1

English for Specific Purposes: What does it mean? Why is it different?

A. Growth of ESP

* From the early 1960’s, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has grown to become one of the most
prominent areas of EFL teaching today. Its development is reflected in the increasing number of
universities offering an MA in ESP (e.g. The University of Birmingham, and Aston University in the
UK) and in the number of ESP courses offered to overseas students in English speaking countries.

* There is now a well-established international journal dedicated to ESP discussion, “English for
Specific Purposes: An international journal,” and the ESP SIG groups of the IATEFL and TESOL are
always active at their national conferences.

* In Japan too, the ESP movement has shown a slow but definite growth over the past few years. In
particular, increased interest has been spurred as a result of the Mombusho’s decision in 1994 to largely
hand over control of university curriculums to the universities themselves. This has led to a rapid
growth in English courses aimed at specific disciplines, e.g. English for Chemists, in place of the more
traditional ‘General English’ courses.

B. What is ESP?

* As described above, ESP has had a relatively long time to mature and so we would expect the ESP
community to have a clear idea about what ESP means. Strangely, however, this does not seem to be
the case. In October this year, for example, a very heated debate took place on the TESP-L e-mail
discussion list about whether or not English for Academic Purposes (EAP) could be considered part of
ESP in general.

* At the Japan Conference on ESP also, clear differences in how people interpreted the meaning of
ESP could be seen. Some people described ESP as simply being the teaching of English for any
purpose that could be specified. Others, however, were more precise, describing it as the teaching of
English used in academic studies or the teaching of English for vocational or professional purposes.

* At the conference, guests were honored to have as the main speaker, Tony Dudley Evans, co-editor
of the ESP Journal mentioned above. Very aware of the current confusion amongst the ESP community
in Japan, Dudley-Evans set out in his one hour speech to clarify the meaning of ESP, giving an
extended definition of ESP in terms of ‘absolute’ and ‘variable’ characteristics (see below).
 * The definition Dudley-Evans offers is clearly influenced by that of Strevens (1988), although he has
improved it substantially by removing the absolute characteristic that ESP is “in contrast with ‘General
English’” (Johns et al.,1991: 298), and has included more variable characteristics. The division of ESP
into absolute and variable characteristics, in particular, is very helpful in resolving arguments about
what is and is not ESP.

* From the definition, we can see that ESP can but is not necessarily concerned with a specific
discipline, nor does it have to be aimed at a certain age group or ability range. ESP should be seen
simple as an ‘approach’ to teaching, or what Dudley-Evans describes as an ‘attitude of mind’. This is a
similar conclusion to that made by Hutchinson et al. (1987:19) who state, “ESP is an approach to
language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based on the learner's reason for
learning.”

C. Is ESP different to General English?

* If we agree with this definition, we begin to see how broad ESP really is. In fact, one may ask ‘What
is the difference between the ESP and General English approach?’ Hutchinson et al. (1987:53) answer
this quite simply, “in theory nothing, in practice a great deal.”

* When their book was written, of course, the last statement was quite true. At the time, teachers of
General English courses, while acknowledging that students had a specific purpose for studying
English, would rarely conduct a needs analysis to find out what was necessary to actually achieve it.

* Teachers nowadays, however, are much more aware of the importance of needs analysis, and
certainly materials writers think very carefully about the goals of learners at all stages of materials
production. Perhaps this demonstrates the influence that the ESP approach has had on English teaching
in general. Clearly the line between where General English courses stop and ESP courses start has
become very vague indeed.

* Rather ironically, while many General English teachers can be described as using an ESP approach,
basing their syllabi on a learner needs analysis and their own specialist knowledge of using English for
real communication, it is the majority of so-called ESP teachers that are using an approach furthest
from that described above.

* Instead of conducting interviews with specialists in the field, analyzing the language that is required
in the profession, or even conducting students’ needs analysis, many ESP teachers have become slaves
of the published textbooks available, unable to evaluate their suitability based on personal experience,
and unwilling to do the necessary analysis of difficult specialist texts to verify their contents.

