THE DEVELOPMENT OF ESP

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ESP

From its erly beginnings in the 1960s ESP has undergone three main phases of development. It is now in a fourth phase with a fifth phase starting to emerge. It should be pointed out first of all that ESP is not a monolithic universal phenomenon. ESP has depeloped at different speeds in different countries, and examples of all the approaches we shall describe can be found operating somewhere in the world at the present time. Our summary must, therefore, be very general in its focuse. It wiil noticeable in the following overview that one area of activity has been particularly important in the development of ESP. This is the area usually know as EST (English for science and Technology).

1.      The concept of special language: register analysis

This stage operating on the basic principle that the English, of, say, Electrical Enginering constituted a spesific register different from other registers such Biology or of General English. The aim of the analysis was to identify the grammatical and lexical features of the registers. The main motive behind register analyses such as Ewer and latorre’s was the pedagogic one of making the ESP course more relevant to learners needs. The aim was to produce a syllabus which gave high priority to the languange forms students would meet in their Science studies and in turn would give low priority to forms they would not meet.

2.      Beyond the sentence : rhetorical or discourse analysis

On the second phase of development, ESP became closely involved with the emerging field of discourse or rhetorical analysis. This phase gives more understanding how sentences were combined in discourse to produce meaning. The basic hypothesis of this stage, expressed by Allen and Widdowson (1974): ‘The difficulties which the students encounter arise not so much from a defective knowledge of the system of English, but from an unfamiliarity with English use, and that consequently their needs cannot be met by a course which simply provides further practice in the composition of sentences, but only by one which develops a knowlede of how sentences are used in the performance of different communicative acts. Register analysis had focussed on sentence grammar, but in rhetorical or discourse analysis, the attention and focus is to understanding how sentences were combined in discourse to produce meaning. The concern of research, therefore was to identify the organisational patterns in texts and to specify the linguistic means by which these patterns are signalled. These patterns would then form the syllabus of the ESP course. The typical teaching materials based on the discourse approach taught students to recognise textual patterns and discourse markers.

3.      Target situation analysis

On the third phase development of ESP, it aimed was to take the existing knowledge and set it on a more scientific basis, by establishing procedures for relating languange analysis more closely to learner’s reasons for learning. The ESP course design process should proceed by first identifying the target situation and then carrying out a rigorous analysis of the linguistic features of that situation. The identified features will form the syllabus of the ESP course. This stage process is usually known as needs analysis’, but according to Chambers’ (1980) term of target situation analysis’, it is more accurate description of the process concerned.

4.      Skills and strategies

The fourth stage of ESP has seen an attempt to look below the surface and to consider not the languange itself but the thinking processes that underlie languange use. The principal idea behind the skill-centred approach is that underlying all languange use there are common reasoning and interpreting processes, which, regardless of the surface forms, enable the students to extract meaning from discourse. The focus should be on underlying interpretive strategies, which enable the learner to cope with the surface forms, for example guessing the meaning of words from context, using visual layout to determine the type of text, exploiting cognates (words which are similar in the mother tongue and the target languange). A focus on spesific subject registers is unnecessary in this approach, because the underlying processes ae not specific to any subject register. As has been noted, in terms of materials this approach generally puts the emphasis on reading or listening strategies. The characteristic exercises get the learners to reflect on analyse how meaning is produced in and retrieved from written or spoken discourse.

5.      A learning-centred approach

All of the stages outlined so far have been fundamentally flawed, in that they are all based on descriptions of languange use. Whether this description is of surface forms, as in the case of register analysis, or of underlying processes, as in the skills and strategies approach, the concern in each case is with describing what people do with languange. A trully vaid approach to ESP must be based on an understanding of the processes of languange learning.