paper english spesific purpose

PAPER

IEnglish of Spesific Purposes

INTRODUCTION

1.1  Issue Background

English for specific purposes (ESP) is a sphere of teaching English language including Business English, Technical English, Scientific English, English for medical professionals, English for waiters, English for tourism, English for Art Purposes, etc. From the early 1960's, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has grown to become one of the most prominent areas of EFL teaching today. Its development is reflected in the increasing number of universities offering an MA in ESP (e.g. The University of Birmingham, and Aston University in the UK) and in the number of ESP courses offered to overseas students in English speaking countries.

ESP learning for people who use English in a professional field that they do is very important. knowing about ESP make use can use the English language related to our profession properly although English language is foreign language. So when we have been working in a profession that uses the English language, we can receive and impart information without significant obstacles.

In this paper the authors discuss about Development of ESP and ESP approach not product. In the topic above authors will show development of ESP and the difference of English language used in a profession with other professions and show the relationship between ESP and ELT.

DISCUSSION

The Development of ESP ( English for Specific Purposes)

English for Specific Purposes is a new area of study for many scholars, but the work of both Tony Du dley - Evans and Maggie Jo St John is well known all over the world especially among those of us working in English for Business Purposes. English for specific purposes (ESP) is a sphere of teaching English language including Business English, Technical English, Scientific English, English for medical professionals, English for waiters, English for tourism, English for Art Purposes, etc. ESP makes use of underlying methodology and activities of the discipline it serves. ESP is centered on the language appropriate to these activities in terms of grammar, lexis, register, study skills, discourse and genre.

Nowadays ,there are fifth phases of ESP development. All the approaches that related to the ESP development can be found in all around the world and we can measure the speeds of the development by seeeing the application of the approaches.  They grow with the different speeds in each country based on its needs to English. Related to the Development of ESP we should take our attention to one are of activity that has been particularly important in the development of ESP. We’ve known this as EST (English for Science and Technology). Swales (1985) has pointed that the use of EST’s development can be used to illustrate the development of ESP in general. Here are the fifth phases and its explanation :

1)        The Concept of Special Language : Register Analysis

The needs of English here back to their needs according to their area of study or work by operating the basic principle of English in a spesific register or general english. They need to know them with an aim to identify the grammatical and lexical features of these registers. Then, we need teaching materials to take these linguistic parts as its syllabus. The main motive behind register analyses is the pedagogic one of making the ESP course more relevant to learners’ needs. The aim is to produce a syllabus which give high priority to the language forms that the students will meet or won’t meet in each of their studies. For example , we can compare the language on Science textbook and general english textbook. Of course, there will be significant differences between them, we can find that general english books neglect some of the language forms that commonly find in the Science textbook. The conclusion is ESP course should give precedence to these forms.

2)        Beyond the Sentence : Rhetorical or Discourse Analysis

If in the first phase, ESP had focussed on language at the sentence level, but in this phase, the development shifted into the level above the sentence. So, ESP became closely involved with the emerging field of discourse or rhetorical analysis. The basic hypothesis of this stage is expressed by Allen and Widdowson (1974) :

”The difficulties which the students encounter arise not so much from a defective knowledge of the system of English, but from an unfamiliarity with English use, and that consequently 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 knowledge of how sentences are used in the performance of different communicative verbs.  Rhetorical patterns of text organisation differed significantly between specialist area of use. The structure placed according to the area of work or study. The typical teaching materials based on the discourse approach taught students to recognise textual patterns and discourse markers mainly by means of text diagramming exercises.

3)        Target Situation Analysis

The aim of this phase is to take the existing knowledge and set it on a more scientific basis, by establishing procedures for relating language analysis more closely to learners’ reasons for learning. There is a purpose of ESP course that support this phase, the purpose is to enable learners to function in situations which the learners will use the language they are learning, then the ESP course design process should proceed by first identifying the target situation and then carrying out the right analysis of the linguistic parts of that situation. It will form the syllabus of the ESP course. This process known as “needs analysis”. What had been done previously in piecemeal way become something’s systematised and learner needs was apparently placed at the centre of the course design process.