2 D. The Future of ESP

English for Specific Purposes: A Learner-Centered Approach

I. Introduction to ESP ( Based on the book written by Tom Hutchinson and Alan
Waters (1987, 1991)

A. The
Origins of ESP
* As with most developments in human activity, ESP was not a planned and coherent movement, but
rather a phenomenon that grew out of a number of converging trends. These trends have operated in a
variety of ways around the world, but we can identify three main reasons common to the emergence of
all ESP.

A.1 The Demands of a Brave New World

* The end of World War II in 1945 heralded an age of enormous and unprecedented expansion in
scientific, technical, and economic activity on an international scale.
* The expansion of created technology and commerce that soon generated a demand for an
international language.
* The economic power of the United States in the post-war fell to the role of the English language.
Some reasons for learning English have not been well defined.
* A knowledge of an FL had been generally regarded as a sign of a well-rounded education, but this
resulted to being questioned why it was necessary.
* Then, English became an international language of technology and commerce.
* The development of English was accelerated by the Oil crises of the early 1970s.
* English suddenly became big business.
* It now became subject to the wishes, needs, and demands of people other than language teachers.
A.2 A Revolution in Linguistics

* Traditionally, the aim of linguistics had been to describe the rules of English usage, that is, the
grammar.
* However, the new studies shifted attention away from defining the formal features of language usage
to discovering the ways in which language is actually used in real communication (Widdowson, 1978).
* The language we speak and write varies considerably in different ways and contexts.
* With this, distinct views in language learning emerged which undermined English for Engineering
and other related fields.
* If language varies from one situation to another, then it should be possible to determine features of
specific situations as bases for the learners’ course.
* The view gained ground that the English needed by a particular group of learners could be identified
by analyzing the specialist area of work and study.
* ‘Tell me what you need English for and I will tell you the English that you need’ became the guiding
principle of ESP.

A.3 Focus on the Learner

* New developments in Educational Psychology also contributed to the rise of ESP, by emphasizing
the central importance of the learners and their attitudes to learning (e.g. Rodgers, 1969).
* Learners were seen to have different needs and interests.
* This idea led to development of courses paramount to the relevance on the learners’ diversity.
* The growth of ESP, then, was brought about by a combination of three important factors:
a. The expansion of demand for English to suit particular needs;
b. Developments in the field of linguistics; and Educational psychology.

II. The Development of ESP ( Based on the book written by Tom Hutchinson and
Alan Waters (1987, 1991)

B. The Development of ESP

* It should be pointed out first of all that ESP is not a monolithic universal phenomenon.
* ESP has developed at different speeds in different countries.
* It will be noticeable in the following overview that one area of activity has been particularly
important in the development of ESP which is the EST (English for Science and Technology) by
Swales (1985).

B.1 The Concept of Special Language: Register Analysis

* Operating on the basic principle that the English of, say, Electrical Engineering constituted a specific
register different from that of Biology or of General English.
* The aim of the analysis was to identify the grammatical and lexical features of these registers.
* Teaching materials then took these linguistic features as their syllabus.
For example:
• Engineering Terms (Amorphous, Abrasion Resistance, Corrosion, Filament, etc.)
• Biology Terms (Anatomy, DNA, Organism, Tissue, Femur, etc.)
• General English (Adjectives, Modals, Verbs, Prepositions, Allusion, and so on).
B.1 The Concept of Special Language: Register Analysis
* In Ewer & Latorre’s syllabus (1969), register analysis revealed that there was very little that was
distinctive in the sentence grammar of Scientific English beyond a tendency to favor particular forms
such as the present simple tense, the passive voice, and the nominal compounds.
* It did not reveal any forms that were not found in General English.
* The main motive behind register analyses was the pedagogic one of making ESP course more
relevant to learners’ needs.
* The aim was to produce a syllabus which gave high priority to the language forms students would
meet in their science studies and in turn would give low priority to forms they would not meet.

