Definition of ESP

1.      What is ESP?

ESP (English for Specific Purposes) involves teaching and learning the specific skills and language needed by particular learners for a particular purpose. The P in ESP is always a professional purpose – a set of skills that learners currently need in their work or will need in their professional careers. This broad definition can be taken to include business skills, such as English for Job-hunting or Presentations, but many ESP teachers see their field as distinct from mainstream Business English. Preparation for an exam (such as the Cambridge PET or First Certificate) is not usually considered to be ESP (even though there is a particular reason for studying). ESP exams do exist, of course, but they tend to focus on the learners' ability to function effectively at work, rather than purely their level of English.

ESP contrasts with General English, which is aimed at a very wide range of learners. It also contrasts with Business English, although there is considerable overlap between the two branches. A lawyer and a marketing executive might both benefit from attending the same Business English course, focusing on the generic skills they both need at work (such as writing an email or participating in a meeting), but they might get more from attending an ESP course in legal or marketing English respectively as this will focus more precisely on their needs.

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).

Definition of ESP (Dudley-Evans, 1997)

Absolute Characteristics
1.  ESP is defined to meet specific needs of the learners
2.  ESP makes use of underlying methodology and activities of the discipline it serves
3.  ESP is centered on the language appropriate to these activities in terms of grammar,

lexis, register, study skills, discourse and genre.

Variable Characteristics

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

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".

2.      The Origins of ESP

Certainly, a great deal about the origins of ESP could be written. Notably, there are three reasons common to the emergence of all ESP: the demands of a Brave New World, a revolution in linguistics, and focus on the learner (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987).Hutchinson and Waters (1987) note those two key historical periods breathed life into ESP. First, the end of the Second World War brought with it an " ... age of enormous and unprecedented expansion in scientific, technical and economic activity on an international scale · for various reasons, most notably the economic power of the United States in the post-war world, the role [of international language] fell to English" (p. 6). Second, the Oil Crisis of the early 1970s resulted in Western money and knowledge flowing into the oil-rich countries. The language of this knowledge became English.

The general effect of all this development was to exert pressure on the language teaching profession to deliver the required goods. Whereas English had previously decided its own destiny, it now became subject to the wishes, needs and demands of people other than language teachers (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987, p.7).

The second key reason cited as having a tremendous impact on the emergence of ESP was a revolution in linguistics. Whereas traditional linguists set out to describe the features of language, revolutionary pioneers in linguistics began to focus on the ways in which language is used in real communication. Hutchinson and Waters (1987) point out that one significant discovery was in the ways that spoken and written English vary. In other words, given the particular context in which English is used, the variant of English will change. This idea was taken one step farther. If language in different situations varies, then language instruction to meet the needs of learners in specific contexts is also possible. Hence, in the late 1960s and the early 1970s there were many attempts to describe English for Science and Technology (EST). Hutchinson and Waters (1987) identify Ewer and Latorre, Swales, Selinker and Trimble as a few of the prominent descriptive EST pioneers.

The final reason Hutchinson and Waters (1987) cite as having influenced the emergence of ESP has less to do with linguistics and everything to do psychology. Rather than simply focus on the method of language delivery, more attention was given to the ways in which learners acquire language and the differences in the ways language is acquired. Learners were seen to employ different learning strategies, use different skills, enter with different learning schemata, and be motivated by different needs and interests. Therefore, focus on the learners' needs became equally paramount as the methods employed to disseminate linguistic knowledge. Designing specific courses to better meet these individual needs was a natural extension of this thinking. To this day, the catchword in ESL circles is learner-centered or learning-centered.

3.      Development 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. The ESP community in Japan has also become more defined, with the JACET ESP SIG set up in 1996 (currently with 28 members) and the JALT N-SIG to be formed shortly. Finally, on November 8th this year the ESP community came together as a whole at the first Japan Conference on English for Specific Purposes, held on the campus of Aizu University, Fukushima Prefecture.

Stages in the development of E.S.P.

To make a chronology of E.S.P. it is necessary to record the attempts at tackling the problems of languages for specific purposes, tackling which involves an insight into terminological key terms, as well as a sketchy inventory of the books intended for specific registers.

Hutchinson and Waters (1987:9) state that the early beginnings of E.S.P. start in the 1960s and that this domain of theory and practice in the teaching of English has undergone five phases.

1. The concept of special language: register analysis

2. Rhetorical and discourse analysis

3. Target situation analysis

4. Skills and strategies

5. A learning-centered approach

In the late 1960s and early 1970s humankind witnessed the greatest expansion of research into the nature of particular varieties of English. All along these decades ESP and EST were almost synonymous, but clarifications and distinctions between the two have been established.

1.      Special language as a concept

The concept of special language (which considers a wide range of topics from register analysis to sentence grammar) was described in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in the literature mentioned in the foregoing. The basic principle of the above mentioned authors was that the English of a particular field constituted a specific register different from another. The language teachers’ aim at the time was to identify lexical and grammatical features of these registers. The teaching materials focused on these linguistic features which represented the syllabus. Now that a first stage in the exploration of English has reached its terminal point, namely the study of the word structure down to its smallest lexical component, the E.S.P. teachers decide it is time to move on to a new linguistic level, the sentence. Therefore, the syllabus should not only give priority to language forms which had a high frequency of occurrence in science studies/texts, namely compound nouns, but they should also deal with passives, conditionals and anomalous finites (modals).

2.      Beyond the sentence (rhetorical or discourse analysis)

The 1980s recorded a step ahead in the approach to E.S.P, with Louis Trimble’s (1985) EST: A Discourse Approach, CUP.

