National Education Standards Board (2013) found that there is still a gap between what students have learnt at schools and the expectation of the work fields. Hersulasti (2012) points out that the EFL teaching practices which are conducted at SMKs are not effective to make students able to use English appropriately. She adds that the teaching and learning process is only focused only on written tasks, vocabulary memorizing or grammar. Herisulasti’s explanation clearly indicates that the teaching and learning activities are still far from preparing students to be able to use the target language in their daily life and their future work …show more content…
Marwan (2009) suggests that there are four challenges faced by SMK teachers in implementing ESP program at SMK, those are students’ motivation, mismatch between reality (students’ English proficiency) and expectation (curriculum), lack of quality resources, and teachers’ heavy workload. Furthermore, Andriani (2014) mentions that problems in teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) at SMK can be categorized into five broad problems. They are (1) teaching pedagogy, (2) the teachers, (3) the design of the course, (4) students’ ability and (5) students’ needs. In terms of teachers’ professionalism, Cahyadin (2013) suggests that ESP teachers under his study are not specially prepared and trained for teaching ESP, in fact they are GE teachers. The same view is also stated by Dardjowidjojo (2000) and Kusni (2011), who explains that, with respect to the education background, some ESP teachers do not have any qualification in English