ESP and Business English for Postgraduate Students in the Department of Economics, Tahri Mohamed University, Bechar, Algeria

To bridge the gap between the ongoing demands of the fieldwork and the outcomes of the actual teaching, all the Algerian universities, with all the kinds of specialties they provide, embrace the learning of English for more specialized purposes and try to deliver curricula that maintain the balance between the two sides. The teaching of such a technical language for the postgraduate students presents a challenge for ESP practitioners since they are asked to submit an overall knowledge of the language alongside particular business English needed to accomplish a variety of tasks that are required from the students in the academic spheres or the professional settings. Most of these ESP practitioners are general language teachers and are asked to cover the growing needs of their learners in their fields of specialty. However, this current teaching situation reveals several serious obstacles which prevent the teaching outcomes from reaching their goals. Even though most of the literature review devoted to Business English teaching focused on the professional demands to maintain the specialized registers, the current investigations show that the presented ESP sessions are still twining with general English ones and deprived of reaching the postgraduate students’ academic as well as professional desires. Moreover, the study uses a case study of eighteen first year doctorate students at Tahri Mohamed university, Bechar, Algeria to investigate the research. The data collected was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively through a delivered questionnaire and a semi-structured interview given to the teacher so as to present his views about the teaching situation. The analysis of the collected data allowed the researcher to claim that the ESP courses presented in these classes are not satisfactory since they do not meet the learners requirements and thus, suggest a number of interesting recommendations that may help in the improvement of the teaching/learning situations. As a result, the current study is done with the purpose to shed light on the teaching/learning situation and then providing a profile of the specific target needs of these researchers, which helps while designing a suitable syllabus appropriate to their special fields of interest.