English for Specific Purposes, 26X273, 1993 $6.00 + .

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Pergamon Press Ltd. Printed in the USA. Copyright 0 1993 The American University

Reviews

ESP TODAY: A PRACTITIONER’S GUIDE. Pauline Robinson. Hemel

Hempstead, UK: Prentice Hall International (UK) Ltd, 1991, xii + 146 pp.

Reviewed by Numa P. Markee

This short, but very broad, account of English for Specific Purposes (ESP)
consists of nine chapters; Robinson begins by providing an overview of what
ESP is (Chapter 1) and then proceeds to survey the state of the art in relation
to needs analysis (Chapter 2), the analysis of language for ESP (Chapter 3),
syllabus and course design (Chapter 4), methodology (Chapter 5), materials
(Chapter 6), evaluation and testing (Chapter 7), the role of the teacher in ESP
instruction (Chapter S), and finally, issues and approaches in two varieties of
ESP, Business English, and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) (Chap-
ter 9).
Readers who have been professionally involved with ESP during the last 10
years or so will immediately recognize this book as an update of Robinson
(1980). However, in the preface to the book, the series editor, Chris Candlin,
claims that the book’s purpose is not just to update the earlier text, but to:

address three issues and challenges that have arisen within the field, examining
critically not only what is the content of ESP but also what are its characteristic
processes of teaching and learning, secondly to indicate and reference the
breadth of ESP as a major discipline in English Language Teaching, and thirdly,
to emphasize the importance of the research and practice of ESP for the general
language teacher. (Candlin 1991: ix)

In this review, therefore, I will assess how successful Robinson has been in
achieving these three aims.
As was the case with the earlier book, the chief strengths of the present
offering are the impressive breadth of coverage of most important issues in
ESP and the very comprehensive and well laid out bibliography, which, in fact,
accounts for approximately one third of the book’s length. This bibliography
consists of a selection of some 800 items which Robinson considers “essential”
primary sources on ESP, as opposed to the roughly 500 items which pretty
well constituted the field in 1980. These 800 references are arranged in 10
sub-sections which correspond to the 9 chapters of the book (the last 2 provide
separate listings for Business English and EAP). There can be no doubt that
Robinson has succeeded extremely well in fulfilling the second aim identified by
Candlin, and the book is well worth buying on this count alone.
With respect to Candlin’s first point, Robinson does a creditable job of

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reviewing what ESP practitioners typically do in the field; however, this does
not amount to a critical analysis of the content of ESP; and with respect to
CandIin’s third point, I am not sure that I really understand what Robinson’s
position is regarding the issue of whether ESP is IundamentaIIy different from
English for General Purposes (EGP). If there is no important difference be-
tween the two at the level of theoretical content, then whatever influence ESP
exerts on the development of EGP (and/or vice versa) has to be specified more
explicitly than Robinson does.
In this regard, it is interesting to note that in her 1980 book, Robinson
defines ESP courses as “purposeful and . . . aimed at the successful perfor-
mance of occupational or educational goals. [They are] based on a rigorous
needs analysis of students’ needs and should be ‘tailor-made’ . . .” (p. 13). But
by 1991, she will only commit herself to saying “perhaps what we are really
involved in as ESP practitioners is not so much teaching English for specific
purposes but teaching English to specified people” (p. 5). This very weak
definition of ESP (if that is indeed what this last sentence amounts to) would
seem to suggest that ESP is not fundamentally distinctive from EGP.
My main criticism of this book is that Robinson hardly ever adopts a strong
personal position on any issue in the entire book. This may be due to the fact
that by covering such a broad range of material, she necessarily has to go into
issues in less depth than she otherwise might. On those rare occasions when
she does express a personal opinion, however, she tends to assert rather than
discuss her position.
For example, she begins her discussion of tasks in EGP by baldly stating that
“the best overview of tasks can be found in Candlin and Murphy [1987]” (p.
47), without providing us with any reason for why this might be true; she then
goes on to cite approvingly what must surely be the most formidably opaque
definition of a language learning task in the applied linguistics literature:

[a language learning task is] one of a set of differentiated, sequencable, (sic)

problem-posing activities involving learners and teachers in some joint selection
from a range of varied cognitive and communicative procedures applied to ex-
isting and new knowledgein the collectiveexplorationand pursuance of foreseen
or emergent goals within a social milieu. (Candlin 1987: 10)

