English language education for specific professional needs

This section of the Handbook provides a state of the art look at the relationship between ESP and the key areas of speaking, listening, reading, writing and vocabulary. While for the purposes of this volume it has been necessary to separate these into distinct chapters, it is important to acknowledge, as several of the authors in the section do, that in the classroom, they are of course, less easily separable. ESP pedagogies have tended to focus on identifying -often through needs analyses -sets of transferable generic language and literacy skills that are seen to be applicable in the majority of academic and workplace settings. More recent approaches such as the " academic literacies " approach (Lea and Street 1998 ) understand that " skills " are always located within specifi c contexts and communities and form part of sets of social practices -that is, distinct ways of thinking, feeling, believing, valuing, and acting -that also shape learner and teacher identities (Gee 1990 ; Prior, this volume).

ASp

The study of specialized discourse has burgeoned over the last twenty years or so, and, with English becoming ever more the lingua franca of this globalized world, English for Specific Purposes has rapidly assumed a key position in language studies in general. This has coincided with an increasingly "functionalist" approach to education in general, with the emphasis ever more on the acquisition of skills that can be utilized in a professional context, at the expense of a more theoretical, idealistic perspective which views education as an intellectual endeavour concerned with an individual's personal and cultural development as a whole. Let us begin with a simple question: what does the "S" in ESP stand for, "specific" or "special"? Google can provide us with a rough answer, with "English for Specific Purposes" outnumbering "English for Special Purposes" by a ratio of roughly 14 to 1 (respectively 955,000 hits vs 66,200 hits). 1 The marked preference for "Specific" denotes an awareness that the type of language that ESP scholars are concerned with is not so much "special" in itself as pertaining to "specific" spheres of professional and institutional communication in English. ESP comes within the realm of "specialized" (as opposed to "special") discourse. Secondly, how do we define ESP? Definitions abound in the literature. Here are just a few: English for specific purposes (ESP) refers to the teaching and learning of English as a second or foreign language where the goal of the learners is to use English in a particular domain. (Paltridge & Starfield 2013: 2) English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is a learner-centered approach to teaching English as an additional language, which focuses on developing communicative The future of ESP studies: building on success, exploring new paths, avoiding...

English for Specific Purposes, known as acronym-'ESP', has been a distinct activity in the field of English Language Teaching (ELT) since 1960s. The flowering period of ESP has been identified due to many incidents like the second world war in 1945, the rapid expansion in scientific, the growth of science and technology, the increased use of English as the international language of science, technology and business, the increased economic power of certain oil-rich countries and increased numbers of international students studying in English Speaking countries. Needs analysis is the key essence of ESP. The paper reviews the history and development of ESP, the notion of needs analysis in ESP setting and some important components of ESP needs analysis. Finally the paper critically reviews the ESP needs analysis models. TSA (Target Situation Analysis), PSA (Present Situation Analysis), LSA (Learning Situation Analysis), MA (Means Analysis) and Language Audit are the salient features of needs analysis in any ESP context. In the field of ESP, there are a number of models of needs analysis such as Munby (

International Journal of Language Studies, 2019

In this interview, Mohammad Hassan Tahririan reflects on his experiences, perceptions, and views about English for Specific Purposes (ESP) by first identifying the differences between the General English Language and ESP courses, and then pinpointing recent practices of teaching ESP. He discusses the future directions and areas of ESP research in Iran and points out some challenges that both ESP learners and teachers encounter during learning and teaching the courses. He also emphasizes that if stakeholders insist on offering ESP courses, the required conditions should be provided. If the students are not convinced that learning English is a must for them, imposing ESP courses on them will not be much different from unwanted General English courses. Tahririan believes that the future of most EFL programs in Iran will be in ESP, if understood and offered as expected.

The journal of Asia TEFL, 2021

Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 1987

Five years ago book-length studies of the craft of English for Specific Purposes comprsied Munby's Communicative Syllabus Design (1978) and Robinson's ESP (English for Specific Purposes) (1980), substantive additions to this very short list had been made by widdowson (1984), Kennedy and Bolitho (1984), McDonough (1984), Trimble (1985), and Hutchinson and task-orinented collections of papers (Swales 1985b, Peterson 1986), several conference proceedings (e.g., Tickoo 1986) and comprehensive survey articles such as that by Maher (1986) on English for Medical Purposes. Nor has there been any abatement in the steady stream of ESP-related articles, papers, theses, and monographs.

2017

This paper aims to explore the necessity of designing “ESP” courses based on the essential approaches as the learner’s needs analysis in order to improve the teaching atmosphere by providing a new learning context depending on students real needs. When the exceptional rapid expansion of science, business and technology called for an international language for specialists, “ESP” has witnessed a speedy and firm development, becoming nowadays one of the most important branches of English Language Teaching (ELT). In this paper the researcher attempts to provide a brief definition of English for Specific Purpose (ESP), and its ultimate relation with learner’s needs analysis(LNA), learner’s center approach and communicative approach which are essential in ESP syllabus design and mostly considered to be in appropriateness with the general objective of ESP courses “to enable learners to function adequately in a target situation”. Thus, that vital relation constructs the basis for ESP course...

2020

, is a practical manual for graduate and undergraduate students, experienced teachers and researchers, whose interests lie in teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP), English for Academic Purposes (EAP), and English for Occupational Purposes (EOP). The book opens with an introduction, which outlines the main issues and assumptions of the book, gives an overview of its content, and explains how it should be used. The main part of the book is divided into three sections: (i) Contextualising ESP, which describes the background to ESP as a field of enquiry; (ii) Understanding the four pillars of ESP, which explains the theories and practices that form the basis of the four key pillars of ESP; and (iii) Applying ESP in realworld settings, which first defines ways to implement ESP, then discusses the main challenges that instructors have to deal with while teaching ESP and, finally, outlines the future direction of the field. The sections are further divided into ten chapters in total. They all have the same structure and exhibit the same features: each chapter is initiated with a brief statement describing the relevance of the topic to be addressed, then it contains a short review of what will be covered, and, lastly, it offers an explanation of what