ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSE

(LANGUAGE DESCRIPTION AND LEARNING THEORIES)

Language Description
We now have a number of ways of describing language available to us. Therefore important to
understand the main features of each of these descriptions in order to consider how they can be used
most appropriately in ESP courses. We can identify some main stages of development.

A. Classical or Traditional Grammar

Descriptions of English and other languages were based on the grammars of the classical
languages, Greek and Latin. These descriptions were based on an analysis of the role played by each
word in the sentence. The prestige of the old classical languages ensured the survival of this form of
description even after English had lost most of its case markers and become a largely word order based
language. It can also be argued that although cases may no longer be apparent in modern English, the
concepts they represent underlie any language (Fillmore,1968). Thus acknowledge of the classical
description can still deepen on our knowledge of how languages operate.

B. Structural Linguistics
In a structural description the grammar of the language is described in terms of syntagmatic
structures which carry the fundamental propositions (statement, interrogative, negative, imperative, etc)
and notions (time, number, gender etc).by varying the words within these structural frameworks, sentence
with different meanings can be generated. This method of linguistic analysis led in English language
teaching to the development of the substitution table as a typical means of explaining grammatical
patterns. The very simplicity of the structural language description entails that there are large areas of
language use that it cannot explain. In particular it may fail to provide the learner with an understanding of
the communicative use of the structures. Later developments in language teaching and linguistics have
attempted to remedy this weakness

C .Transformational Generative (TG) Grammar

For ESP the most important lesson to be drawn from Chomsky’s work was the distinction he
made between performance (surface structures) and competence (the deep level rules). Chomsky’s own
definition of performance and competence was narrowly based, being concerned only with syntax. A
simple way of seeing the distinction between performance and competence is in our capacity to
understand the meanings of words we have never met before.

D. Language Variation and Register Analysis

The concept of language variation gave rise to the type of ESP which was based on register
analysis. If language varies according to context, it was argued then it should be possible to identify the
kind of language associated with a specific context, such as an area of knowledge (legal English; social
English; medical English; business English; scientific English etc), or an area of use (technical manuals,
academic texts, business meetings, advertisements, doctor-patient communication etc). The important
point is that even if particular registers favor certain forms they are not distinctive forms. They are simply
drawn from the common stock of the grammar of the language.

E. Discourse (Rhetorical) Analysis We can identify two key ways in which the results of studies into the
nature of discourse have been used in ESP teaching materials
•Learners are made aware of the stages in certain set-piece transactions associated with particular
specialist fields.
•The second use of discourse analysis in ESP has been through materials which aim to explain how
meaning is created by the relative positions of the sentences in a written text. The aim of such an
approach is to make the learners into more efficient readers, by making them aware of the underlying
structure of a text and the way in which language has been organized to create this structure.