How do I design ESP material / books?

[ngoclinh]

Hi Lucy,
I have written to you so many times about the various issues concerning my own teaching situations and I have always received invaluable advice from you, which always helped me out of the difficult situations. This time I'm writing in again to ask consult you the issue of designing ESP material. I'm teaching English to students of Information Technology. As you know, textbooks in this field are very far and few between. The ones that we are using at the moment include Basic English for Computing, Infotech, and Oxford English for Computing. However, after a period of time working with these books we realized that they are not much suitable for our students as well as our iwn teaching situation. We, a group of teachers, have decided to design new material for our students. Yet we are all new to designing material. As we started we realized that things are not that simple. But we still embark on this project, which we very much hope that may bring our teaching job to a higher level and will benefit both teachers and students. I'd like to ask you a few things. First of all, Where should we start? What steps Should we follow and how to carry out each of them? How to decide on the approach and methodology to the book and how to realize them in the tasks of the book?
I hope these questions will not take you too much time
Look forward to hear from you soon
Phuong

[Lucy]

Dear Phuong,

This is a wonderful idea. It's great that you have thought of it.

I can give you help on designing individual exercises and activities. I've never written a book myself (or not yet!) and so I am not very well placed to advise on how to go about designing a book. I think you need expert advice so as not to waste time. I suggest you contact some publishing houses and try to get advice.

If you would like to discuss with me how to design tasks, I'd be very happy to answer.

Good luck and kind regards,

Lucy