Teacher training for EST: Problems and methods

For over a decade the EST teacher-training course at the University of Chile at Santiago has been a part of the regular undergraduate programme in English language for teacher-trainees. Concentrating at first on scientific and technological English, in later years the course has also included English for vocational purposes. The students in the course, like most potential and practising EFL/ESL teachers, have a humanities background; further, they have learned their English according to the traditional, “general” English system. Accordingly, they come to the EST teacher-training course with five main types of problems: attitudinal, conceptual, linguistic, methodological, and organisational. A combination of theoretical and practical classes has been designed to overcome these problems. By careful planning and patient teaching the course builds an entirely new, integrated conceptual network for the students. Not only the content of the course, but also the methodology used in its presentation can serve as a frame of reference for other institutions planning preservice or inservice teacher training in EST/ESP.