CORRELATIONAL ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE

ON ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES (ESP) AND GENERAL ENGLISH (GE)

Jasser A. Al-Jasser, Ph.D.College of Languages and Translation

King Saud University

Abstract

Applied linguists and EFL program designers have been actively involved not only in introducing new teaching methods and strategies for improving the quality of learning foreign language skills in general English, but also in putting more emphasis on designing ESP programs that meet the needs of the learner.

In this article an attempt is made to explore general English and ESP as part of the EFL program at King Saud University, and the extent to which students’ performance correlates in these areas.

The correlational analysis of the students’ test scores, and the t-test have indicated that no statistically significant correlation between their achievement scores has been observed. The t-test result has also shown no significant statistical differences in the students’ mean scores in general English and ESP.

The findings of this research suggest that general English and ESP should be regarded as one entity rather than two separate parts of the EFL program. The implementation of an effective teaching approach that works for general English should similarly work for ESP. Further, it is deemed important to relate the ESP items to their functional and communicative use; otherwise their value in the EFL program will be limited.

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INTRODUCTION

Focus on foreign language learners has led FL teachers and applied linguists not only to develop new approaches and strategies for constructing curricula that meet their needs, but also to go beyond teaching the foreign language skills of general English to emphasize the implementation of English for special (or specific) purposes (ESP) in the course syllabuses of many international academic institutions.

Concentration on ESP in second/foreign language programs is attributed to the ‘..growing awareness that the language needs of students in the highly specialized fields of science and technology-as in many other professional areas of business and industry-go beyond the standard format of ordinary course offerings in SL (Second Language), and that certain, perhaps major, adjustments in orientation, methods and materials may be required to satisfy these needs.’(1)

ESP and its specific register is not a new concept. It is associated with the work of Jack Ewer (1969), A.R.Bolitho and P.L. Sandler (1977), Peter Strevens (1977), Munby (1978), Widdowson (1978), John Swales (1985) and Louis Trumble (1985). There is no specific definition of ESP, that is, no distinction has been made between ESP, EOP (English for occupational purposes) and EAP

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(English for academic purposes). Yet, there is a tendency for foreign language teachers and applied linguists to consider EOP and EAP as the two broad categories of ESP. For this reason authors such as Sinha and Sadorra (1991) refered to ESP as a ‘a generic term used to indicate an approach practiced in teaching and learning of content-oriented English for any very specific purpose.’(2)To develop a second/foreign language program, Mackay and Parlmer (1981) suggested that, “..a preliminary analysis of learners’ needs and expectations will be a prerequisite to program development in any language-teaching situation, whether for “general” or for “specific” purposes.”(3)

In pointing out the difference between ESP and General English, Hutchinson and Waters (1987) believe that there is a great deal of difference in practice but not in theory. As to the distinction between these two terms, they stated that, ‘what distinguished ESP from general English is not the existence of a need as such but rather the awareness of the need. If learners, sponsors and teachers know why the learners need English, that awareness will have an influence on what will be acceptable as reasonable content in the language course and, on the positive side, what potential can be exploited.’(4)

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They also believe that ‘the fact that language is used for specific purposes does not imply that it is a special form of the language, different in kind from other forms.. There are some features, which can be identified as ‘typical’ of a particular context of use and which, therefore, the learner is more likely to meet in the target situation. But these differences should not be allowed to obscure the far larger area of common ground that underlies all English use, and indeed, all language use.’(5)

Malmkjaer (1991) claimed that ‘the functional/notional syllabus probably worked more effectively in ESP courses than in general English courses.’(6) He supported his judgement by referring to Bates and Dudley Evans’ Nucleus (1976) and Allen and Widdowson’s English in Focus (1974), of which both series were based largely on concepts and functions respectively.

Swales (1981) introduced the term Genre Analysis and related it to ESP, which consequently influenced both branches of ESP. He explained the term Genre Analysis as ‘a system of analysis that is able to reveal something of the patterns of organisation of a “genre” and the language used to express those patterns.’(7)

Terms such as ‘Medical English’, according to Swales, can be misleading. This is because ‘They over privilege a homogeneity of content at the expense of variation in communicative

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purpose, addresser-addressee relationships and genre conventions.’ (8)

According to Johns and Duddley-Evans (1993) the history of ESP ‘..has been dominated by English for academic purposes, and under that rubric, by English for science and technology, EAP continues to dominate internationally.’(9)They asserted that ‘ESP requires methodologies that are specialized or unique.’(10) They believe that ‘an English for academic purposes (EAP) class taught collaboratively by a language teacher and a subject-area lecturer.. sheltered and adjunct EAP classes and special English classes for students in the workplace.. require considerably different approaches to those found in general English classes.’(11)

METHOD

This research is intended to explore the association between general English and the ESP parts of the EFL intensive program designed for the medical science students at King Saud University. The discussion will later deal largely with ESP since, for such students, it is given significant fundamental weight in their EFL training.

The students enrolled in the program are expected to complete the requirement for this program as a pre-requisite for their official

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admission to the colleges of Medicine, Pharmacy, Dentistry or Applied Medical Sciences where English language is the medium of instruction.

