DEVELOPING DIGITALIZED ESP TEACHING MATERIALS: ACCOMODATING THE NEEDS OF GEOGRAPHY MAJOR STUDENTS

Abstract

The position of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in higher education in Indonesia is only taught as one of general basic courses. It is considered a specific course in practice but not applied properly in terms of ESP theories. Thus, the process of teaching and learning in this course faces many issues including the use of appropriate teaching materials. This Research and Development (R & D) study aimed to present the development of digital based English teaching materials for university students of Universitas Hazairin (Unihaz) Bengkulu, South Sumatera, Indonesia, majoring Geography by applying materials development framework of Jolly and Bolitho model. The process of developing these materials passed four phases, i.e. first, analyzing the students’ needs, second, prototyping digital based materials on the specific purposes, third, validating the feasibility of the materials designed, and fourth, assessing the effectiveness of the materials. This R & D study confirmed that digital-based English teaching materials for university students majoring Geography were very useful and effective. These results were proven by the increasing average scores gained by the students in the 4 TOEFL-like tests on the fourth stage of the research. The development of these teaching materials is expected to give worth contribution to English education field especially in English for specific purposes in the era of IR 4.0.