The Origin of Esp

8/19/2019 The Origin of Esp

1/6

1. What is the origin of ESP ?The answer by Lala Ramadhani and Wiwik Yusiani

English for specic purpose. The originin of ESP is...

As with most developments in human activity, ESP was not a

planned and coherent movement, but rather a phenomenon that

grew out of a number of converging trends. There are three main

reasons common to the emergence of all ESP:

1. The demands of a ra!e "ew World

The general eect of all this development was to e!ert pressure

on the language teaching profession to deliver the re"uired

goods. #hereas English had previously decided its own destiny,

it now become sub$ect to the wishes, needs and demands of

people other than language teacher.

English had become accountable to the scrutiny of the wider

world and the traditional leisurely and purposes free stroll

through the landscape of the English language seemed no

longer appropriate in the harsher realities of the mar%et place.

#. $ Re!olution in Linguisti%s

Traditionally the aims of linguistics had been to describe therules of English usage, that is the grammar. &n English language

teaching this gave rise to the view that there are important

dierences between, say, the English of commerce and that of

engineer.

'ost of the wor% at this time was in the area of English for

Science and technology (EST) and for time ESP and EST were

regarded as almost synonymous. The gained ground that

English needed by a particular group of learners could be

identied by analy*ing the linguistic characteristics of theirspecialist area of wor% or study.

&. 'o%us of the Learner

+ew developments in educational psychology also contributed

to the rise of ESP, by emphasi*ing the central importance of the

learners and their attitude to learning (e.g. odgers, -/).

0earners were seen to have dierent needs and interest, which

would have an important in1uence or their motivation to learn

and therefore on the activeness of their learning. This lent


2/6

support to the development of courses in the which relevance

to the learners need and interests was paramount.-

#. Please e()lain the de!elo)ment of ESP?

The answer by *iana Tria +andra *ewi and $ni ,alasari

The development of ESP it is now in a fourth phase with a fth phase

of development starting to emerge from it is previous three main

phases of development started in the early beginnings of -/2s.

1. The %on%e)t of s)e%ial languange - register analysis

This stage operates on the basic principle that the English, of, say,

Electrical Enginering constituted a spesic register dierent fromother registers such 3iology or of 4eneral English. The aim of the

analysis was to identify the grammatical and le!ical features of the

registers.

The main motive behind register analyses such as Ewer and

latorre5s was the pedagogic one of ma%ing the ESP course more

relevant to learners needs. The aim was to produce a syllabus which

gave high priority to the languange forms students would meet in

their Science studies and in turn would give low priority to formsthey would not meet.

#. eyond the senten%e - rhetori%al or dis%ourse analysis

6n the second phase of development, ESP became closely involved

with the emerging eld of discourse or rhetorical analysis. This

phase gives more understanding how sentences were combined in

discourse to produce meaning.

The basic hypothesis of this stage, e!pressed by Allen and#iddowson (-78): 9The diculties which the students encounter

arise not so much from a defective %nowledge of the system of

English, but from an unfamiliarity with English use, and that

conse"uently their needs cannot be met by a course which simply

provides further practice in the composition of sentences, but only

by one which develops a %nowlede of how sentences are used in the

performance of dierent communicative acts.9

- Tom hutchinson and alan waters.English for specic purposes a learning ; centred

approach.new yor%:cambridge univercity press cambridge.-


3/6

egister analysis had focussed on sentence grammar, but in

rhetorical or discourse analysis, the attention and focus is to

understanding how sentences were combined in discourse to

produce meaning. The concern of research, therefore was to identify the organisational

patterns in te!ts and to specify the linguistic means by which these

patterns are signalled. These patterns would then form the syllabus

of the ESP course.

The typical teaching materials based on the discourse approach

taught students to recognise te!tual patterns and discourse

mar%ers.

&. Target situation analysis

6n the third phase development of ESP, it aimed was to ta%e the

e!isting %nowledge and set it on a more scientic basis, by

establishing procedures for relating languange analysis more closely

to learner9s reasons for learning.

