HISTORY OF ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES (ESP)

HISTORY OF ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES (ESP)

Hutchinson and Waters (1987) traced the early origins of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) to the end of Second World War. In the new commerce- driven world, many saw the need of learning English, which was considered the accepted international language. Nonnative speakers saw it as the new lingua franca that responded to their needs of cross cultural communication, business doing, and information sharing (Teodorescu, 2010). During the 1960’s, changes in the world’s markets resulted in the rising of ESP as a discipline. According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987), ESP emerged due to the development of the world’s economy, which entailed the progress of technology, the economic power of oil-rich countries, and the increasing amount of overseas students in English-speaking countries. Also, according to Johns and Dudley- Evans (1991), the international community recognized the importance of learning English not only as a means to achieve the transmission of knowledge and communication but also as a neutral language to be used in international communication. The first boost of ESP came from the register analysis of scientific and technical writing. Logically, the movement gave special importance to semi- or subtechnical vocabulary. Smoak (2003) describes the instructors’ believed job as “to teach the technical vocabulary of a given field or profession”.While this detailed study of language in specific registers demonstrated a very positive, early interest in functional lexis, it showed an extreme concentration on form and offered little explanation about why and how the sentences were formed and combined as they were. Rhetorical and discourse analysis attempted to answer these questions and in doing so, as Dudley-Evans (2001) commented, “introduced the idea of relating language form to language use, making use the main criterion for the selection of ESP teaching materials”. This new movement in ESP prioritized the rhetorical functions of language over its form since, as Maleki (2008) clearly explained, discourse analysis “focused on the communicative values of discourse rather than the lexical and grammatical properties of register” and reinforced the area’s emphasis on research and analysis of texts. In this regard, Johns (2013) described through a series of sample research papers the shift of emphasis of ESP during this period, going from statistical grammar accounts to a deeper interest in the relation between grammar and rhetoric. However, the discourse analysis of ESP was primarily concerned with language and gave no attention to the development of study skills. This, then, became the focus of EAP during the late 1970’s. Skill-based courses at the end of the 70s intended to address the learners’ specific foreign language needs; to do so, needs analyses had to be carried out. The movement believed that teaching how language works was not enough; the language-learning processes involved should be addressed as well so that learners would transfer these study skills to their real life tasks. Consequently, the learners’ purpose for learning the target language became of utmost importance and so did needs analyses (Maleki, 2008). The decades of 1970’s and 1980’s saw the consolidation of the ESP movement. Numerous articles on the field were published, such as Munby’s model for needs analysis and Hutchinson and Waters’ influential papers. The latter two authors questioned many ESP long-held ideas and believed that ESP students should be led towards developing the “underlying competence” (1987) to eventually become independent learners. Closely related to this concept, Hutchinson and Waters outlined the concept of learnercentered approach, which focuses on the process of learning, emphasizes the exploitation of the learner’s already possessed skills (acquired at work or through academic study), and takes into account students’ different learning styles (Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1987. The decades of the 70s and 80s were also witness to controversy in ESP. The analysis of ESP resulted in two main views: that of “the wideangle approach,” which advocated for the teaching of English through topics beyond students’ specialist areas, and the “narrow-approach,” which claimed that the focus of the language studies should be on the students’ specific area of development. Another debate of the 70s and 80s what that of skill specificity. Some research studies proved monoskill emphasis useful, specially in regard to reading, but the ESP community considered that such “concentration on one skill is limiting” (Johns & Dudley-Evans,1991.) and that working on several skills simultaneously would actually enhance the language learning processes. Johns and Dudley-Evans (1991) also pinpointed that in “the late 1970s and 1980s, theoretical work seemed to lag behind materials development”, which became a new trend of ESP work and research at the time. Finally, instructor’s specialization was an issue of concern as well. According to Johns (2013), a study carried out by Tarone et al