The priorities, for this decade, mean:

-  Understanding how sentences were combined in discourse to produce meaning

-  To identify the organizational patterns in texts

- To specify the linguistic means by which these patterns are signaled. All these patterns represented the syllabus.

This approach is clearly accounted for by the E.ST. Rhetorical Process Chart suggested by Trimble (1985: 11), which is reproduced in what follows:

Level                Description of level

A. The objectives of the total discourse

EXAMPLES:

1. Detailing an experiment

2. Making a recommendation

3. Presenting new hypotheses or theory

4. Presenting other types of E.S.T. information

B. The general rhetorical functions that develop the objectives of Level A

EXAMPLES:

1. Stating purpose

2. Reporting past research

3. Stating the problem

4. Presenting information on apparatus used in an experiment

a) Description

b) Operation

5. Presenting information on experimental procedures

C. The specific that develop the general rhetorical functions of Level B

EXAMPLES:

1. Description: physical, function and process

2. Definition

3. Classification

4. Instructions

5. Visual-verbal relationship

D. The rhetorical techniques that provide relationships within and between the rhetorical units of Level C

EXAMPLES:

I. Orders

1. Time order

2. Space order

3. Causality and result

II. Patterns

1. Causality and result

2. Order of importance

3. Comparison and contrast

4. Analogy

5. Exemplification

6. Illustration

3.      Target situation analysis

Aim: take the existing knowledge and set it on a more scientific basis by establishing procedures for relating language analysis to learner’s reasons for learning The purpose of an E.S.P. course focused on target situation analysis 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

-  To identify the target situation

- To carry out a rigorous analysis of its linguistic features The representative work to have applied the target situation analysis is John Munby’s (1978) Communicative Syllabus Design, CUP.

The Munby model produces a detailed profile of the learner’s needs in terms of - communication purposes

- Communicative setting

- Means of communication

- Language skills

- Functions

- Structures

The target situation analysis marked the ‘coming of age’ of E.S.P. nevertheless, as any other model, Munby’s had its shortcomings which include the fact that the concept of ‘needs’ is far too simple.

4.      Skills and strategies

This stage in the evolution of E.S.P. was the object of The National E.S.P. Project in Brazil and The University of Malaya E.S.P. Project, which had been designed as an attempt to:

- Look below the surface forms of the language

- Consider not the language 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 enable learners to extract meaning from discourse.

The focus should be on the underlying interpretive strategies which enable learners to cope with the surface forms:

- Guessing the meaning of words form 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)

This approach generally concentrates on reading and listening strategies, the characteristic exercises get the learners to reflect on and analyse how meaning is produced in and retrieved from written or spoken discourse.

5.      A learning – centered approach

The final stage in the teaching of E.S.P. is that the emphasis should be laid not on language USE but on language LEARNING.

The authors of this new perspective describe their vision of ESP in the volume English for Specific Purposes. A Learning-centered Approach (1987). They start their view on ESP with a metaphorical image presenting the relationship between ESP and ELT under the form of a tree. The roots of their ELT tree (fig. 3, 1987: 17) represent the learning communication while the trunk, the language teaching. The next division represents the English language teaching out of which three branches indicate English as a Mother Tongue (EMT), English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and English as a Second Language (ESL). The thickest of the branches, EFL, further divides into General English (GE) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP). ESP distinguishes English for Science and Technology (EST), English for Business and Economics (EBE) and English for Social Sciences (ESS). As the authors state, “the topmost branches of the tree show the level at which individual ESP courses occur”. Their vision is not only self-explanatory but also complete and useful in accounting for the multitude of purposes for which the English language may be thoroughly or superficially studied, depending on the immediate aims of the (individual) learner.

3. 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.

4. The Future of ESP

If the ESP community hopes to grow and flourish in the future, it is vital that the community as a whole understands what ESP actually represents. Only then, can new members join with confidence, and existing members carry on the practices which have brought ESP to the position it has in EFL teaching today. In Japan in particular, ESP is still in its infancy and so now is the ideal time to form such a consensus. Perhaps this can stem from the Dudley-Evans' definition given in this article but I suspect a more rigorous version will be coming soon, in his book on ESP to be published in 1998. Of course, interested parties are also strongly urged to attend the next Japan Conference on ESP, which is certain to focus again on this topic.

Conclusion

This paper has discussed the origins of ESP,In this section or material we have identified the main factors in the origins of ESP and give a brief overview of its development. We have noted that the linguistic factor has tended to dominate this development with an emphasis on the analysis of the nature of specific varieties of language use. Probably this has been a necessary stage, but now there is a need for a wider  view  that focuses less on differences and more on what various specialism have in common. As the three of ELT shows, what they have in common is that they are all primarily concerned with communication and learning. ESP should properly be seen not a particular language product, but as an approach to language teach which is directed by specific and apparent reason for learning.

 5. References

Dudley-Evans, Tony (1998). Developments in English for Specific Purposes: A multi-disciplinary approach. Cambridge University Press. (Forthcoming)

Hutchinson, Tom & Waters, Alan (1987). English for Specific Purposes: A learner-centered approach. Cambridge University Press.

Johns, Ann M. & Dudley-Evans, Tony (1991). English for Specific Purposes: International in Scope, Specific in Purpose. TESOL Quarterly 25:2, 297-314.

Strevens, P. (1988). ESP after twenty years: A re-appraisal. In M. Tickoo (Ed.), ESP: State of the art (1-13). SEAMEO Regional Language Centre.

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