ESP

English for Specific Purpose



English for Specific Purpose

Introduction

Learning is not only a process but also a product. The process entails the steps taken to learn and the product is the expectations and the goals set as a consequence of learning outcomes. Hence, learning should be seen with respect to the context in which the learning is to take place. English for specific purpose has been classified into two broad categories. These are Educational ESP and Occupational ESP. The Educational ESP was later divided into sub-categories. English as Academic Purposes is one of the sub-categories of educational ESP. The teaching and learning of English for Specific purpose (ESP) has always been an interesting topic for researchers of L2 writing (O'Dowd, 2003, p. 118).

The fault with the academic writing books and tutorials that helped students of English for Specific Purpose is that it did not enable students to come up with their own written material. That is to say that the students could not do academic writing.

The importance of teaching and learning ESL may be understood from the fact that each year there are tens and thousands of people who migrate to different countries across Europe. The students who come to UK have to be fluent in English so that they may be able to come at par with the other more fluent speakers of English students in their class or program. Not being able to speak English or failing to produce quality academic writing can put these students at a disadvantage (Hyland, 2006, p. 83). These students must be provided with equal opportunities of learning ESL. In addition, the assessment criterion for academic writing is the same for all the students whether their native language is English or not.

Academic writing, in very broad terms, may be defined as the piece of work created by students for the courses they take at university such as Assignments, Research reports and other materials submitted as a graded or ungraded part of the course work. In other words, any writing that takes place in the academy may be referred to as academic writing. Because of the shortcomings of the books that are available for perusal for the students to help with their academic writing, there existed a need to come up with novel approaches on teaching of writing in an ESP context (Henry, 1998, p. 147). The paper summarizes and critiques the main approaches to the teaching of writing. In doing so, it also relates the writer's personal experience with learning ESP.

ESL academic writing courses have been divided into basic, intermediate and advanced level. The orientations in the latter two courses can be either based on Pattern-centered approaches, Functional approaches, Process-centred approaches or Content-based approaches.

Genre Based Approach

The many theories on L2 writing instructions have always had the process at their centre. Most of the techniques used in this teaching and learning have adopted theories in cognitive psychology. This was an attempt to refine both teaching and ...