2. Trends in English for Academic Purposes
We will look at the various trends in ESP under four headings- Register Analysis, Rhetorical
and Discourse analysis, analysis of study skills, Analysis of learning needs- and illustrate
through published teaching materials how these movements have influenced ESP.
A)
Register analysis
The work of register analysis focused on the grammar and vocabulary of scientific and
technical English using what Swales refers to as an approach based on ‘lexicostatistic’. The
assumption was that, while the grammar of scientific and technical writing does not differ
that of General English, certain grammatical and lexical forms are used much more
frequently. Thus the predominant tense is the present simple and the passive voice is used
much more frequently than in General English but not more frequently than the active voice.
The significant ESP textbook A.J.Herbert`s The structure of technical English, was published
in 1965. The book was designed for students who have studied some English but need
training in the special structures and linguistic conventions of the English used in technical
and scientific writing so that they may be able to follow the current literature in English in
their particular SUBJECT. As Swales remarks The structure of the technical English was
driven by the linguistic analyses that underpinned it. The coverage of language, especially
semi- technical vocabulary has been admire, but as a textbook for classroom use it left a lot
to be desired.
B)
Rhetorical and Discourse analysis
While the work of Barber and other lexicostatistics examined the language of specific
registers, it offered very little explanation of why certain grammatical patterns are favored by
the English neither of science and Technology, nor of how sentences are combined to form
paragraphs and whole texts or discourses. The pioneering work in this area was done by
Lackstrom, Selinker and Trimble later book English for Science and Technology: Trimble
defines rhetoric as the process a writer uses to produce a desired piece of text and an EST
text as concerned only with the presentation of facts. He suggests that, a writer needs to
organize a text at four rhetorical levels:
·
level A- the objectives of the total discourse ;
·
level B- the general rhetoric functions that develop the A level functions;
·
level C- the specific rhetorical functions that develop the general ones;
·
level D- the rhetorical techniques that provide relationships between the level C
functions;
This work introduced the idea of relating language form to language use, making use the
main criterion for the selection of ESP teaching materials.
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