8. trends in teaching english for specific purposes

8.  TRENDS IN TEACHING ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES 

Diane D. Belcher 

This review of trends in the teaching of English for specific purposes (ESP) presents 

recent developments in ESP praxis from three different but not mutually exclusive 

points of reference:  the sociodiscoursal, sociocultural, and sociopolitical.  In 

addition to a selection of exemplar practices, theoretical analogues are considered for 

each of these three socially oriented perspectives on ESP.  For the sociodiscoursal 

approach to ESP, genre theory and genre-informed pedagogy are highlighted; for the 

sociocultural, theories of situated learning and their practical corollaries are focused 

on; for the sociopolitical, theories and applications of critical pedagogy are 

emphasized.  Possible research directions for all three social turns of ESP are also 

suggested. 

 

 

 

New York: An English as a Second Language textbook focuses 

predominantly on food-preparation vocabulary, night-school student Eduardo Reyes 

reported Monday.  “I must admit, I would like to learn how to say more than, ‘I have 

diced the onions,’ and ‘Did he want scrambled or over-easy?’ “said a disconsolate 

Reyes, speaking through a translator, following his first lesson.  “I had hoped to learn 

words for the different parts of the body so I can pursue my dream of becoming a 

doctor.  I have instead learned much about the grilling of chickens”  (Siegel, 2002, p. 

206). 

 

Although the preceding quotation is actually a parody of a report on a New 

York City adult literacy class taken from the satirical publication 

The Onion

, it may 

capture for many critics of English for specific purposes (hereafter ESP

1

) what they 

feel is the essence of the shortcomings of the ESP approach to English language 

teaching:  that it teaches learners enough English to survive in certain narrowly 

defined venues but not enough to thrive in the world at large.  A common litany of 

complaints includes the observation that texts used in ESP pedagogy are too far 

removed from the real-life contexts that learners aim for (see Adam and Artemeva, 

2002, on “textoids,” and Auerbach, 2002, on learner vs. language expert goals).  

Another common complaint is that many ESP instructors could not (or would not) 

engage in the type of specialized language use that they attempt to induct learners 

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166  DIANE D. BELCHER 

 

into, e.g., humanities majors teaching the language of science and technology (Spack, 

1988; for a recent response to Spack, see Bruce, 2002).  Hand in hand with the latter 

criticism comes the view that ESP has a strong bent toward accommodationism, or 

“vulgar pragmatism” (Pennycook, 1997), because it seeks to help learners fit into, 

rather than contest, existing socioeconomic and political structures no matter how 

inequitable their power distribution may be. 

 

Those familiar with ESP as it is often practiced today, or as many would like 

to see it practiced, would likely deny that the 

Onion

 scenario and much of the 

criticism of ESP’s narrow window on the world have much to do with current ESP 

best practices.  Ideally, ESP pedagogy is driven by learner-centeredness (Johns & 

Price-Machado, 2001; but see also Hutchinson & Waters, 1987, for a critique of 

ESP’s learner focus).  In fact, ESP was, arguably, learner-centered long before the 

term became popular in ELT, as the four-decades-old approach called ESP (see 

Swales, 2000) is by definition one that attempts to give learners access to the 

language they want and need to accomplish their own academic or occupational 

goals.  Whether or not ESP is always as sensitive to learners’ needs and successful at 

meeting them as it should be is another matter.  Unlike other pedagogical 

approaches, which may be less specific-needs-based and more theory-driven, ESP 

pedagogy places heavy demands on its practitioners to collect empirical needs-

assessment data, to create or adapt materials to meet the specific needs identified, 

and to cope with often unfamiliar subject matter and even language use; moreover, 

they must do all of the above without allowing the aims of a funding agency, an 

employer, an 

au courant 

educational theory, or an instructor’s own idiosyncratic 

sense of what’s best for language learners to affect attempts to address specific 

learners’ current and future needs. 

 

Perhaps because of its very pragmatism—its eagerness to be responsive to 

learners’ target academic and occupational needs—and its lack of a well-developed, 

identifiable theoretical base, which Hyland (in press) finds unsurprising given its 

“pragmatic diversity,” ESP appears, at least in its current incarnation, receptive to 

criticism and input from a number of philosophical and theoretical fronts (Hyland, 

2003; Johns, 2002b; Swales, 2000).  As a result of this ideological permeability, ESP 

pedagogy can be viewed at present as developing in three overlapping directions:  the 

sociodiscoursal, sociocultural, and sociopolitical.  Although it would be more than 

unfair to countless ESP practitioners over the past decades to say that they have 

totally ignored social context (or their social consciences!), it may well be fair to say 

that never before has ESP emphasized social situatedness as much as it does today.  

In what follows, I will look at the three aforementioned social turns that ESP has 

taken, focusing first on their theoretical impetus and then on actual praxis.