Graduate qualifying work

1.CHAPTER. General Overview of ESP

Introduction

The discipline of ESP has been defined by many authors according to its different origins because it has grown out of a number of converging trends which can be summarized under three major headings: 1) the expansion of demands for English to suit specific needs of a profession, 2) developments in the field of linguistics, and 3) educational psychology which explains the influence of the learner’s needs on their motivation and effectiveness of their learning).Moreover, those different origins of birth have lead to the variation of types of ESP such us ESS( English for Social Sciences )and EBE( English for Business and Economics).

Definitions of ESP

According to Belcher (2009) English for specific purposes (ESP) refers to the teaching and learning of English as a second or foreign language where the goal of the learners is to use English in a particular domain. In its early days, teaching English for specific purposes was largely motivated by the need to communicate across languages in areas such as commerce and technology and now it has expanded to include other areas such as English for medical purposes (EMP), and English for legal purposes (ELP). For Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 18) ESP is not a matter of teaching' specialized varieties' of English. However, the English in this case taught has not a particular form of the language. Therefore, it should not be limited to certain forms or uses of the language. Moreover, ESP has a larger aspect than teaching vocabulary or grammar for learners of a specific domain. Hutchinson and Waters illustrate this in a picture of tree, where we see the leaves and the branches, but there is much more to the tree than just these- much of it hidden from view inside and beneath the tree. The leaves do not just hang in the air: they are supported by a complex underlying structure. In the same way there is much more to communication than just the surface features that we read and hear. Furthermore, ESP lessons should be effective and efficient for learners because it is not different in kind from any other form of language teaching. Though the content of learning may vary there is no reason to suppose that the processes of learning should be any different for the ESP learner than for the General English learner. In this picture, General English and ESP are opposed to each other because usually GE is taught for exam purposes whereas ESP is teaching English for any other purposes, e.g. work or study. These two are usually called professional (also occupational or vocational) purposes and academic purposes. According to the division, most secondary schools teach General English simply because their purpose is a particular exam (a GE exam, of course, such as the standard schools exams). Students who need English in their future profession or in their academic studies, they have to deal with another sort of English that ought to meet some particular needs. Therefore, the majority of universities and colleges deal with ESP.
In his definition of ESP Streven (1988) distinguishes between two types of characteristic.