My reaction to this particular definition is always to wonder what is wrong

with the much more direct definitions of task provided by Long (1985) or
Crookes (1986), for example. Of course, each writer will have favorite defini-
tions which make better sense to them than they do to others. But the point
1 am making here is not just about personal preferences. It is about the ob-
jective relevance and appropriateness of Robinson’s choice of sources in this
instance.
The two sources I have just cited propose definitions which are not only
more accessible (for example, Long [1991: 891 defines tasks as “the things
people will tell you they do if you ask them and they are not applied linguists”),
they also have the merit of being directly inspired by the ESP “movement,”
 Reviews 265

while Candlin’s is not. Arguably, therefore, Long’s definition is more inherently

relevant to Robinson’s subject matter than the definition she has used.
Furthermore, it is also worth noting that Long’s advocacy of task-based
language teaching is based on the considerable amount of research that has
been done in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) during the last 10 years or
so. Again, Car&n’s is not (although his views are actually compatible with
many of the interpretations of SLA research that are current today). Robin-
son’s failure to discuss in any depth the implications of SLA research for a
task-based approach to ESP is a major shortcoming in her discussion of sylla-
bus design/methodology in ESP because it precludes any serious discussion of
Candlin’s third point. The question “What is the theoretical basis (if any) of ESP
as a semiautonomous area of Second Language (SL) teaching?” goes right to
the heart of the nature of the relationship between ESP and EGP. And this is
a question which, for me at least, remains unanswered by this book. This is a
shame, because it is precisely this question which has dogged ESP right from
the very beginning.
If I may attempt a very brief answer of my own to this question, I would
argue that, in terms of SLA research, ESP cannot be said to have a separate
identity from EGP. Thus, whatever influence ESP has on EGP is at the prag-
matic level of developments in SL teaching practice. This is, itself, a very
important sphere of influence. Indeed, I would like to suggest that, historically,
the greatest contribution that ESP has made to the SL teaching community has
always been to act as a weather vane for some of the most interesting devel-
opments in TESL. In other words, issues which initially become problematized
in ESP are likely to become important in EGP fairly soon after.
In my view, one of the most useful current developments in ESP which is
showing signs of being picked up by the wider profession is the interest in
treating language curricula as innovations whose development has to be care-
fully managed. I predict that by the time Robinson writes the third edition of
this book in the year 2000, an entire chapter on this topic may well be neces-
sary.
In summary, the book is well worth buying as an unequalled compendium of
primary references and as a review of ESP practice during the 1980s and into
the early 1990s. However, it is essentially a backward-looking rather than a
forward-looking book. Consequently, readers should not expect to find indica-
tions of how ESP is likely to develop in the 21st century.

REFERENCES

Candlin, C. N. (1991). Preface. ESP today: A practitioner’s guide. Hemel

Hempstead, UK: Prentice Hall.
Candlin, C. N. (1987). Towards task-based language learning. In C. N. Car&n
& D. F. Murphy (Eds.), Language learning tasks (Lancaster Practical Pa-
pers in Language Education, 7, pp. 5-22). Hemel Hempstead, UK: Prentice
Hall.
Candlin, C. N., & Murphy, D. F. (Eds.). (1987). Language learning tusks
266 Reviews

(Lancaster Practical Papers in Language Education, 7). Hemel Hempstead,

UK: Prentice Hall.
Crookes, G. (1986). Task classification: A cross-discz$linary perspective (Tech-
nical Report #4). Honolulu: University of Hawaii at Manoa, Social Science
Research Institute, Center for Second Language Classroom Research.
Long, M. H. (1985). A role for instruction in second language acquisition:
Task-based language training. In K. Hyltenstam & M. Pienemann (Eds.),
ModelZing and assessing second language acquisition (pp. 77-100). Clevedon,
Avon, UK: Mukilingual Matters.
Robinson, P. (1980). ESP. Oxford, UK: Pergamon.

Numa Markee teaches Applied Linguistics at the University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign, where he also directs the ESL service courses. He spe-
cializes in curriculum design, methodology, and teacher education.

PEOPLE IN BUSINESS: AUTHENTIC INTERVIEWS FOR LISTEN-

ING DEVELOPMENT. Michael Kleindl and David Pickles. New York: Long-
man Publishing, 1992, 80 pp.

Reviewed by Erlinda R. Boyle

People in Business is an exercise book (with an accompanying tape) on

listening and speaking. The listening materials are based on a series of inter-
views with six business people from a variety of business fields in Japan.
The topics include: Researching a Company; Talking About Your Company;
Living Overseas (Manager of War-burg Securities); Job Responsibilities and
Cultural Problems; Management Styles (Marketing Manager of ALC Press);
Products and Services; Sales Markets and Plans (General Manager of Dow
Jones & Company, Inc.); Company and Product Description; Introducing a
New Product; International Business Differences; Market and Price (Presi-
dent, Pacific Edge Trade Group Japan>; Products and Services in Detail; Cus-
tomers and Customer Expectations (President, Gadelius Metallurgy K.K.);
and, tinally, Public Relations; Press Relations; Company Image (Account Ex-
ecutive, Gavin Anderson & Company).
There are six units altogether, with each unit divided into two sections. Each
section has six parts, namely: (a) Pre-listening: Discussion Questions; (b)
Pre-listening: Words and Expressions; (c) Main Point Listening; (d) Detail
Listening; (e) Focus Listening, which is basically a cloze test; and (0 Speaking:
Talking About Your Company.
Pre-listening: Discussion Questions is designed to get students thinking
about the topic of each listening section. On the other hand, Pre-listening:
Words and Expressions aims at introducing students to the important vocab-
ulary in each listening section. Main Point Listening is for general comprehen-