The growing role and importance of English for specific purposes: Students' awareness and attitudes

The knowledge of the English language, as a global lingua franca is necessary for following professional literature, communicating with foreign business partners, as well as correspondence and various forms of written expression. An important aspect of language education on the higher educational level is learning English for a given purpose. ESP (English for Specific Purposes), as a subfield of the English language, that is distinct and special, is an excellent means for individuals to connect and communicate within a certain profession. The primary objective of a foreign language learning curriculum, utilising a communicative approach, is to equip students with the requisite knowledge and practical skills to effectively communicate in a second language. The aim of this paper is to examine to what extent university students are motivated to learn ESP, as well as to what extent they are aware of the importance of ESP for the profession they have chosen. This paper also aims to determine whether students, who after many years of learning English continue to study it at the university, have any particular expectations from the ESP course in the first year of study, whether there are certain difficulties with the acquisition of professional terminology, as well as to what extent the students are satisfied with the achieved success. The paper employed quantitative research as a research methodology to evaluate the set hypothesis by statistically analyzing numerical data. Questionnaires were used to collect data which then were analysed using descriptive statistics in order to provide exact and reliable information.