| المستخلص: |
ESP is a term which refers to the role of English in a language syllabus in which the content and aims of the syllabus are fixed by the specific needs of a particular group of learners, this means that ESP focuses on students‟ needs and interests in teaching language. (Richards, et al 1987:94) English for Legal purpose (ELP) is a branch of ESP as it uses specialised legal English vocabulary and structure in language teaching. It designed to introduce foreign practitioners and law students to legal English concepts, through lectures, written assignments, in-class exercises, participants whose native language is not English will practice a wide array of legal English skills. (Bhatia, 1993:121) The study is an attempt to design an ESP syllabus for Iraqi Students at Colleges of Law. The existing English course in these Colleges adopt the old and traditional method in teaching English which mainly presents legal content regardless the educational instruction methods while the proposed syllabus is designed according to the students‟ needs and interests. The proposed syllabus is supposed to give the students opportunities to practice English language as possible, teach English skills interactively, encourage the students to express their own opinions and decisions, use more activities, participate in group discussion, role play, and increase their autonomy in adding and selecting materials of their own. The sample of the present study is the first year students at the College of law, University of Wasit for the academic year 2013-2014. Many procedures are adopted in this study. First, a questionnaires are given to instructors as well as students at colleges of law to evaluate the existing course for teaching English for special purpose. Second, need analysis questionnaires have been conducted to collect the information of students‟ needs .The syllabus has been designed according to the learner-centered approach and multi-syllabus design. Third, an experiment is designed where two groups of (60) students were randomly chosen from the first year students at the College of law. One of these two groups was assigned as a control group, and the other as an experimental one. Both groups were equalized in terms of age; parents’ level of education; the level of subjects’ achievement in English for the previous academic year (2012-2013); and their levels in the four skills through implementing the pre-test. The researcher himself taught both groups, as being one of the instructors at the college of law. The experimental group was taught according to the proposed syllabus and by using the Task Based Instruction method while the control one was taught according to the existing textbook. The experiment lasted one academic year (two courses). Oral and written post-tests were constructed for both groups. After, exposing the pre –posttest to jury members for the purpose of ascertaining their validity, item analysis was carried out to determine the item difficulty level and discriminating power. Reliability of the written test was estimated by using split-half procedure, whereas the oral test is estimated by mark/remark procedure. After analyzing the results statistically, it has been found out that there are significant differences between the two groups in the written and oral tests and in favour of the experimental group. This indicates that using the proposed syllabus in teaching is more effective than using the existing textbook.
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