Teaching English through Family Psychology

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to design a course of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) for students majoring in Psychology. In Armenia, specifically, there is a need for such classes since a) family psychology is gaining ground in sought after professions and b) more students want to become well-versed in English dealing with this subject matter. The course description, materials and assessment rubrics, in addition to the course reflections and recommendations included in this paper, will provide the readers interested in the field of ESP with a general idea about methods and teaching procedure of ESP. The content was ‗‘family psychology‘‘. This course aims to enhance the students‘ language skills, particularly speaking and writing, as well as to introduce them to family psychology. The course consisted of 10 weeks of classes each lasting 2 academic hours. It was implemented with 4th –year university linguistics students taking psychology as a second profession. The content of the course consisted of ten different topics. Students were assessed through quizzes that they wrote during five classes. To achieve the goals set for this course, many engaging and fun activities including ‗‘role-play‘‘ were used. The students‘ active participation in class discussions gave the impression that the students enjoyed the course. Furthermore, the results of the course evaluation showed that the students met the goals and objectives of the course quite successfully.

Keywords: English for Specific Purposes, Family Psychology, assessment.