In this section, the present study will address the issue of sports English as ESP teaching material. First, a study about the influence of sports English on college students was reviewed. Second, some published books for sports English were reviewed.
2.3.1 Impact of Sports English Teaching Material on Students
Kai (2012) did a study to investigate the influence of sports English teaching materials on college students‟ English learning motivation. According to the author‟s observation, there is a huge difference in terms of English proficiency in National Taiwan Sport University, where non-athlete students outperform athlete students in English. The athletes in Taiwan tend to be poor at English because of many reasons.
For example, they didn‟t get the sense of achievement in junior and senior high school which led to their lack of confidence in English. Therefore, they become less
motivated when they have to learn English in college. Based on a questionnaire survey done in 2009, more than three-fourths of the athlete students in National Taiwan Sports University were not interested in learning English by using English textbooks with general English content. In order to solve the problem, the researcher did some changes to the materials of the textbook. Certain ESP materials like sports English and fitness-related English were included into the original textbook. Two
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freshman classes served as the control group and experimental group in the study. The former used the original material with the standardized English text book while the latter used the revised material where ESP materials such as sports English were included. The outcome of the study revealed significant difference in the post-class test. The class using English-for-sports-purposes materials scored 9.8 points (total 100 points) higher than the class using original textbooks. Generally speaking, students in the experimental group showed much higher motivation than the students in the control group. In brief, the research suggests that sports English be applied to low-achievers‟ English classes to enhance their motivation to learn English.
2.3.2 Published Books for Sports English
Published in 2013 in Taiwan, Huang‟s Sports English (運動英語) is actually a course material combining ESP and various sports together. The original purpose of this book is to help students who study in sports related department to enhance their English proficiency about sports. It can serve as a course material for one semester.
Eight chapters are included in this book. Each chapter mainly talks about one sport. In brief, there are baseball, basketball, tennis, golf, cycling, triathlon, swimming and Olympics. For each sport, the author introduces the English of a certain sport
equipment, rules, techniques and scoring terms. For example, the English of all parts of a bicycle are introduced in the cycling chapter and many interesting terms about scoring in tennis such as love standing for zero point are also listed in the book. It also includes some reading materials of stories about famous sportsmen like Lance
Armstong. In addition, there is also an additional practice part at the end of each chapter for teachers and learners‟ reference. The practice includes a dialogue, vocabulary practice, reading comprehension and questions, basic sentence pattern practice and application.
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Overall, this book is very rich in terms of its topic variety since many kinds of sports are included. However, it does not narrow down enough to focus on a certain sport. For one sport, the coverage is roughly about ten pages. Additionally, there are few example sentences to demonstrate how a certain vocabulary item is used.
Learners can‟t have a thorough understanding of one sport English by just reading this book.
In Yu‟s Go Yard with Sports English(運動英語紅不讓) published in 2008, there are many kinds of sports English discussed including baseball, basketball, boxing, football, trackfield, tennis, golf, racing and horsing. For each sport mentioned above, the book lists about 50 idioms. Instead of only providing Chinese translation, there are also detailed explanation and example sentences for readers to have better
comprehension of a certain idiom. For example, the idiom trash talk means the offensive language spoken between players to get others angry. Along with the Chinese translation and the detailed explanation, one example sentence is also provided: “Our team successfully trash-talked their leading scorer into throwing a punch and getting ejected from the game.” On top of the idiom part, the book has a diction part for baseball, basketball and tennis. Take basketball for example, there are about 270 vocabulary items included. For each word or phrase, Chinese translation and explanation are included. At the end of the book, the author also selected some pieces of news as teaching materials for some phrases and words.
In general, the book is rich because it includes the idioms and words of many sports. However, there is no example sentence in the diction part and the book does not teach collocation use to learners. If learners want to know how to use a certain vocabulary item, they will have a hard time using it correctly in a sentence without the instruction of collocation.
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Redmond and Warren (2014) wrote a book named Oxford Express Series : English for Football. The author of the book is a big football fan. After compiling this book, he tried to teach football English to potential learners like football fans and football players. Furthermore, he also aimed to teach the important English
vocabulary and terminology used in football field. According to the author, football has its special lexicon different from general English. Expressions like drop deep and hold the ball up are crucial terms not only for players to understand during a match but also for football fans to communicate with each other while watching and talking about the game.
With the help of the book, teachers can teach football English to their students or football fans can also learn the phrasal verbs which are divided based on frequency. In addition, the book also provides and clearly illustrates the situation for a specific vocabulary item. For example, the book demonstrates that mark up is the term that people will hear from a goalkeeper when he is defending corners and free-kicks.
Additionally, it also includes some exercises for students to practice in order to get familiar with those professional terms.
In sum, this book is useful not only for professional footballers but also for people fond of watching football.