Approaches to Teaching ESP:

1) Indentify the main approaches to ESP and see how each of them has contributed to the
concept of ESP itself, how each of these approaches has described language, and how these
descriptions have influenced teaching materials.
a. Register analysis (1960’s - 70’s): the basic idea behind it was that the choice of
language used in certain circumstances is predetermined. This predetermination is
governed either by the situation the speakers are in or the subject matter they are
talking about.

Since the emergence of ESP as a discipline, its teaching passed through five approaches, depending
on each ones focus (focal point):

1) Language-centred Approaches:
a. Register analysis
b. Rhetorical (discourse) analysis
c. Genre analysis

2) Learner-centred Approaches:
a. Target-situational analysis

3) Needs Analysis Approach:

4) Skills-centred Approach:
5) Multi-disciplinary (Eclectic) Approach:
6) Learning-centred Approach: focuses on the learner’s learning profile and skills
 Register Analysis (mid-60’s – early 70’s):

1) Characteristics:
 It acknowledges the existence of a special language for a given subject.
 It created specific registers for scientific subjects (EST).
 It works only on the word-sentence level.
 Its teaching methodology focuses on structure (vocabulary and grammar) rather than on the
function of language.

2) Strengths:
 It presented ESP as a recognised new branch of applied linguistics.
 It teaches items in scientific context.
 Its course design is tailored to learners’ needs.

3) Weaknesses:
 It operated only at word and sentence levels.
 It showed that there was very little differences between scientific English and general
English.
 It was only descriptive and not explanatory.
 EST was the only branch of ESP according to this approach.
 It is structure-based with no reference to meaning.
 It neglected the communicational aspects of language.
 Its tools were dull and uninteresting to both the teachers and the students.

4) Development: Register analysis 60’s - Computer-based corpus analysis.

 Rhetorical (Discourse) Analysis (70’s- 80’s):

1) Characteristics:
 It focuses on EST.
 each discipline has its typical rhetorical pattern.
 It came as a remedy to the weaknesses of register analysis.
 It goes beyond the sentence level to the discourse level.
 It stresses the primacy of language use over usage.
 It shifts attention from sentence grammar to how sentences were combined in discourse to
produce meaning.
 It includes the concepts of coherence and cohesion.
 It aims at identifying the organisational patterns in texts (coherence).
 It determines the linguistic realisations (glue-words) by which these patterns are signalled
(cohesion).
 It tries to explain why to use a pattern or item rather than the other.
 Rhetorical considerations (use) determine grammatical choices (usage).

The Rhetorical Process Chart comprises four levels of hierarchical organisation:

 Objectives of total discourse

 General rhetorical functions
 Specific rhetorical functions
 Rhetorical techniques

In this approach, the conceptual paragraph is the basic unit of EST discourse, and central to it is
the core generalisation. The specific rhetorical functions are the heart of this Chart. They allow the
readers to understand more clearly the concepts included in writer’s organisation.

2) Teaching Materials:

They help students recognise textual patterns and discourse markers. The emphasis is on:

 key functions in scientific and academic writing:

1/ Definition 2/ Classification 3/ Description 4/ Hypothesising
 linguistic forms of cohesion.

The results in rhetorical analysis showed that teaching materials have to make learners aware of:

 the stages in rhetorical patterns in transactions in a specialist field.

 how meaning is created by the relative position of a sentence in a text.

3) Weaknesses:
 It misrepresents the real nature of discourse.
 It was only applied to scientific communication.
 It is restricted to the identification of rhetorical functions and their linguistic realisations.
 Its treatment is fragmentary as it identifies functional units of the text, but does not go
beyond the text to communication. It does not analyse the text as a whole.
 Genre Analysis:

1) Definitions and Generalities:

 A genre is a class of discourse, the members of which share communicative purposes. These
purposes are recognised by the members of the discourse community.
 Genre analysis involves the study of how language is used and organised within a particular
setting. It is deeper and narrower than discourse analysis.

Discourse Analysis Genre Analysis

It goes beyond the sentence level to the text
level but only in a fragmentary way without
dealing with the text as a whole. It shows
cohesive links between sentences and
paragraphs, or the structure of the whole text
It states how texts work
It is about communicative value
It goes to the level of the regularities of
structure distinguishing one type (genre) of
text from the other. It deals with the problem
of fragmentation through treating the text as a
whole
It states differences in text types
It is about communicative events

 Swales says: “A more or less communicative event with a set of goals mutually understood
by the participants in that event and occurring with a functional rather than a personal or
social setting”.
 Examples of genres: business reports, academic lectures, news articles, religious speeches,
political discourse, CV, etc.
 Genre community consists of: participants, setting (place and time), and context.
 In each genre there are moves (steps) to follow.
 Genre analysis is concerned with the study of:
1) The forms of discourse that a particular discourse community engages in.
2) Their communicative conventions and purposes.
3) The role texts play in particular contexts.
4) The differences between discourses in a different discourse communities.

