The ESP Journal, Vol. 2, pp. 131-137, 1983 0272-2380/83 $3.00 + .00 Pergamon Press Ltd. Printed in the USA. Copyright © 1983 The American University

S o m e P r o p o s i t i o n s About ESP David Carver

Abstract--This paper at tempts to characterise specific purpose English by con- trasting it with some possible forms of English with nonspecific purposes. It is argued that all uses of English are specific in their nature, and that all teaching of English as a Foreign Language should be addressed to specific purposes. Three approaches towards this end are discussed: the use of simulated purposes within the classroom, the use of real purposes external to the classroom, and the use of relevant literature. It is argued that an ESP course should be characterised by the use of authentic materials, an orientation to purposeful activities on the part of the learners, and self-access organisation of the learning. Three approaches to appropriate methodology are discussed--the approach through register, through discourse, and through study skills.

1. What Is Contras ted w i t h ESP?

There are several possible answers to this question.

1.1 TENOR

One type of English teaching which contrasts with ESP is painfully familiar to some teachers; it has been helpfully labelled TENOR (Teaching English for No Obvious Reason). TENOR is a very interesting challenge to language teaching methodology; it is not the concern of this paper to explore this challenge in detail but merely to propose three possible teaching strategies to reduce the amount of TENOR going on around the world:

- - the creation of simulated purposes internal to the classroom by means of a much wider use of role playing and game playing; -- the direction of learner's attention to real purposes external to the classroom, where such purposes may have a validity in the community--e, g., reading foreign newspapers, listening to foreign radio broadcasts, reading labels on foreign products, participating in the tourist industry, applying for a job with a foreign company. The basic approach would be to maximise communicative ability rather than linguistic competence; - - the retention or reinstatement of the old and very rational purpose of reading the literature of the foreign culture; for the purposes of ESP, "literature" could be interpreted in the way the scientist uses the term.

1.2 Common Core English

This term is frequently contrasted with ESP but the contrast may rest upon a confusion of categories. ESP is categorised in terms of purpose; common core English is distinguished by frequency of forms. It is a cultural convention

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that different purposes are realised by the use of particular forms. This is perhaps a trivial point.

More importantly, the contrast implies a possible distinction in methodology: ESP is taught in a context of purpose, common core English is not. This tends to equate teaching common core English with TENOR, with all the resultant frustration and ineffectiveness.

1.3 General English

This term is sometimes used to imply a type of English which is context- independent, or which is good for nearly all contexts. One sees the point of this categorisation, which in a rough and ready way makes sense, both in terms of social use of language and in terms of teaching methodology. However, it has the weakness that it allows or even encourages the teacher to take a nonspecific and therefore noncommunicative approach. Current opinion is that such an approach is likely to be ineffective. Moreover, while the General English model takes one quite a long way in the reception of language, it frequently fails when one is faced with the need to produce language.

Every communicative setting is negotiated by means of linguistic routines which, it is proposed, are best learned as holophrases in a role-playing exercise. Part of learning one's mother tongue consists of mastering these routines by imitation of others. For instance, what do you say in English when you want to buy petrol ("Three star, five pounds' worth please"), when you want to complain about a purchase ("I bought this yesterday but it's got several clicks on the third side"), when you want to control a child's bad behaviour ("I won't tell you again"), etc., etc. Part of the answer to TENOR, it is proposed, should take the form of rehearsing in role playing such routines--where they are appropriate to the uses of the language in the country. In many countries, for instance, the routines would be concerned with talking to foreigners, and with letter writing.

Krashen (1981:83-99) discusses the relevance of prefabricated routines and prefabricated patterns to language learning. His conclusion is that routines may evolve into patterns, but at the same time, independently, the language acquisition process may develop and "catch up" with performance based on routines; that is, " . . . the language acquisition process may 'reanalyze' patterns and routines as creative constructions." (1981:84) In other words, employing routines and patterns as a way of handling communicative demands is a temporary but very useful strategy in language learning. Elsewhere (1981:111) Krashen concedes that "Theoretically, routines and patterns do not contribute much to language acquisition, but practically they may help quite a bit."

The first basic proposition, then, is that in reality there is no such thing as English without a purpose, or English for general purposes, and that a teaching methodology which includes purpose and specificity in its basic approach is thereby the richer. In this sense, all English teaching is teaching of ESP.

2. Some Types of ESP

That having been said, there are still several senses in which we might want to speak of ESP as something distinct from ELT:

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2.1 English as a Restricted Language

One may cite the familiar examples of English for air traffic controllers or waiters. This is an extreme example of the approach to language learning through situational routines referred to in Section 1.3.

2.2 English for Academic and Occupational Purposes

This is or should be at the heart of ESP. The person faced with needs for English in his professional life has very specific purposes in learning the language.

2.3 English with Specific Topics

Here there is a shift of emphasis from purpose to topic. In this sense of ESP we may find courses in English for scientists. The scientists, frequently in fact undergraduate students of science, may not have any particular need for English at this stage of their career. However, it is felt, or even known, that later on some of them may have such needs, e.g., as postgraduate students reading the literature of their subject, or as working scientists attending conferences, meeting foreign colleagues, or working in foreign institutions.

