ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES: WHAT DOES IT MEAN? WHY IS IT DIFFERENT?

A. Growth of ESP
Based on the article written by Laurence Anthony of Okayama University of Science, Okayama,
Japan
 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?
Let’s draw differences from the conventions of English Language Teaching.
 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).

Specific Needs Methodology Language Appropriation

1. ESP is defined to meet specific 2. ESP makes use of underlying 3. ESP is centered on the
needs of the learners. methodology and activities of language appropriate to these
the discipline it serves activities in terms of grammar,
lexis, register, study skills,
discourse and genre.
Absolute Characteristics - Definition of ESP (Dudley-Evans, 1997)
Design, Level, Language System (Variable Characteristics)
Definition of ESP (Dudley-Evans, 1997)
1. ESP may be related to or designed for specific disciplines.
2. ESP may use, in specific teaching situations, a different methodology from that of General
English.
3. ESP is likely to be designed for adult learners, either at a tertiary level institution or in a
professional work situation. It could, however, be for learners at secondary school level.
4. ESP is generally designed for intermediate or advanced students.
5. Most ESP courses assume some basic knowledge of the language systems.

B. What is ESP?
 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?

General English vs. English for Specific Purposes
 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.

D. The Future of ESP

Let’s view ESP in its more evolving sense of approach and practice.
 ESP may be seen as both an approach and a praxis.
 Language teachers can bring action research into a more profound ESP Approach.
 ESP is still in its infancy and so now is the ideal time to form such a consensus.
 It is vital that the community as a whole understands what ESP actually represents.

ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES: A LEARNING-CENTERED APPROACH

A. 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:
1. The expansion of demand for English to suit particular needs;
2. Developments in the field of linguistics; and
3. Educational psychology.

B. The Development of ESP

Based on the book written by Tom Hutchinson and Alan Waters (1987, 1991)
 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).
 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 and 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.