2) Process of genre analysis:

It narrows down the scope of ESP through:

 Identifying a genre within a discourse community

 Defining the communicative purpose the genre is designed to achieve
 Examining genre organisation (schematic structure of moves)
 Examining textual and linguistic features (style, tone, voice, grammar and syntax) that
realise the discourse moves
3) Steps:

Bhatia outlines seven steps to analyse genre:

1) Placing a given genre text in its situational context

2) Surveying the existing research on the genre
3) Understanding the genre community
4) Collecting a corpus of the genre
5) Introducing an ethnographic dimension
 6) Moving from context to text
7) Seeking a specialist informant from the research site to verify findings

e.g. Acknowledgment

Moves Communicative function

Reflecting
Thanking
 Presenting participants
 Thanks for academic help
 Thanks for resources
 Thanks for moral support
Announcing
 Accepting responsibility
 Dedication
Introspection on the writer’s research experience
 Introducing those to be thanked
 Thanks for intellectual support
 Thanks for data access and financial support
 Thanks for encouragement, friendship and sympathy
 Assert personal responsibilities for flows and errors
 Formal dedication to individuals

4) Types:
 Oral genres: e.g. lecture
 Written genres: e.g. poem
5) Reasons Behind the Differences between Genres:
 Discourse community
 Communicative purpose
 Communicative event

6) Other Examples of Genre Analysis Models:

a. Swales (1998) created CARS = creating a research space
b. Ferguson (1994) stated that some teaching procedures that can be followed in genre-
based approach to material design in pedagogical situations are as follows:
i. Think: thinking about the genre and the elements around it
ii. Study: studying the genre and its typical features (content)
iii. Awareness raising activities: raising awareness about the typical and
conventional content and organisation of the genre in addition to the
linguistic features (register)
iv. Part practice: practicing an isolated element or move
v. Whole practice: reproducing the whole text as practice (summary)
vi. Integration: reproducing the genre through applying the moves

7) Criticism:

Dudley Evans: Genre-base approach remains controversial:

1) There are those who believe that genre-analysis takes the writing teacher beyond the basic
responsibility of introducing students to the process of writing into an academic concern that
should be handled by the subject-teacher e.g. Spack 1988
2) There are others who argue that the concentration on a limited number of classroom genres
(as suggested by Kress in 1982) may have unfortunate educational consequences by
prevailing certain genres (and neglecting others).
3) In a similar vein, Prior (1995) is critical of the tendency of genre analysis to concentrate
exclusively on the text and neglect the ongoing discussion.
 4) It creates limitations and hinders creativity.

Target-situational Analysis
1) Definition:

Munby (1976) has created a model communication needs processor in order to analyse target-needs
of the learner. In his publication: Communicative Syllabus Design (1978), learners’ purposes
became in the central position of learning process. The function (needs) and situation are
fundamental in language learning. He believed that needs analysis is the backbone and the first step
in ESP course-design.

1) Participants: information about the identity and the language of the learner.
2) Communication needs processor: investigates communication needs according to socio-
cultural and stylistic variables and establishes their profile.
3) Meaning processor: is part of socio-culturally determined profile of communication needs
in a semantic and pragmatic way.
4) Profile of needs: is the result of the communication needs processor (CNP).
5) Language skills selector: identifies the specific language skills that are required to realise
the events that have been identified in CNP.
6) Linguistic encoder: considers the dimension of contextual appropriateness. It involves, like
a register, the linguistic features of language related to a specific domain.
7) Communicative competence specification: indicates the target communicative
competence of the participant and it is the translated profile of needs.

It focused on the learner, on the language needed, on the purpose, on the setting, on the
communicative competence, and on the skills.

2) Criticism:
 This stage neglects the present situation of the learner (level, problems, background,
difficulties, etc.). This led to the appearance of Present Situation Analysis (PSA).
 It also neglects the learning situation (tasks, materials, time table, groupings, etc.). It does
not analyse how teaching is going to be done.
 This criticism led to the emergence of Needs Analysis which is the backbone of modern
ESP. It includes:
o Present Situation Analysis (PSA)
o Target Situation Analysis (TSA)
o Learning Situation Analysis (LSA)
 Skills and Strategies Analysis or Study Skill Approach

1) Definition:

The main idea underlying this stage is that there are common reasoning and interpreting processes
that enable you to extract meaning from this course and to produce your own meaning. “The
fundamental principle is that the teaching of language forms alone is not sufficient for the
development of the ability to perform the task. It should be accompanied with language use
processes” (Dudley-Evans and St John).

2) Characteristics:

Skill = ability

Strategy = way or steps of doing something

 Each skill has different strategies to be acquired. This approach provides the learner with the
skill through appropriate strategies and language use. It is designed not only for foreign
language learners, but also to native speakers. (Jordan 1997).
 It suggests a list of study situations, activities and related study skills e.g. benefiting from
speeches and lectures requires listening and understanding skills enhanced through note-
taking strategies, questions, clarification requests, etc.
 In its early stages, the focus was on receptive skills (listening and reading) in the business
domain and on business-English materials. A great number of books from the 1980’s
focused on skills and strategies e.g. The Longman Series of Skills: Negotiating by O’Conner
(1992), Telephoning by Bruce (1992), etc.
 This approach puts the emphasis on listening and reading skills.
 The language learners are treated as thinking beings who can be asked to observe and
verbalise the interpretive processes they employ in language use.
 It is based on developing a skill using a strategy to master language.

3) Criticism:
 Hutchinson and Waters think that it is a merely descriptive approach like its predecessors.
 Learning-centred Approach

 It is the latest approach in ESP. It was developed by Hutchinson and Waters in 1987.
 It focuses on the learning process, of which the learner is only a part.
 The question that should be asked is “how to learn?” instead of what questions such as
“what is the language needed?”, “what is the context?”, etc, which lead to mere description.
 “Our concern in ESP is not with language use, although this would help to define the course
objectives, but our concern is with language learning. We cannot simply assume that
describing and exemplifying what people do with language will enable someone to learn it...
A truly valid approach to ESP must be based on an understanding of the processes of
language learning” Hutchinson and Waters (1987:14).
 They aim to discover how someone acquires language competence in order to design a
dynamic and interactive course.