Objectives in Teaching ESP

Nowadays English has a special and predominant role in the communicative sphere of the world. It has also a special identity in the field of education.

A language is a medium of communication and interacting verbally in our day-to day life situation in family and society. But in India English is a foreign language. It is different from mother tongue. The teaching of English is highly desirable for a English teacher. Before starting his teaching, it requires for the teacher to fix up his aims and objectives. It makes him efficient.

Objectives Teaching English:

(A) The objective of teaching English has two main aspects:

(i) Language aspect: Words, sentences, pronunciation, spelling and grammar.

(ii) Literature aspect: Words, sentences, expressing ideas, feelings and experiences.

(B) The English language teaching has four objectives to develop four skills:

(i) Reading, (ii) Writing, (iii) Speaking and (iv) Listening.

(C) The English teaching also has two objectives:

(I) Skill objectives include:

• To develop the skill of speaking,
• To develop the skill of reading,
• To develop the skill of writing,
• To develop the skill of listening,
• To enable the students for the use of grammar correctly,
• To enable the students to analyze the element of language and establish the appropriate relationship among linguistic components.

(II) Cognitive objectives include:

• To acquire knowledge,
• To diagnose the weakness of speaking and writing English,
• To compare and illustrate linguistic components,
• To classify the elements of English language,
• To understand the meaning of prose, poetry, story and drama by reading.

This chapter examines broad objectives in teaching ESP. The chapter describes five objectives:

1.    To reveal subject-specific language use.

2.    To develop target performance competencies.

3.    To teach underlying knowledge.

4.    To develop strategic competence.

5.    To foster critical awareness.

1.   To reveal subject-specific language use.

Concepts

Teaching oriented to  this  objective aims to show how English is used in the target  environment and  to impart to  students the  knowledge about  it that  has  been  revealed  by linguistic research in the field. There is a direct link between research and pedagogy, with teaching primarily focused on demonstrating the forms and features that descriptive linguistic research has brought to light.

Research and Applications

The  objective  of revealing  specific-purpose language use  is intuitively appealing, but  what  might  the  potential drawbacks  be  of  teaching and learning based on descriptions of specific-purpose language use? Wharton (1999) reviews research into the difficulties experienced in learning genres. Wharton’s findings show that  teaching and  learning a genre  involves far more than transmission of linguistic information. Her findings  include the following points:

• Learners find academic and  professional genre  acquisition difficult because  it necessitates  not only development of conceptual understanding of the surface discourse but also of a set of socially valued norms  and  thus new frameworks of reasoning.

• Learning genres tends to  be  mastered late  even  in  one’s  first  language.

• It is difficult  for teachers to communicate the  nature of a genre  to those who are unfamiliar with it.

2.   To develop target performance competencies.

Concepts

Competency-based occupational  education  can  be  described as  an  ap- proach focused  on  developing the  ability to perform the  activities of an occupation and  function to the  standards expected of those  employed in that occupation (Funnel & Owen, 1992). In language education, teaching oriented toward this objective presents language operationally in terms  of what people do with language and the skills they need  to do it. Courses are organized around core skills and competencies that are also subdivided into microskills and more specific competencies. This orientation can be catego- rized as a proficiency  objective, according to Stern’s classification (1992).

Research and Applications

The emphasis on performance competencies has been particularly common in workplace  ESP training, English for highly specific situations,  and  ‘shot in the arm’ projects  of limited  duration. The following example illustrates a ‘shot in the arm’ ESP project in the Middle East based on training target situation performance competencies.

Ball (1994)  reports an ESP project developed by the British Council  for bank  tellers in an Arabic-speaking  country.  The  3-day ESP course  was part of a month-long training program for bank tellers with good knowledge of banking procedures including currency transfers.  The  ESP course  aimed to provide  the tellers with English language skills to be able to process cur- rency transfers for non-Arabic-speaking customers. The course targeted two key functions for the bank  tellers: to elicit information from the customer in English and to issue a foreign  currency draft in English.

Teaching was based  around the  currency transfer form  used  in  the bank.  Instruction involved activities such as eliciting  questions used  when completing the  form  (What  is the  beneficiary’s  bank?  How much  do you want  to  transfer?). It  also  involved  role-plays  between  bank  tellers  and customers. The  role-plays  were  videoed   and  feedback   provided by the teachers on  aspects  of the  students’  language use,  such  as grammar, vo- cabulary,  and  choice  of politeness formula. The  trainees were assessed on their  ability to perform the  two key functions in English  and  were judged on this by an expatriate employee of the bank. The criterion the expatriate employee used  for  assessment  was: ‘If you were  doing  a currency transaction,  would this trainee be able to serve you effectively and  efficiently in English.

