English for Specific Purpos 特殊用途英语

2024年3月30日发(作者：作文日记)

English for Specific Purpos: What does it mean? Why is it different?

Laurence Anthony

Dept. of Information and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering

Okayama University of Science, 1-1 Ridai-cho, Okayama 700, Japan

anthony 'at'

1. Growth of ESP

From the early 1960's, English for Specific Purpos (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 cours offered to overas students in English speaking countries. There is

now a well-established international journal dedicated to ESP discussion, "English

for Specific Purpos: An international journal", and the ESP SIG groups of the

IATEFL and TESOL are always active at their national conferences.

In Japan too, the ESP movement has shown a slow but definite growth over

the past few years. In particular, incread interest has been spurred as a result of

the Mombusho's decision in 1994 to largely hand over control of university

curriculums to the universities themlves. This has led to a rapid growth in English

cours aimed at specific disciplines, e.g. English for Chemists, in place of the more

traditional 'General English' cours. The ESP community in Japan has also become

more defined, with the JACET ESP SIG t up in 1996 (currently with 28 members)

and the JALT N-SIG to be formed shortly. Finally, on November 8th this year the

ESP community came together as a whole at the first Japan Conference on English

for Specific Purpos, held on the campus of Aizu University, Fukushima

Prefecture

.

2. What is ESP?

As described above, ESP has had a relatively long time to mature and so we

would expect the ESP community to have a clear idea about what ESP means.

Strangely, however, this does not em to be the ca. In October this year, for

example, a very heated debate took place on the TESP-L e-mail discussion list

about whether or not English for Academic Purpos (EAP) could be considered

part of ESP in general. At the Japan Conference on ESP also, clear differences in

how people interpreted the meaning of ESP could be en. Some people described

ESP as simply being the teaching of English for any purpo that could be

specified. Others, however, were more preci, describing it as the teaching of

English ud in academic studies or the teaching of English for vocational or

professional purpos.

At the conference, guests were honored to have as the main speaker, Tony

Dudley-Evans, co-editor of the ESP Journal mentioned above. Very aware of the

current confusion amongst the ESP community in Japan, Dudley-Evans t out in

his one hour speech to clarify the meaning of ESP, giving an extended definition of

ESP in terms of 'absolute' and 'variable' characteristics (e below).

Definition of ESP (Dudley-Evans, 1997)

Absolute Characteristics

1. ESP is defined to meet specific needs of the learners

2. ESP makes u of underlying methodology and activities of the discipline it

rves

3. ESP is centered on the language appropriate to the activities in terms of

grammar, lexis, register, study skills, discour and genre.

Variable Characteristics

1. ESP may be related to or designed for specific disciplines

2. ESP may u, in specific teaching situations, a different methodology from

that of General English

3. ESP is likely to be designed for adult learners, either at a tertiary level

institution or in a professional work situation. It could, however, be for learners at

condary school level

4. ESP is generally designed for intermediate or advanced students.

5. Most ESP cours assume some basic knowledge of the language systems

The definition Dudley-Evans offers is clearly influenced by that of Strevens

(1988), although he has improved it substantially by removing the absolute

characteristic that ESP is "in contrast with 'General English'" (Johns et al., 1991:

298), and has included more variable characteristics. The division of ESP into

absolute and variable characteristics, in particular, is very helpful in resolving

arguments about what is and is not ESP. From the definition, we can e that ESP

can but is not necessarily concerned with a specific discipline, nor does it have to

be aimed at a certain age group or ability range. ESP should be en simple as an

'approach' to teaching, or what Dudley-Evans describes as an 'attitude of mind'.

This is a similar conclusion to that made by Hutchinson et al. (1987:19) who state,

"ESP is an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to content and

method are bad on the learner's reason for learning".

3. Is ESP different to General English?

If we agree with this definition,, we begin to e how broad ESP really is. In fact,

one may ask 'What is the difference between the ESP and General English

approach?' Hutchinson et al. (1987:53) answer this quite simply, "in theory nothing,

in practice a great deal". When their book was written, of cour, the last

statement was quite true. At the time, teachers of General English cours, while

acknowledging that students had a specific purpo for studying English, would

rarely conduct a needs analysis to find out what was necessary to actually achieve

it. Teachers nowadays, however, are much more aware of the importance of needs

analysis, and certainly materials writers think very carefully about the goals of

learners at all stages of materials production. Perhaps this demonstrates the

influence that the ESP approach has had on English teaching in general. Clearly the

line between where General English cours stop and ESP cours start has

become very vague indeed.

Rather ironically, while many General English teachers can be described as

using an ESP approach, basing their syllabi on a learner needs analysis and their

own specialist knowledge of using English for real communication, it is the

majority of so-called ESP teachers that are using an approach furthest from that

described above. Instead of conducting interviews with specialists in the field,

analyzing the language that is required in the profession, or even conducting

students' needs analysis, many ESP teachers have become slaves of the published

textbooks available, unable to evaluate their suitability bad on personal

experience, and unwilling to do the necessary analysis of difficult specialist texts to

verify their contents.

4. The Future of ESP

If the ESP community hopes to grow and flourish in the future, it is vital that

the community as a whole understands what ESP actually reprents. Only then,

can new members join with confidence, and existing members carry on the

practices which have brought ESP to the position it has in EFL teaching today. In

Japan in particular, ESP is still in its infancy and so now is the ideal time to form

such a connsus. Perhaps this can stem from the Dudley-Evans' definition given in

this article but I suspect a more rigorous version will be coming soon, in his book

on ESP to be published in 1998. Of cour, interested parties are also strongly

urged to attend the next Japan Conference on ESP, which is certain to focus again

on this topic.

5. References

Dudley-Evans, Tony (1998). Developments in English for Specific Purpos: A

multi-disciplinary approach. Cambridge University Press. (Forthcoming)

Hutchinson, Tom & Waters, Alan (1987). English for Specific Purpos: A

learner-centered approach. Cambridge University Press.

Johns, Ann M. & Dudley-Evans, Tony (1991). English for Specific Purpos:

International in Scope, Specific in Purpo. TESOL Quarterly 25:2, 297-314.

Strevens, P. (1988). ESP after twenty years: A re-appraisal. In M. Tickoo (Ed.),

ESP: State of the art (1-13). SEAMEO Regional Language Centre.