The ESP course design process should proceed by rst identifying

the target situation and then carrying out a rigorous analysis of the

linguistic features of that situation. The identied features will form

the syllabus of the ESP course.

This stage process is usually %nown as 9needs analysis9, but

according to =hambers9 (-centred approach is that

underlying all languange use there are common reasoning and

interpreting processes, which, regardless of the surface forms,

enable the students to e!tract meaning from discourse.

The focus should be on underlying interpretive strategies, which

enable the learner to cope with the surface forms, for e!ample

guessing the meaning of words from conte!t, using visual layout to

determine the type of te!t, e!ploiting cognates (words which are

similar in the mother tongue and the target languange).

A focus on spesic sub$ect registers is unnecessary in this approach,because the underlying processes ae not specic to any sub$ect


4/6

register.

As has been noted, in terms of materials this approach generally

puts the emphasis on reading or listening strategies. The

characteristic e!ercises get the learners to re1ect on analyse how

meaning is produced in and retrieved from written or spo%endiscourse.

/. $ learning0%entred a))roa%h

All of the stages outlined so far have been fundamentally 1awed, in

that they are all based on descriptions of languange use. #hether

this description is of surface forms, as in the case of register

analysis, or of underlying processes, as in the s%ills and strategies

approach, the concern in each case is with describing what peopledo with languange. A trully vaid approach to ESP must be based on

an understanding of the processes of languange learning.

The Conclusion

All of the stages described so far are the stages of the development

of ESP from it is started in the early beginnings on the -/2s until

todays uses. These stages started by identifying and analysing

learners9 register and focused on sentence level, and on secondstages. ESP became closely involved with the emerging eld of

discourse or rhetorical analysis.

6n third stages, what to aimed to do was to ta%e the e!isting

%nowledge and set it on a more scientic basis, by establishing

procedures for relating laguange analysis more closely to learners9

reasons for learning. 6n the fourth stages the focus is in underlying

strategies.

&. Please e!plain the reason, why do ESP is an approach not product ? The answer by +anang Susanto 3ecause ESP is not a particular %ind of language or methodology,

nor does it consist of a particular type of teaching material.

@nderstood properly, it is an approach to language learning, which

is based on learner need.

. Please give a simple analogy of ESP as an approach B

Tom Cutchinson and Alan #aters, English for Specic Purposes: A learning-centered approach, (0ondon: =ambridge @niversity Press, -


5/6

The answer by @mmu Cabibah ahmah

The topmost branches $ust below this level at which individual ESP

course occur. The branches $ust below this level indicate that these may

conveniently be divided into two main types of ESP dierentieated

according to whether the learner re"uieres English for academic study(EAP: English for Academic Purposes) or for wor%Dtraining

(E6PDEPDES0 :English for 6ccupational PurposeDEnglish for ocational

PurposeDocational English as a Second 0anguage). this is, not a clear>cut

distinction : people can wor% and study simultaneously : it is also lie%ely

that in many cases the language learnt for immediate use in a study

environment will be used later when the student ta%es up, or returns to, a

$ob.

At the ne!t level down it is possible to distinguish ESP course by the

general nature of the learners5 specialism. Three large categories are

usually identied here : EST (English for Science and Technology), E3E

(English for business and Economics) and ESS (English for the social

Science). This last is not common, probably because it is not thought to

dier signicantly from more traditional humanities>based 4eneral

English.

As we go down the tree, we an see that ESP is $ust one branches

EF0DES0, which are themselves the main branches of English 0anguage

Teaching in general. E0T, in turn is ine variety of the many possible %indsof language teaching.


6/6

3ut, there is more to a tree than is visible above ground : a tree cannot

survive without roots. The roots which nourish the tree of E0T are

communication and learning.G

G Tom Cutchinson and Alan #aters, English for Specic Purposes: A learning-centered approach, (0ondon: =ambridge @niversity Press, --7

Documents

The Origin of Esp