Such future purposes rarely figure in standard ESP courses, which tend to concentrate on form, discourse, and topic. ESP of this kind may well turn out to be a special case of TENOR. The way out is to build into the ESP programme elements of simulation and role play addressed to the hypothesised future purposes.

The proposition, then, is that a course of English which has a heavy bias towards specific topics such as science and technology, does not constitute by itself a course in ESP, in the full sense of that term, without the addition of learner centred role-play and simulation.

3. S o m e F e a t u r e s of an ESP Course

3.1 Authentic Material

Authentic material is intrinsic to an ESP course simply because of the orientation towards purpose. The learners are studying because they have actual or simulated purposes related to the real world. Real world language performance is by definition authentic. It is proposed that the only way in which learners can learn how to handle authentic material is by exposure to such material. Further, it is proposed that such exposure should be as extensive as possible, and should occur as early as possible.

The practical implementation of this might take the form of a programme in which learners are exposed to authentic material almost from the beginning, possibly through the medium of bilingual written texts. The texts serve as a point of reference for the learners, making them aware from the beginning of the target behaviour and so enabling them to build up strategies of self-assessment.

The texts could be exploited by the teacher in various standard ways---e, g., for language analysis, for comprehension and interpretation, for substitution

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practice, for reproduction practice. With near beginners it will be most convenient to treat the chunks of language as holophrases, and in effect to take the purpose- related approach to language acquisition instanced by tourist phrase books. Crucial to this kind of approach are two elements: the use of the mother tongue to convey the meaning of the text, and second, the use of explanation to enable the learners to conceptualise the rules of the text.

Beyond the skill-getting stage of exploitation of the text however, there is also scope for use of the texts in such skill-using activities as role play and simulation, outlined in Section 3.2. Moreover, authentic materials can play a central role in the self-directed activities described below under 3.3.

None of this is to deny the appropriateness of the contrasting approach to authenticity described by Widdowson (1976) as "gradual approximation." Gradual approximation introduces the learners systematically to features of language and discourse characteristic of authentic texts, through the medium of nonlanguage equivalents such as diagrams and tables, simple accounts specially written for the purpose of teaching, and various kinds of manipulatory exercises. This is generally accepted pedagogy, but it frequently fails to capture the elements of specificity and purpose which are crucial to ESP. It is proposed that gradual approximation and the use of authentic materials could operate together as parallel streams in the same syllabus, each approach to authenticity having its own values and techniques while also supporting the other.

3.2 A Purpose-Related Orientation

This has been discussed in Section 1.2. It is sufficient to repeat that the implementation of this could take the form of role play and simulation, using authentic material. In an ESP programme for instance, a purpose-related ori- entation might be achieved through simulation of a conference, involving the preparation of papers and in turn necessitating reading, notetaking, and writing; or it might take the form of the operation of a digest service, again leading participants to read, using skimming and scanning as well as study reading, to note, and to summarise; or it could take the form of mini-research projects or problem-solving activities, using published material as data. Many, if not all, activities of this kind depend on the availability of a bank of authentic materials to which the learners have direct access.

3.3 Self-Direction

Self-access is one aspect of the third proposed characteristic of ESP, namely, some degree of self-direction. Self-direction in language teaching is described in the literature [for instance, Dickinson (1979)]. The point of including self- direction here is that ESP is concerned with turning learners into users. One can only become a user by having the opportunity to use the language. In the real world outside school or college one is on one's own; there are no teachers-- though there are plenty of helpers whose help one can choose to enlist.

It is proposed, then, that ESP necessarily demands a certain degree of self- direction. This is seen as taking two closely related forms. First, there must be a certain degree of freedom for learners to decide when, what, and how

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they will study. Second, there must be a systematic attempt by teachers to teach learners how to learn--i.e., by means of helping the learners to understand learning strategies (see, e.g., Tarone 1980 and Rubin 1981), making learners aware of learning resources, helping learners to plan their study, and by con- sciously and publicly taking on the role of resource person and helper instead of taskmaster and controller. Opportunities for self-direction in ESP would be increased through the availability of a bank of materials (to which learners could and should contribute) to be used by learners individually or in groups on a self-access basis for chosen tasks, e.g., pursuing a topic through current literature, summarising material for a class-produced digest, or listening to a recording of a lecture to practice notetaking.

4. Appropriate Methodology for ESP

Finally, there is the question of the appropriate methodology for ESP. Three approaches have been widely current:

4.1 The Approach through Register

This concern has undeservedly fallen out of favour in recent years. In the informal sense of making learners aware of appropriate and typical language, an approach through register seems very closely related to the use of authentic texts outlined above. It is possibly limited in scope, but it is nevertheless of great utility, to give the learner practice in such well-worn elements as the use of the passive without agent, the production of complex nominals, appropriate expressions for scientific notions, etc.

