ESP; THE ORIGINS OF ESP

THE ORIGINS OF ESP

1.      The demands of a brave new world

The end of the Second World War in 1945 heralded of an age of enormous and unprecedented expansion in scientific, technical and economic activity on an international scale. This expansion created a word unified and dominated by two forces – technology and commerce – which in their relentless progress soon generated a demand for an international language. For various reasons, most notably the economic power of the United States in the post - war world, this role fell to English.

The effect was to create a whole new mass of people wanting to learn English, not for the pleasure or prestige of knowing the language but, because English was the key to the international currencies of technology and commerce. Previously the reasons for learning English ( or any other language) had not been well defined. A knowledge of a foreign language had been generally regarded as sign of a well – rounded education, but few had really questioned why it was necessary.

Learning a language was, so to speak, its own justification. But as English became the accepted international language of technology and commerce, it created a new generation of learners who knew specifically why they were learning a language – businessmen and women who wanted to sell their products, mechanics who had to read instructions manuals, doctors who needed to keep up with developments in their field and a whole range of students whose course of study included textbooks and journals only available in English. All these and many others needed English and, most importantly, they knew why they needed.

This development accelerated by the Oil Crises of early 1970s, which resulted in a massive flow of funds and Western expertise into the oil-rich countries. English suddenly became big business and commercial pressures began to exert an influence. Time and many constrains created a need for cost effective courses with clearly defined goals.

The general effect of all this development was to exert pressure on the language teaching profession to deliver the required goods. Whereas English was previously decided its own destiny, it now became subject to the wishes, needs and demands of people other than language teacher. English had become accountable to the scrutiny of the wider  word and the traditional leisurely and purpose-free stroll through the landscape of the English language seemed no longer appropriate in the harsher realities of the market places.

2.      Arevolution In Linguistics

·         At the same time as the demand was growing for English courses tailored to specific needs, influential new ideas began to emerge in the study of language. Traditionally the aim of linguistics had been to describe the rule of English usage that is a grammar. However the new studies shifted attention away from defining the formal features of language usage to discovering the ways in which language is actually used in real communication (Widdowson, 1978).  One finding of this research was that the language we speak and write varies considerably, and in a number of different ways, from one context to another. In English language teaching this gave rise to the view that there are important differences between say, the English of commerce and that of engineering. These ideas merried up naturally with the development of English courses for specific groups of learners. The ideas was simple : if language varies from one situation of use to another, it should be possible to determine the features of specific situation and then make these features the basis of the learners’ course.

Swales (1985) presents an article by C.L. Barber on the nature of Scientific English which saw the greatest expansion of research into the nature of particular varieties of English- for example, descriptions of written scientific and technical English by Ewer and Latorre (1969), Swales (1971), Selinker and Trimble (1976) and others. Most of the work at this time was in the area of English for science and Technology (EST) and for a time ESP and EST were regarded as almost synonymous. But there were studies in other fields too, such as the

3.      Focus on the learner

New development in educational psychology also contributed to the rise of ESP, by emphasizing the central importance of the learners and their attitudes to learning (e.g. Rodgers, 1969). Learners were seen to have different needs and interests, which would have an important influence on their motivation to learn and therefore on the effectiveness of their learning. This lent support to the development of courses in which ‘relevance’ to the learners’ needs and interest was paramount. The standard way of achieving this was to take texts from the learners’ specialist area – texts about biology for biology students etc. The assumption underlying this approach was that the clear relevance of the English course to their needs would improve the learners’ motivation and thereby make learning better and faster.

The growth of ESP, then, was brought about by a combination of three important factors: the expansion of demand for English to suit particular needs and developments in the fields of linguistics and educational psychology. All three factors seemed to point towards the need for increased specialization in language learning.