B.2 Beyond the sentence: Rhetorical or Discourse Analysis

* In the first stage of its development, ESP had focused on language at the sentence level, the second
phase shifted attention to the level above the sentence, as ESP became closely involved with the
emerging field of discourse or rhetorical
analysis.
* Register analysis had focused on sentence grammar, but now attention shifted to understanding how
sentences were combined in discourse to produce meaning.
* The focus of research was to identify the organizational patterns in texts and to specify the linguistic
means by which these patterns are signaled.

* The rhetorical structure of science texts was regarded as different from that of commercial texts.
* The typical teaching materials based on the discourse approach taught students to recognize textual
patterns and discourse markers mainly by means of text-diagramming exercises.

B.3 Target Situation Analysis

* Given that the purpose of an ESP course is to enable learners to function adequately in a target
situation, that is, the situation in which the learners will use the language they are learning.
* Then, the ESP course design process should proceed by identifying the target situation and then
carrying out a rigorous analysis of the linguistic features of that situation.
* The process previously mentioned is known as “needs analysis.”
* However, it is preferable to use “target situation analysis” since it has a more accurate description
(Chambers, 1980).
* This stage marked a certain ‘coming of age’ for ESP.
 B.4 Skills & Strategies
* The fourth stage of ESP has seen an attempt to look below the surface and to consider not the
language itself, but the thinking processes that underlie language use.
* The principal idea behind the skills-centered approach is that underlying all language use there are
common reasoning and interpreting processes, which, regardless of the surface forms, enable us to
extract meaning from discourse.
* The focus should be on the underlying interpretative strategies, which enable the learner to cope with
the surface forms, for instance guessing the meaning of words from context, using visual layout to
determine the type of text, exploiting cognates (i.e. words which are similar in the mother tongue and
the target language) etc.
* ‘It was argued that reading skills are not language-specific but universal and that there is a core of
language.’
* In terms of materials, this approach generally puts the emphasis on reading or listening strategies.
* Language learners are treated as thinking beings who can be asked to observe and verbalize the
interpretative processes they employ in language use.
B.5 A Learning-Centered Approach
* All of the stages outlined so far have been fundamentally flawed, in that they are all based on
descriptions of language use.
* But the concern of ESP is not with language use alone. The concern is mostly with language learning.
* One cannot simply assume that describing and exemplifying what people do with language will
enable someone to learn it.
* A truly valid approach to ESP must be based on an understanding of the processes of language
learning.
* This brings us to this fifth stage.
*The importance and the implications of the distinction that were made between language use and
language learning will give language teachers applicable notions on how an ESP syllabus should be
designed.

3 The Nature of Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching

Let’s have an applied example: The topic/ lesson to teach is “The New Culture of Human Information”
in Media and Information Literacy.

A. Teaching Approach – Constructivism/ Media Relativism

B. Teaching Method – Classroom Activity wherein they can use their schema to expound concepts
C. Teaching Technique – Debate or Reenactment would do
D. Teaching Strategy – KWL (Know-Want-Learn) or Think-Pair-Share

I. Major language trends in 20th century language teaching

1. The Grammar-Translation Method - students learn grammatical rules and then apply those rules
by translating sentences between the target language and the native language. Unit of teaching
language starts from words.
2. Direct Method - is based on the direct involvement ofthe student when speaking, and listening to,
the foreign language in common everyday situations. Unit of teaching is through sentences and not
individual words.
3. The Oral Approach or Situational Language Teaching - is based on a structural view of
language. Speech, structures and a focus on a set of basic vocabulary items are seen as the basis of
language teaching.
It uses models, mock-ups, realia, images, and so on to emphasize situations relevant to the needs of the
learners in the classroom.
4. The Audio-lingual Method - aims to develop communicative competence of students through
dialogues. Dialogues and pattern drills that students need to repeat are used to form habits in learners
that will allow them to develop quick and automatic responses. Drills are useful in foreign language
teaching in that they give students the opportunity to perform what they have learn.