4.2 The Approach through Discourse

There can be no doubt that the attention given to discourse in recent years has very largely contributed, too, to a strengthening of the effectiveness of ESP courses, by encouraging learners to move beyond word- and sentence- level processing of texts, and by making learners aware of devices of cohesion and coherence which build language into discourse. However, the language- independent universality of scientific discourse has reasonably been seen as grounds for doubts about the need for the teacher to make explicit all the discourse features of an English text. Is it not the case, for instance, that as teachers of ESP we conscientiously draw attention through the target language to cause-effect relations in the text, when the learners have no difficulty in conceptualising the relationship from their knowledge of the world? What is needed in such cases, it is submitted, is not awareness of cause-effect--which is no problem to the learner; the need is for practice in expressing cause-effect in English--i. e., for a register approach.

4.3 Study Skills

There have been several interesting programmes which set out to teach the learners the skills they will need for studying in English--skills such as reading

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flexibility, notetaking, library skills, summarising, etc. The relevance of such an approach to ESP is not difficult to see. Two comments seem to arise in this connection.

First, it may well be more effective not to teach study skills as an end in itself but instead to take, partially at least, a study skills approach to ESP. This could mean in practice, for instance, developing the learners' skills of reading, notetaking, etc., in relation to specific tasks within the ESP prograrmne, preferably tasks involving the use of authentic materials.

Second, and more fundamentally, it has been doubted whether one can teach study skills at all. Rea (1979) quotes with approval a comment by Gibbs and Northedge (1977):

Attempts to teach students how to study have often been ineffective and sometimes harmful. Both the giving of study advice and the training of specific study technique can cause students a multitude of p r o b l e m s . . . An alternative approach would be to start from the student's existing studying: habits of examining and questioning one's own studying would be encouraged as part of a continuing process of change and development. A type of structured group . . . seems particularly appropriate to this approach. Students are given an opportunity to draw on and share their personal experiences through working on an actual study task. , .

Rea's own programme followed this basic approach. It is described in detail in Rea 1979. Her approach to study skills is reminiscent of Allwright's (1980) proposals for enabling learners to work out their own learning strategies. The point to be made here is that a study skills element in an ESP programme can, and perhaps should, be learner centred and partially self-directed in its nature.

5. S u m m a r y

This paper offers a number of propositions about ESP, which, it is argued, could serve as basic principles for the design of ESP courses. These propositions a r e :

- - In real life all language is for specific purposes: a teaching methodology which includes purpose and specificity in its basic approach is thereby the richer. In this sense, all ELT should be ESP. - -ELT which lacks purpose is in danger of becoming TENOR (the Teaching of English for No Obvious Reason); this applies just as much to ESP courses which are such only by virtue of featuring a specific topic, without a cor- responding purpose for that topic. The problem of TENOR in ESP can be met by importing purpose into the classroom through simulation and role play, thus opening up the classroom to the purposes of the real world. --Necessary features of ESP are authentic material, simulation and role play, and some degree of self-direction. --Possible approaches to ESP methodology are through register, which is closely related to the exploitation of authentic material for role play; through discourse, but not necessarily by means of formalisation of the description of discourse; and through study skills, probably taking a learner-centred or self-directed approach.

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REFERENCES

AUwright, R. 1980. What Do We Want Teaching Materials For? Paper presented at the Fourteenth Annual TESOL Convention, San Francisco, California.

Dickinson, L. 1979. Self-Instruction in Commonly Taught Languages. System 7, 3:181-186. Reprinted in D. J. Carver and L. Dickinson (Eds.). Self- Directed Learning: Collected Papers in Self-Directed Learning in English Language Learning. Edinburgh: Moray House College of Education.

Gibbs, G. and A. Northedge. 1977. Learning to Study: A Student Centred Approach. Teaching at a Distance No. 8, Milton Keynes: The Open University.

Krashen, S. 1981. Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Rea, P. 1979. Study Skills in English: New Directions. Practical Papers in English Language Education No. 2, 80-145. Lancaster: University of Lan- caster.

Rubin, J. 1981. Study of Cognitive Processes in Second Language Learning. Applied Linguistics 2, 2:117-131.

Tarone, E. 1980. Communication Strategies, Foreigner Talk, and Repair in Interlanguage. Language Learning 30, 2:417-431.

Widdowson, H. G. 1976. Gradual Approximation. Paper presented at the Georgetown University Round Table 1976. Reprinted in H. G. Widdowson Explorations in Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.

David Carver is currently Coordinator of the ELT Unit in the Scottish Centre for Education Overseas, Moray House, Edinburgh, Scotland. He formerly taught in Ghana and he has worked on short courses in the fields of general ELT and in ESP in a number of countries, including Yugoslavia, Poland, Genxiany, Austria, India, Thailand, and Mauritius. His major professional interest is in the training and development of teachers of EFL. He has published several papers on microteaching for ELT and on self-direction in language learning. A current research interest is the development of self-assessment procedures for learners of EFL.