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
emphasized. Possible research directions for all three social turns of ESP are also
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.
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
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).
engage in the type of specialized language use that they attempt to induct learners
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.
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