II. Alternative Approaches and Methods

5. Total Physical Response - is a method of teaching language or vocabulary concepts by using
physical movement to react to verbal input.
6. The Silent Way - is based on the premise that the teacher should be silent as much as possible in the
classroom but the learner should be encouraged to produce as much language as possible. It is a
manifestation of various teaching philosophies.
7. Community Language Learning - is a language teaching method which involves psychological
aspect and students work together to develop what skill of a language they would like to learn.
8. Suggestopedia – is based on the power of suggestion in learning, the notion being that positive
suggestion would make the learner more receptive and, in turn, stimulate learning.
9. Whole Language Approach - is an approach of teaching children to read by recognizing words as
whole pieces of language. Proponents of the whole language philosophy believe that language should
not be broken down into letters and combinations of letters and “decoded.” Instead, they believe that
language is a complete system of making meaning, with words functioning in relation to each other in
context.
10. Multiple Intelligence - Gardner's early work in human cognition and human potential led to his
development of the initial six intelligence. Today there are nine intelligence, and the possibility of
others may eventually expand the list.
11. Neuro-linguistic programming - is a way to change a person's thoughts and habits to be
successful through perception, behavior, and communication techniques. It is a pseudo-scientific
approach based on neural connections, specifically, on how they process language.
12. Lexical Approach - is a way of analyzing and teaching language based on the idea that it is made
up of lexical units rather than grammatical structures.
13. Competency-Based Language Teaching - students must demonstrate that they are able to use
language to complete a real-world task. The shift in focus from knowing about to doing with the
language requires important changes from traditional classrooms if CBLT is to be successful.
 III. Current Communicative Approaches

14. Communicative Language Teaching - is an approach to language teaching that emphasizes

interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of study.

15. The Natural Approach - is a method of second language learning that focuses on communication
skills and language exposure before rules and grammar,
similar to how you learn your first language.

16. Cooperative Language Learning - is an approach to teaching that makes maximum use of
cooperative activities involving pairs and small groups of learners in the classroom.

17. Content-Based Instruction - is a teaching approach where learners study language through
meaningful content. It motivates students to learn because the subject matter is interesting, and allows
them to apply their learned language
skills in a different context instead of rotely memorizing vocabulary.

18. Task-Based Language Teaching - offers an alternative for language teachers. In a task-based lesson
the teacher doesn't pre-determine what language will be studied, the lesson is based around the
completion of a central task and the language studied is determined by what happens as the students
complete it.

19. The Post-Methods Era

4 ESP: Approach and not a Product

A. The Tree of ELT ( Based on the book written by Tom Hutchinson and Alan
Waters (1987, 1991)
A. The Tree of ELT

The tree of ELT represents some of common divisions that are made in ELT:

1. The topmost branches : ESP Courses

2. The Branches below : EAP (English for Academic Purposes)/ EOP (English for Occupational
Purposes)
3. The next level down : EST (English for Science and Technology); EBE (English for Business and
Economics); & ESS (English for the Social Sciences)

ESP is seen in some functions:

1. Functions related to teaching and research;
2. Functions regarding language use;
3. Functions toward learning.

B. ESP as an Approach
* ESP is not just a matter of science words and grammar for scientist and so on. When we look at the
tree, there is actually much hidden from view inside and beneath the tree although we know the leaves
and the branches. They are supported by a complex underlying structure.

* The point is we need much more communication than just the surface features of what we read and
hear and also we need to distinguish between performance and competence in relation to what people
actually do with language and the range of knowledge and abilities which can enable them to do it.

* ESP is not different in kind from any other form of language teaching. It is based on the principles of
effective and efficient learning. Even though the content of the learning is different; the processes of
learning should be different for the ESP learner than for the general English learner.

* ESP is not a matter of teaching ''specialized varieties'' of English because the fact that language is
used for a specific purpose. There are some features which can be identified as ''typical'' of a particular
context of use, and which, later on help learners to be prepared to meet in the target situation.

C. Some ESP Activities

* Oral presentations * Viewing of films/ Analysis of film contents * Note-taking tasks

* Writing (articles, essays, CVs, reviews) *Language quests * Storytelling *Role playing