3.   To teach underlying knowledge.

Concepts

Using  a second  or  foreign  language for workplace  or  study purposes re- quires  not  only linguistic  proficiency  and  knowledge but  also knowledge and understanding of work-related and disciplinary concepts. According  to Douglas (2000),  specific-purpose language ability results  from  interaction between  specific-purpose background knowledge and language ability. ESP teaching with preexperienced students (students with limited  familiarity with their  target  workplaces  and  disciplines) may set out  to teach  specific purpose background knowledge. The  term  underlying competencies in ESP was used by Hutchinson and Waters (1985)  to refer to disciplinary concepts from  the  students’  field  of study. They  argued that  ESP should  focus on developing students’  knowledge of these  disciplinary  concepts as well as their  language skills. The  objective of teaching underlying knowledge can be classified as a cultural knowledge objective, according to Stern’s catego- rization  (1992).

Research and Applications

Kingdom.  The  study  showed  that  the  negotiations opened with a move termed establishing the credentials. In  this  move,  buyers  concentrated on their  company’s current assets and buying power, and sellers concentrated on their  company’s  fixed assets and  selling power.  However, cross-cultural differences emerged in  the  strategies  buyers  and  sellers  from  different cultures used  in approaching issues. For example, the  Iranian negotiator used  the  approach of ‘extra  benefits’  as a way of compensating for what the  seller  did  not  have, a strategy not  used  by negotiators from  different cultures. The  results  led Gimenez  to make  two proposals for teaching ne- gotiations in English for Business Purposes  courses.  First, teaching should incorporate an  exploration of  the  status-bound behavior  of  negotiators (whether buyer  or  sellers).  Second,  students should  be required to role- play  negotiations and  teachers should   use  the  role-plays  as a  basis  for discussion  on  cultural differences in strategy choice.  These  proposals are examples of ESP teaching with a focus on teaching conceptual and cultural knowledge.

4.    To develop strategic competence.

Discussions of strategic  competence have appeared in definitions of lan- guage ability in the language-testing literature. Douglas (2000)  proposes a three-part model  of specific-purpose language ability comprising language knowledge (grammatical, textual,  functional, and  sociolinguistic),  back- ground knowledge, and  strategic  competence (assessment of the  external context and  engaging a discourse domain). Douglas  argues  that  strategic competence acts as a ‘mediator’ between  the  external situational context and  the  internal language and  background knowledge that  is needed to

respond to the  communicative situation (p.  38).  Strategic  competence is the  link  between  context of situation and  language knowledge and  can be  defined as the  means  that  enables  language knowledge and  content knowledge to be used in communication.

Teaching oriented  toward  the  development of  strategic  competence aims to recognize and  work from  the  preexisting knowledge base  of the student:

The ESP teacher, for the most part, does not in any straightforward sense con- form  to the  image  of a ‘knower.’ It is true  that  he or she possesses specialist knowledge of the target language which the learner is interested in acquiring; he or she may be fortunate enough to possess some familiarity with the subject matter relevant  to the learner’s area of study or concentration. It is more likely, however . . . that the learner will possess far more  knowledge in depth in his or her own specialist field than  the teacher. (Early, 1981, p. 85)

Teaching ESP to students who have workplace  and  professional experience  who  have  experience in  study  in  their  disciplines  may  aim  to develop  the  students’  strategic  competence. The  intent is to bring  to the surface the knowledge of the subject area that the students already have and to create  opportunities for the  students to actualize  this knowledge in the target  language (in this case, English).

In the  ESP literature, Dudley-Evans and  St. John  (1998)  maintain that ESP learners bring  to language learning knowledge of their  own specialist field and communication in it. Although this knowledge may be conscious, it is often  latent  (implicit or tacit knowledge) and thus learners will not be able to control the use of that knowledge. Therefore, ‘the ESP teacher’s  job may be to develop  a more  conscious  awareness  so that  control is gained’ (p. 188). Teaching with this focus can be categorized as having a linguistic knowledge objective, according to Stern’s classification (1992).

Research and Applications

In working  with postgraduate students from  highly specialised  fields, the EAP unit  at Birmingham University developed a team  teaching approach (Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998). Their aim was to avoid situations in which

‘the  EAP teacher . . . with a smattering of knowledge in the  subject  area, and  a view of himself as an expert  on communication . . . comes to regard himself  as an  expert — or  the  expert — on  how  the  subject  ought  to  be taught, and  even  what the  subject  ought  to be ‘ (p.  152).  The  approach involved three parties  in teaching: the  EAP teacher, the  subject  specialist, and the students. The role of the teacher was to be a mediator between  the language and subject knowledge by providing language needed to express the content.

5.   To foster critical awareness.

Concepts.

