EXPLORING ESP STUDENTS’ ENGLISH SKILLS BY “ENGLISH TALENT COMPETITION”

Designing ESP course sometimes is not easy as designing general English course. It needs some efforts to handle and realize it because many aspects should be considered in conducting it, such as analyzing students‟ needs, formulating goals and objectives, conceptualizing the content, selecting and developing materials, evaluating, getting students‟ feedback, etc. Still, those are not enough for serving ESP students in learning English. Many approaches, methods, strategies are also needed in order the ESP students are interested in joining ESP course. As a practitioner of ESP, the writer always tries to find and conduct appropriate and effective programs which can encourage and explore ESP students‟ English skills. One of them is English Talent Competition (ETC). It is an annual program conducted by Language Center of Universitas Muhammadiyah Ponorogo since 2014. This study aims at sharing an idea about the implementation of ETC in order to motivate ESP students improve and develop their English skills.


INTRODUCTION
This study aims to describeabout the implementation of "English Talent Competition" in exploring the ESP Students" English Skills. As many ESP teachers have known that it is not easy to motivate non-English departments" students to learn and improve English because of many reasons. That is why the writer as a chief of language center always tries to find and make special programs for ESP students in her university such as English Learning Day, Video Field Trip, Debate Forum, English Community, etc.,besides her main duty to give English certifications. There are many reasons why it happens. Some of them are because English does not belong to the subject in their curriculum, they don"t realize that English is important for their future in order to get good jobs; English is categorized as difficult subject, etc. The factors can be from internal and external of learners.

English for Specific Purposes (ESP)
UK University Foundations in Asiyah (2015) determines that this term (ESP-English for Specific Purposes) refers to the teaching of a specific genre of mostly technical English for students with specific goals, careers or field of study. Examples include English for Academic Purposes (students will enter an English-speaking university), English for Business & Management, or Hotel & Catering English (for hotel and tourism professionals). Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 8) state about ESP, "In short, the view gained ground that the English needed by a particular group of learners could be identified by analyzing the linguistic characteristics of their specialist area of work or study. "Tell me what you need English for and I will tell you the English that you need" became the guiding principle of ESP." Moreover Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 8) add that learners were seen to have different needs and interest, which would have an important influence on their motivation to learn and therefore on the effectiveness of their learning. This lent support to the development of courses in which "relevance" to the learners" needs and interests was paramount.
From those definitions above, it can be concluded that ESP is an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based on the learners" reasons for learning.

METHOD
According to Creswell (2014;32), qualitative research is "…an approach for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem". This study is a descriptive qualitative research that aims at describing the implementation of ETC to explore the English skills of ESP Students conducted by Language Center of UniversitasMuhammadiyahPonorogo.ETC is conducted annually.
The first ETC was in 2014, followed by the 2 nd in 2015 and the 3 rd in 2016. The data collection in this study based on interview, observation and document analysis as Ary et al (2002;236) state that the most widely used tools in qualitative research are interviews, document analysis, and observation. Moreover Green (2007) states that qualitative research defined by its purpose and it presents data through words.
Qualitative research requires deep explanation on the study conducted start from preparation, process until interpreting data

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
English Talent Competition (ETC) has been implemented for three times by