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The Development of Esp

The development of ESP occurred in four main stages: 1) Register analysis in the 1960s-1970s focused on grammatical and lexical features at the sentence level. 2) Discourse analysis in the 1970s looked above the sentence level at patterns and markers that combine sentences. 3) Target situation analysis (TSA) in the 1980s established procedures to relate language to learner needs. 4) The skills and strategies approach from the 1980s focused on underlying thinking processes rather than surface language forms and taught interpretive strategies.

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Mumin Arifin
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84 views

The Development of Esp

The development of ESP occurred in four main stages: 1) Register analysis in the 1960s-1970s focused on grammatical and lexical features at the sentence level. 2) Discourse analysis in the 1970s looked above the sentence level at patterns and markers that combine sentences. 3) Target situation analysis (TSA) in the 1980s established procedures to relate language to learner needs. 4) The skills and strategies approach from the 1980s focused on underlying thinking processes rather than surface language forms and taught interpretive strategies.

Uploaded by

Mumin Arifin
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The development of ESP

ESP develops at different speeds in different


countries.

Swales (1985) “with one or two exceptions..English


for Science and Technology has always set and
continues to set the trend in theoritical discussion, in
ways of anaysing language, and in the variety of
actual teaching materials”
1. The concept of special language: register analysis

1st stage: Focused on language at the sentence level

Stage that took place mainly in 1960s and early


1970s
Operating on the basic principle that the English
( such as, electrical engineering ) constituted a
specific register, different from other disciplines.
The analysis aims to identify the grammatical and
lexical features of these registers.

Lead to register analysis-based syllabus


2. Beyond the sentence: rhetorical or discourse analysis

2nd phase: focus on language above the sentence


level

Ewer &Hughes-Davies(1971) found the school


textbooks neglected some of the language forms
commonly found in the science texts (ex. Compound
nouns, passive, conditionals)
Focus on understanding how sentences were
combined in discourse to produce meaning.

The typical teaching materials based on the


discourse approach taught students to recognise
textual patterns and discourse markers mainly by
means of text-diagraming exercises.
The context of the sentence is also important in
creating meaning.

Central feature of ESP textbook at this phase aimed


at developing a knowledge of how sentences are
combined in texts in order to produce a particular
meaning.—lead to text diagraming exercise.
3. Target Situation Analysis (Need Analysis)

How ESP developed again later --3rd stage:


Aimed to take the existing knowledge and set it on
more scientific basis, by establishing procedures for
relating language analysis more closely to learner’s
reason learning.

Learner’s need was placed at the centre of the course


design process.
4. Skills and Strategies

1&2 stages of the ESP development had been on the


surface of the language

3 stage: TSA didnt really change the above features


because its analysis in learner need still looked
mainly at the surface linguistic features of the target
situation.
4th stage: attempt to look below the surface and to
consider not the language itself but the thinking
process that underlie language use.

The principal idea behind the skill-centered


approach is that underlying all language use there
are common reasoning and interpretating process.
Lead to notion: no need to focus closely on the
surface form of the language
The focus should rather be on underlying
interpretative strategi., which enable the learner to
cope with the surface form, (such as; guessing
meaning of words from context, using visual layout
to determine the type of text)

The focus on register is unnecessary in this


approach, because the underlying process are not
specific to any subject register.
Which of the stages outlined above has your country
experienced?

Why do you think EST (English for Science and


Technology) has set the trends in the development of
ESP?
in linguistics, a register is a variety of a language
 used for a particular purpose or in a particular social
setting. For example, when speaking in a formal
setting, an English speaker may be more likely to use
features of prescribed grammar—such as
pronouncing words ending in -ing with a velar nasal
 instead of an alveolar nasal (e.g. "walking", not
"walkin'"), choosing more formal words
(e.g. father vs. dad, child vs. kid, etc.), and refraining
from using contractions such as ain't—than when
speaking in an informal setting.
In sociolinguistics, the term register refers to
specific lexical and grammatical choices as made by
speakers depending on the situational context, the
participants of a conversation and the function of the
language in the discourse.
Discourse :

(1) In linguistics, a unit of language longer than a


single sentence.
(2) More broadly, the use of spoken or written
language in a social context.
Discouse analysis

The study of the ways in which language is used in 


texts andcontexts.
Developed in the 1970s, discourse analysis "concerns
itself with the use of language in a running discourse,
continued over a number of sentences, and involving
the interaction ofspeaker (or writer) and auditor (or 
reader) in a specific situational context, and within a
framework of social and cultural conventions" (M.H.
Abrams and G.G. Harpham, A Glossary of Literary
Terms, 2005).

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