General facts: difference between EFL and IE courses
One of the issues that might be addressed before defining the criteria for the selection of materials and activities in an IE course is the very nature of it. An IE course belongs to the wider spectrum of English for Specific Purposes movement whose proponents "argued that the content of language courses should reflect the purposes for which the students were learning the language in the first place" (Nunan, 1999. p. 148). Hence, it is necessary to understand the differences between EFL and IE courses. The major difference between IE and EFL courses lies in the learners and their purposes for learning English (Nuttall, 1982). IE students are usually adults (or young adults) who already have some familiarity with English (most of them from high-school) and are learning the language in order to understand written material issued in English in order to be able to keep an up-dated record of the current professional developments in their area of study. An IE course syllabus is therefore built on an assessment of purposes and needs and the functions for which English is required. An IE course is part of a larger movement within language teaching away from a concentration on solely teaching grammar and language structures to an emphasis on language in context. In the ULA, IE courses cover subjects ranging from arts, history, and literature to biology and chemistry, among other humanistic and scientific areas. The IE course focus means that English is not taught as a subject divorced from the students' real world; instead, it is integrated into the spine of a specific area of knowledge relevant to the learners. This conception, by no means, suggests that EFL courses do not consider students' needs and goals. It only intends to clarify that EFL and IE courses differ not only in the nature of the learner, but also in the scope of the goals of instruction. Whereas in EFL courses all four language skills (listening,...