Teaching objectives listed in the previous sections are based on a common understanding that  the  role  of ESP is to help  students fit into  their  target academic, professional, or  workplace  environments. Despite  differences among  the  objectives, all have the  overriding goal of enabling students to become accepted members of those  target  environments, and  all have a shared  understanding that  ESP can  best help  students attain  this end  by helping them  develop  the  skills and  knowledge they need  to produce ac- ceptable language in those  environments. Thus conventionally the role of ESP has been construed in terms of helping English language learners meet the demands and expectations of the target  environment, to close the gap between  the  students’  present state of skills and  knowledge and  the  level required by members of the  target  environment.

ESP has most often been seen as a pragmatic venture  that helps students become familiar  with established communicative practices  (Allison,  1996,

1998).  Benesch  (1996)  describes  critical  approaches as a reaction to the pragmatic ESP/EAP perspective that ‘changing existing forms is unrealistic whereas promoting them  is practical’  (p. 736). A critical orientation of ESP has led to the accusation that ESP has been a force for accommodation and conservatism (modifying students to suit established norms  in the  target environment and  maintaining the  status  quo  of those  environments). By seeking to prepare non-native speaker students for target discourse commu- nities, ESP may have inadvertently endorsed practices  and  norms  of target environments. Thus, ESP may be in part responsible for the maintenance of norms  and practices  not all of which are necessarily desirable.

Critical  language awareness  . . . should  not  push  learners into  oppositional practices which condemn them to disadvantage and marginalisation; it should equip  them  with the  capacities  and  understanding which are preconditions for meaningful choice  and  effective citizenship in the  domain of language. (Fairclough, 1992, p.54.)

In a discussion of EAP, Coleman (1996) draws attention to the distinction between  autonomous and  ideological functions of  language education. An autonomous view assumes that  education has the  same function or set of functions in every society, that  there is one  possible set of behaviors  ap- propriate for all systems of higher educations that  can be used to evaluate the  adequacy  of any educational enterprise. An ideological view assumes that the functions are culturally embedded. Each society or culture creates its own function and  there are  no  ‘universally relevant  roles’ (p.  2). The function or set of functions differs according to societies. Coleman critiques EAP for conventionally adhering to an autonomous view in which teaching has tended to assume the ubiquity of patterns, skills, and procedures. When EAP course  participants (students and  academics  from  other parts  of the world)  are  found not  to share  these,  EAP has tended to fault the  participants for thinking in ‘illogical,’ ‘vague,’ and  ‘unclear ways’ and  failing to give regards  to diverse ways of thinking (p. 8).

The emergence of critical perspectives  has led to discussion in the world of ESP. This  is illustrated in  the  debate about  EAP between  Allison and Pennycook that  appeared in  English for Specific  Purposes  Journal (Allison,

1996, 1998; Pennycook, 1997b). Allison (1996)  argued that the role of EAP had  always been  and  should  continue to be essentially pragmatic. Penny- cook  (1997b) challenged the  conventional role  of EAP and  accused  EAP of ‘vulgar’ pragmaticism in that  it had  focused  almost  exclusively on  the everyday concerns of developing courses and materials  and needs  analysis.

Research and Applications

EAP studies  have set out  to investigate  diverse ways of thinking in the  at- tempt  to move away from  ‘autonomous’ views of academic values. Jin and Cortezzi  (1996)  investigated  the  understandings of Chinese  postgraduate students in the United Kingdom of academic work. Bloor and Bloor (1991) investigated   the  writing  problems of  non-native   speaker  students in  an academic writing program in a U.K. university in relation to norms  in the students’  home  cultures. Cadman (1997)  explored the difficulties faced by a small group of international students writing humanities and  arts theses in an Australian  university. Cadman traced  the way the students positioned themselves  in relation to the  claims they made.  She found links between the positioning the students took and  the identity  of ‘the student’ in their home  cultures.

Benesch’s study revealed  that the students found the amount of reading required in one of their psychology papers unmanageable. This led Benesch to provide conventional EAP support in the form of classroom reading skills activities and to try to improve the situation by arranging for the psychology professor  to visit the EAP class for a discussion on one of the topics covered in the psychology curriculum. In addition, Benesch  attempted to raise the students’  social awareness  and  transform their  perceptions of themselves. At the time, elections  for governor of New York were being  held.  Benesch used this opportunity to have the students in her  EAP class to write letters to  the  candidates. In  the  letters,  the  students questioned proposals for cutting educational funding, proposals that  would directly affect them.  In these ways, the EAP course was used to involve the students in political and social processes.

Bibliography

a.    Book “Ideas and Options in English for Specific Purposes” by Helen Basturkmen

b.    http://www.carla.umn.edu/specific-purposes-in.english/definitions.html (online)

c.    http://www.eastwestreport.org/articles/ew11411.html (online)