The purpose of this research is to specifically discover whether there is a degree of association and statistically significant differences between the students’ overall performance score in the general English and in the ESP components. The findings of this study might have implications on whether there is structural harmony in the EFL syllabus and whether the ESP part of the curriculum meets the students’ needs and the expectations of the English language teachers and the extent to which it needs to be improved.

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HYPOTHESIS:To examine the relationship between

students’ scores in general English and ESP and their mean variation, the following hypotheses were formulated and tested:

HO1: There is a statistically significant correlation between the medical students’ performance in general English (GE) and in English for Special Purposes (ESP) at university level.

HO2: There are no statistically significant differences between the medical students’ mean scores in general English (GE) and in English for Special Purposes (ESP) at university level.

SUBJECTS:The samples for this study consisted of a

hundred and thirty two subjects. They were randomly selected from the 177 male student population registered in the second semester intensive English program of the academic year 1998. The analysis of their performance is based on their overall scores on the final exam on components both of the General English and ESP course.

The course is 20 contact hours a week and 16 weeks in duration. The test format of the general English components consisted of 55 items. They cover tenses and modals, active/passive forms, gerunds and infinitives, verb

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agreement, and adjective clauses, while the ESP covers 51 items in two reading comprehension texts and in a medical terminology text. The test items represent the students’ major language objectives on the course syllabus.The maximum mark for each part of the test is twenty out of twenty.PROCEDURE:

To test the hypotheses of this study, the author employed two types of research design:

Pearson product-moment correlation (r), and T-test (sometimes called student t test), which is “a special case of the F test.” (12)The Pearson product-moment correlation was first conducted on the two parts of the observations which represent the students raw scores in general English and ESP. The purpose of such a statistical test is to discover any existing degree of correlation between the students’ performance scores and whether the correlation is positive or negative.

A t-test analysis was also conducted on the same observations, to find out any existing statistical differences between the students’ mean scores based on their overall performance in general English and ESP.

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TABLE 1

Means and Standard Deviations of students’ score in general English (GE) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP). (N=132).

MEAN STANDARD DEVIATIONGE 13.25 3.37ESP 13.66 2.43

TABLE 2

Correlation Coefficients(r) and t-test for paired samples: GE and ESP (N=132)

Variable MEAN STD t-value Sig. RGE 13.25 2.37 1.68 .095ESP 13.66 2.43 .3209

P<.05

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RESULTS From the preceding tables we noticed that

the descriptive statistics for the full data indicated, at first glance, that the mean for both general English and English for Specific Purposes were relatively similar (GE=13.25 and ESP=13.66). (Table 1). On the other hand, when the correlation coefficient test was conducted, the result indicated in the r-value, which is r=.32 (Table 2) showed that although there was a low positive correlation between the students’ scores on GE and ESP, the r value (r=.32) is not statistically significant at the .05 level.

The statistical table (Table 2) indicates that the t-value (t-value = 1.68) is not statistically significant at the .05 level, which suggests absence of any significant differences between the students’ score on GE and their respective mean score on ESP.

These results indicate that single language components of the syllabus of the intensive English program do not account for the students’ level of performance. That is, both general English and ESP have equal weight in a foreign language context, at least in the Saudi EFL learners’ case.

The findings of this research paper are consistent with the assumption of our second hypothesis. On the other hand, the assumption of our first hypothesis (HO1) is rejected. It is,

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therefore, fair to claim that Saudi students’ performance in the GE component of the EFL program does not have any significant association with or impact on their performance in ESP, nor does the reverse hold true (HO1)

Secondly, there is no noticeable significant difference in the students’ mean scores in general English and ESP. (HO2).

DISCUSSIONSince general English and ESP are taught in

a foreign language (rather than second language) environment, fundamental objectives have to be considered for making the program more pedagogically effective: an objective needs analysis, well-designed materials, effective methodology, and systematic evaluation.

An objective needs analysis should not be institution-centered, because it would be insufficient if it were based only on the university course needs. It should rather take into consideration the learners’ needs as well. Emphasis on this aspect should reinforce the students’ motivation.

Mead (1980) studied ESP courses for a number of different colleges at a university in the Middle East. In his inquiry into the students’ interest, he found out that ‘..only medical students were adequately motivated to study the subject matter of their specialism.’(13)

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The objectives of the ESP course should enable the EFL learner to communicate in the target situation rather than furnishing him with conventional memorisation of language text. The criteria for selecting ESP material should be based on ‘..how well and how far it develops the competence of the learner, rather than on the basis of the extent to which it mirrors the performance data of the target situation.’(14)

Due to the fact that Saudi medical students are expected to complete pre-requisite required courses on physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology, the design of their ESP course should follow what R Williams (1978) Calls a ‘wide-angle’ approach. That is, an approach ‘..in which language and skills are taught through topics that are drawn from a variety of subjects rather than from the students’ own discipline.’(15)

Such an approach ‘..needs to be supplemented by some attempt to define students’ more specific needs and the actual language difficulties that they face on a day-to-day basis in classes in their disciplines or in their professional lives’(16)

To strengthen the originality of the ESP material for the Saudi EFL learner, it is also highly important to construct it from the target situation. What the Saudi student needs is not only content-specific ESP but also general English language skills to reinforce his acquisition

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of the specialised features of the language and the communicative ability to interact with his teachers and to comprehend lecture presentation of the other required courses for his study.

