The Impacts of Using Schema Awareness on ESP Learners’ Self-Esteem and Attitudes; The Case Study of Using Schema Awareness in Technical English for Civil Engineering Students

According to the importance of technical English in universities, schema awareness can help leaners to improve their knowledge about the technical English and enhance their self-esteem and attitude toward language learning which are challengeable for many ESP students. Due to the importance of schema awareness through activating the background knowledge, this study tried to investigate the impacts of schema awareness on attitudes and self-esteem of civil engineering students in technical English course in university. To do this end, 60 civil engineering students from Omran Tose’eh University (Hamedan, Iran) were selected in order to see whether schema awareness have any significant improvement on technical English score or no. Subsequently, the researchers conducted two group of experimental and control group in which experimental one contained technical and useful information about subjects like surface tension, open channel hydraulics, engineering hydrology, reinforced and steel structures, and structural analysis through schema awareness. Therefore, the gain score of each learner from pre-test to post-test was evaluated through independent sample t-test to see if there is any significant improvement in technical English score of these ESP learners. After analyzing the results of learners, the findings revealed that there is much improvement in technical English score, if the learners taught through schema awareness. In another words, it can be concluded that schema awareness can improve the learners’ technical English score or language proficiency in civil engineering field. ESP learners, ESP teachers, and curriculum and syllabus designers can benefit from the results of this study.

Keywords:

English as Specific Purposes , Schema Awareness , Attitude , self-esteem , Civil Engineering