4)        Skills and Strategies

In this phase, it’s consider not only the language itself but also the thinking processes that underlie language use. This phase was set up to cope with study situations where the medium of instructions is the mother tongue but students need to read a number of specialist texts which are available only in English. As a result, it concentrated their efforts on reading strategies.

In this phase , we don’t need to focus closely on the surface forms of the language. The focus should be placed on the underlying interpretive strategies, which enable the learner to cope with the surface forms of the language, for example guessing the meaning of words from context, so on. This approach generally emphasise on reading or listening strategies. The characteristic exercises get the learners to  reflect on and analyse how meaning is produced in and retrieved from written or spoken language.

5)        A Learning Centred Approach

Previously, in the origins of ESP, we knew that there were 3 forces that had role in ESP and became its characteristics , they were needs, new ideas about language and new ideas about learning. We use all the approaches so far based on the descriptions of language use and the concern in each case is with describing what people do with language, but the concern is not actually on the language use only, our concern should with language learning too because a truly valid approach to ESP must be based on an understanding of the processes of language learning. With this statement , it brings us to this fifth stage of ESP development. The importance and the implications of the distinction that we have made between language use and language learning will hopefully become clear for us to understand each of the stages of  ESP development.    

  

ESP  of Approach Not Product

ESP all essentially emphasize to language centred approaches and to give a definition of ESP we need to establish a context about how ESP at the present time relates to the rest of ELT.

In the time honoured manner of Linguistics, we shall represent the relationship in the form of a tree. They represent some of the common divisions that are made in ELT. The topmost branches of the tree show the level at which individual ESP courses occur. This level divided into two main types of ESP according to whether the learner requires english for academic study, they are EAP (English for Academic Purpose of for work/training) and EOP,EVP,VESL (English for Occupational Purpose/English for Vocational Purpose/Vocational English as a Second Language)

At the next level down, ESP courses distinguished by the general nature of the learner's specialism. Three categories are identified here, they are : EST (English for Science and Technology), EBE (English for Business and Economics) and ESS (English for the Social Sciences) 

Next level, we can see that ESP is just one branch of EFL/ESL which are themselves the main branches of English language teaching in general. ELT is one variety of the many possible kinds of language teaching. As we know that, a tree cannot survive without roots. In this case, the roots which nourish the tree of ELT are communication and learning. The analogy of a tree above showing to us what ESP isn't. Here they are :

a.         ESP is not a matter of teaching ''specialized varieties'' of English because the fact that language is used for a spesific purpose. There are some features which can identified as ''typical'' of a particular context of use, and which , so, the learners is more perhaps to meet in the target situation.

b.         ESP is not just a matter of science words and grammar for scientist, so on. When we look at the tree, there's actually much hidden from view inside and beneath the tree although we know the leaves and the branches. They are supported by a complex underlying structure. The point is we need much more communication than just the surface features of what we read and hear and also we need to distinguish between performance and competence in relation to what people actually do with the language and the range of knowledge and abilities which can enables them to do it.

c.         ESP is not different in kind from any other form of language teaching. It based on the principles of effective and efficient learning. Eventhough the content of the learning is different, the proccesses of learning should be any different for the ESP learner than for the general english learner.

ESP is different from the form of ELT because ESP must be seen as an approach not as a product. ESP is not a particular kind of language or methodology, nor does it consist of a particular type of teaching material. ESP is an approach to language learning, which is based on the learners' need. So, we conclude that ESP is an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based on the learners' reason for learning.

  

Conclusion

The main factors in the origin of ESP that the Linguistic factor dominate the ESP’s development that focus on the nature of specific varieties of language use. In tree of ELT, it shown that they are primarily concerned with communication and learning. ESP is not a language product but as an approach to language teaching which is directed by specific and apparent reasons for learning. 

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