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64 Apuntes de Investigación en la Enseñanza de Idiomas

tool, but also as a way to identify authentic language patterns and to self-assess. According to Tomak
and Sendulak-Pavelic (2017), if ESP students are able to assess their own learning, this will eventually
enhance their motivation for improving their language proficiency on their own.

Case Study as a Convenient Method to Explore Motivation
An Exploratory Case Study within the Qualitative Paradigm was used to gather real-life information
from pedagogy teachers interested in learning English as a foreign language. This was a course
especially designed for 15 teachers of the Pedagogy School whose experience in teaching at the
UV ranges from 7 to 25 years. They are experts in different fields related to pedagogy such as: edu-
cational management, quantitative and qualitative research and psycho-pedagogy. Semi-structured
interviews were applied to ESP course instructors after the course sessions in order to know their
feelings, opinions and thoughts regarding the course designed especially for pedagogues (Kvale,
1996). In addition, observations were carried out to confirm or contrast what was expressed in the
interviews. Finally, all the collected information was triangulated with the theoretical basis on the use
of ESP courses as a motivational tool.

Results

The information obtained from the analysis of the data gathered in the interviews and observations
was organized in the four categories that emerged:

Students’ choice (Needs, interest & motivation)
The first category refers to the professional need expressed by the director from the Pedagogy School
to her Language School counterpart. The Pedagogy teachers’ extrinsic motivation must guarantee
certain level in the English language in order to improve their working conditions. In addition, the
course would be designed in a specialized area of knowledge: Pedagogy, taking into account some
cognitive competencies already developed by the prospective participants. Finally, the course need-
ed to cover the four skills as well as grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. The idea was to encour-
age participants in the course to feel motivated to continue learning at L2 courses specially designed
for them, either in a face-to-face or in an autonomous mode.

Exclusion & inclusion of contents (including meta-language)

The course would have two main aims; on the one hand, we would use texts from the pedagogy
area written in English to facilitate participants the learning of specialized and daily vocabulary, but at
the same time, the training to pass a certification exam. The vocabulary from the texts allowed the
design of activities which helped participants recognize and/or understand and learn different words,
and they were also able to learn different ordinary words from the ones in the specialized articles.
Motivation to speak English at all time was also enhanced.