Challenges of Grading in an ESP Course

Abstract

This paper deals with the drawbacks of the existent grading system in the English for Specific Purposes course and the suggested solution to this problem. The main difficulty concerns the fact that in Ukraine the CEFR level is not mentioned in the transcript of the university diploma containing the list of the courses and their grades. This is the reason of impossibility to split students into groups according to their initial level of English language competency and give them an opportunity to develop at an appropriate pace and rate. Thus, we can not completely meet the needs of our students, although satisfying the learners’ needs is the key point in an ESP course. This discrepancy pushed us, ESP practitioners, to reconsider our approach to the grading system in an ESP course. We have suggested a system of level ratio that may be applied while calculating the final grades of the students. The introduction of this system may eliminate the outlined problem and enchance motivation of university students in an ESP classroom. In this paper we have described the mechanism of level ratio application, depicted the advantages of the suggested theory and outlined possible problems that can appear.