Although some ESP advocates agree on the fact that ESP is not restricted to any specific methodology and that the communicative approach is often thought to be closely related to ESP (Strevens, 1988, Hutchinson and Waters, 1984) it can be safely asserted that an effective approach for teaching general English should work for teaching ESP, and the teacher who has sound experience in teaching general English can transfer it successfully to the ESP teaching situation. In other words a new teaching method is not required for this new situation. Although the communicative approach can be effective, the situation for both general English and ESP requires an effective eclectic approach rather than adherence to a specific teaching method. I also believe that, just like general English, “ESP does not have to employ any particular method or technique that already exists, if the requirements do not point in that direction.’(17)

A final consideration concerns the role of formative and summative evaluation in developing the program. Systematic formative and summative tests of the students’ achievements on the parts and the whole of the EFL program (ESP and GE components) help not only in

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making decisions concerning the continuation and/or discontinuation of the program and the placement of students, but they can also “…indicate weaknesses in specific components of the program as a whole, and therefore provide information for making decisions about revising the program itself.”(18)

CONCLUSIONBased on the findings of this study, and the

related background information on the status of the intensive English program for the Saudi EFL learners, ESP and general English should be viewed as a single unified descipline. The ESP and the general English constitute an integral part of the EFL course. The lack of a significant correlation between students’ overall scores in general English and their respective scores in ESP, and the absence of significant differences in their mean scores justify the fact that general English and ESP components constitute the total part of the EFL program rather than separate parts.

Since ‘specificity does not necessarily imply uniqueness in the ESP syllabus design.’(19), for any EFL syllabus design there should be more emphasis on the general English part. The ESP part should be taught through general English. That is, the specialized lexical items of the course

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should be introduced through the FL skills as part of the overall vocabulary of the syllabus.

Another generalisation that can be made is that ESP teachers do not have to be specialized in the specific content or register of the program. In the Saudi situation, teachers of ESP components are in fact EFL (or general English) teachers rather than teachers of medical science. They are trained to teach English not medicine. Therefore, an effective teaching approach for general English can similarly work for ESP.

Furthermore, it is pedagogically significant to provide a descriptive adequate frequency count of the basic medical terminology from the medical textbooks of the students major field to be used for on ESP syllabus as a basis for prioritizing teaching items. At the same time, I believe, as Beeching (1997) stated, ‘..it is of limited value when the items are unrelated to their functional or communicative use.’(20)

Finally, I believe the ESP of the Saudi medical science is virtually EAP since its major objective is to enable the students to interact with the teachers of their colleges where English is the medium of instruction. For this reason, emphasis on an eclectic approach rather than adherence to a specific teaching method is deemed necessary for enabling the Saudi student to cope with the college courses presented in English, and hence guarantee effective learning outcomes.

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REFERENCES

(1) Mackey, R. and Parlmer, J. (Ed.), 1981, Languages For Specific Purposes Program Design And Evaluation, Newbury House Publishers, Inc., p.29.

(2) Sinha A. and Sandorra L., 1991, A Primer on ESP For Teachers of English, De LA Salle University Press, p.10.

(3) Opcit, pp.29-30.

(4) Hutchinson, T. and Waters A., 1987, English for Specific Purposes, A learning-centered approach, Cambridge University Press, p.53.

(5) Ibid, p.19.

(6) Malmkjaer, K. (Ed.), 1991, The Linguistics Encyclopedia, Routledge, U.K., p.459.

(7) Dudley-Evans, T., (Ed.), (1987), Gendre Analysis, ELR Journal, Vol.1, p.1.

(8) Swales, J., 1990, Genre Analysis, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p.3.

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(9) Silberstein, S., (Ed.), (1993), State of the Art TESOL Essays, Celebrating 25 years of the Descipline, TESOL, Inc., p.124.

(10) Ibid, p.123.

(11) Ibid, p.123.

(12) Keppel, G., 1982, Design and Analysis, A Researcher’s Handbook, Prentice-Hall, Inc., p.84.

(13) Hutchinson, T., and Waters, A., April 1984, ‘How Communicative is ESP?, ELT Journal, vol.38/2, p.109.

(14) Ibid, p.109.

(15) Silberstein, S., (Ed.), 1993, State of Art TESOL Essays, TESOL, Inc., p.122.

(16) Ibid, p.122.

(17) Sinha, A., and Sadorra, 1990, L.A. Primer On ESP For Teachers of English, p.63.

(18) Mackay and Parlmer (Ed.), 1981, Languages For Specific Purposes, Program Design And Evaluation, Newbury House Publishers, Inc., p.108.

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(19) Brumfit, C.J., 1983, Language Teaching Projects For The Third World, Pergamon Press Ltd., p.159.

(20) Beeching, K., 1997, ‘French for Specific Purposes: The Case For Spoken Corpora’, Applied Linguistics, Vol.18, No.3, Oxford University Press, p.377.

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