in 1981 not only maintained the rhetorical-grammar relationship but also introduced the concept of using the area specialist as a contentexpert consultant. From that moment on, “subject-specialist informants” were more commonly involved as part of ESP research. Content and skill specificity, material design, and the instructor as an expert were topics of debate during the 70s and 80s. Another important contribution to ESP during the 80s, in the view of Johns, was the introduction of two key ESP terms: genre analysis and rhetorical moves, which continue to be subject of intense research work in ESP. Genre analysis was and continues to be a flourishing area of study. Paltridge (2013) affirms that today’s definition of genre is based on Swales’: “a class of communicative events with some shared set of communicative purposes”. Delimiting what a discourse community’s genre is “establish[es] the constraints on what is generally acceptable in terms of how the text should be written or spoken, what issues it will address, and how it can do this” (Paltridge, 2013, p. 347). Identifying an aimed genre may help ESP students reproduce it and participate in it successfully by imitating conventions and limitations of the text. There might be genres, however, that vary in their linguistic and rhetorical features, but all of them should have a communicative purpose. Such a purpose may change over time and can even vary across cultures—a concept referred to as “genre volatility” by Johns (2013). Genres may also be related and based on other genres, a complex relationship that continues to enrich ESP genre analysis. The concept of rhetorical moves is also highly salient in ESP. The moves  contribute to constituting a genre and serve a communicative purpose subordinate to the overall communicative purpose of the text. In traditional genre analysis, a text’s moves or “functional components” (Connor, 2000.) are used for some identifiable rhetorical purpose that is clearly different from other parts of the text. Such differentiation is observable in the text’s division into meaningful units through the use of subtitles, sections, key words, and transitions, among others. Connor (2000) states that although moves can vary in size, they “all contain at least one proposition”  based on both the general rhetorical objectives of the text and the community’s agreements on the form of a text. In the analysis of rhetorical moves, indicators of both the text function and its boundaries and divisions are necessary. During the last twenty years the ESP field has increased dramatically. Hewings (2002), co-editor of the journal English for Specific Purposes, analyzed the issues of this journal for the last twenty years and came up with some interesting conclusions in his article “A History of ESP Through ‘English for Specific Purposes.’” First, the increased number of studies conducted outside the U.S. and U.K., such as Central and South America, China and Hong Kong, demonstrates the growing acceptance of ESP as an academic discipline a conclusion also drawn by Johns and explained below. A second interesting conclusion explained in his article is the specificity towards which ESP, which includes EAP and EOP, is headed. Thirdly, the topics observed seem to have become more EOP oriented and apparently, they have obviated more general program descriptions. The current trend, according to Hewings, is text or discourse analysis. This tendency proves, as he mentioned, the “growing realisation that to provide convincing and effective ESP courses or material, we need to know a considerable amount about target situations”. Teaching ESP means, therefore, a deeper knowledge of the context and the texts that occur within it. The decades of the 1990s and 2000s have seen a rapid increase in research and have continued the expansion on major ESP topics. According to Johns (2013), the emergence of international journals as well as the marked rise in the amount of international submissions and publications have consolidated the importance and relevance of ESP today. Moreover, the new emphases given to already established concepts, such as international rhetorics and learner genre awareness, as well as the more profound and continuous research on corpus studies, demonstrate the steady evolution of research in the ESP arena. ESP has existed as a separate branch of language teaching for around 40 years. At the beginning, it focused upon the specific lexicon of technical and scientific texts, but it soon changed its emphasis towards the rhetorical uses of language in precise discourses. Next, the four skills, which were neglected by all previous methods, were assessed and addressed through the introduction of needs analysis studies. Finally, Hutchinson and Waters (1987) polished the concept of ESP and established the importance of teaching students the skills and language that they need to achieve their desired language performance. It has certainly been a changing but fruitful road for ESP, and even if some say that the evolution of this area of language study has responded mainly to teaching procedures and materials development, its principles and theory have been more clearly outlined and shaped by the passing of time.