, functions and discourse structures depending on different disciplines.The problem will be sure to occur when the materials are redundant and confuse the students as to what is appropriate in the fi eld of law.Another problem is the lack of ELPmaterials.The more specialized the course is, the greater the rarity of the teaching materials is.Therefore, the teacher has the responsibility to select and assess the effectiveness of the teaching materials while identifying the needs of students.Wherever it is necessary, the task of the teacher also includes the modifi cation of those materials when they are unsuitable so as to ensure the students to attain the goals of the course.It is argued that the closer and the more relevant the ESPmaterials are to the fi eld of the learners, the more successful and motivated they will be.
4.2 As a motivator
The teacher’s role in student motivation is emphasized by Dörnyei.He（1994）suggests that teachers could enhance students’ interest and involvement in the tasks by implementing varied and challenging activities and make sure that each activity is fresh and distinguishable perhaps by including game-like features.This implies that the lessons are varied and non-monotonous.According to Dörnyei, the teacher should have three significant personality traits, which are empathy, congruence and acceptance.Empathy means that the teacher should be sensitive to students’ needs, feelings and perspectives.Congruence means that a teacher should be able to be true to himself or herself and not hide behind facades.Acceptance means that a teacher should be“non-judgemental, have positive regard, acknowledging each student as a complex human being with both virtues and faults.”The teacher is indeed an important fi gure and in the meanwhile has a unique position in the classroom environment.
In the context of ELP, motivation falls into the intrinsic and extrinsic categories.As far as the intrinsic motivation is concerned, the topics of the materials must be closely related to the interests and experiences of the students so as to create and maintain students’ curiosity.As for the extrinsic motivation, the teacher helps the students develop realistic but positive attitudes towards ELPlearning.By facilitating the communication process to all the participants in the classroom,students are made more aware of their practical and real needs.Building relaxed and friendly relationship is also very important as it helps the teacher analyze students’ psycho-pedagogic needs more subtly.In this kind of circumstance, teachers’ role is of great signifi cance.The teacher has to decide what should be done so as to be constructive enough to adopt innovative methods and to motivate the students and retain their interest in learning the language.
4.3 As student and researcher
The ELPteacher is different from the EGPteacher in that the latter can assume a somewhat“expert”status for the students in view of imparting knowledge and skills.However, for ELPcourses, the teacher will undoubtedly know more about the language through which meaning is negotiated, but the students often have a greater understanding of the core concepts, and depending on their age, even some of the conventions and diosyncrasies of the discourse community（Swales 1990）.In this sense, the ELPteacher is quite similar to students in their desire to know more about the language of the legal fi eld.
The ELPteacher’s role as“researcher”is especially important.He needs to be always in touch with the updated research, and pays attention to the new trends in that fi eld.Regarding the research in ELP, the teacher discovers the advantages of new technologies, e.g.video cameras and networked computers, and resulting access to virtually real-world situations.Technology facilitates not just the recording, collecting, and analyzing of the real interactional data but also the generation of teaching materials from those actual profession — lawyer.There is also a growing interest in knowing about the legal genre, the language and the skills involved in the legal communication.In fact, no matter what research the teacher has carried out, he always needs to incorporate the fi ndings with the classroom teaching.
5.Conclusion
Over years of vigorous development of English for Specific Purposes（ESP）in English language teaching（ELT）, ELPhas been regarded by many as a distinctive domain.It will exist for its development with the ELPteacher’s continuous exploration and attempts.When ELPcourses are taught to students as a second language, there are at least two language-related challenges.Thefi rst is the peculiarities of the vocabulary and complexities of sentence structures.And the second is the different connotations between specifi c national common law jurisdictions.Moreover, the legal profession perhaps demands its practitioners the highest standard of language competency.In view of such a background, the ELPteacher has to not only take into account the linguistic features and teaching theories, but also to have insights in the recent development of the fi eld of law.In addition, he has to face the new technologies that are offered so as to help improve their methodology.With the most challenging features of the English for Legal Purposes, the ELPteacher is suggesting ways and assuming kinds of roles to adapt to the new requirement.
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注释
[1]本文为中国政法大学校级人文社会科学研究项目“从通用英语向学术英语的转型研究”（项目号14ZFG74001）的研究成果。