From Developments in English for Specific Purposes

1. CourseTitle: An Introduction to English for Specific Purposes
Course Material: Developments in English for Specific Purposes (Dudley-Evans & John)
Lecturer: Maryam Farnia
Payame Noor University

2.  It refers to any English teaching that relates to a study purpose.
Students whose first language is not English may need help with
both the language of academic disciplines and the specific study
skills required of them during their academic course.
 As the study situation changes, the emphasis on different skills
also needs to change.
 The key aspect here is the extent to which either English or the
national language is used as the medium of instruction for subject
courses.

3.  There are four types of situation and that teachers need to look carefully
at accounts of courses and materials before deciding whether they are
relevant to their situation.
 The key determinant of what an EAP course should contain is whether or
not the subject course is taught in English .Teachers need to think
carefully about whether the success claimed for one kind of situation
will transfer to another.
 For example: Materials teaching note-taking from lectures on a pre-
sessional course in a British university are unlikely to be relevant to
teaching note-making for reading an EFL situation .

5.  Pre-sessional vs. In-sessional courses
 The pre-sessional courses (pre-study course) : it focuses on both academic
language and the study skills related to all the main skills.The courses aim
to prepare students for the studies they are about to embark upon.
Therefore, the focus is on common-core academic language and skills .
 In sessional work : it runs in parallel with the subject course and therefore
provides the opportunity for integrated subject- language teaching and
more specific work on the key skills of academic listening, writing and
reading, as well as more common-core EAP courses. (both language and
subject course is run in parallel.)

6.  Growth of EAP in ESL countries such as Anglophone countries likeAfrica,
Nigeria and south east Asian countries like Singapore.
 Students needs are in the area of study skills and adjusting to the nature
of language.
 Needs of students span the needs of non-native speakers following an
English-medium course and those of native speakers in need of
developing communicative skills.
 Up to university, they work on general English EAP in ESL situations

7.  developing common-core study skills courses for students from a mixture of disciplines
focusing particularly on reading and writing skills.
 Concentrating more on specific and subject-related courses have been more successful
in motivating students and their needs.
 Preparing students for the communication tasks, including three key objective:
1.To communicate technical and business information effectively in the work and academic
setting in several modes: written, oral, etc.
2.To adapt material prepared in one form for presentation in another. For example, to adapt
a written business proposal for a boardroom presentation.
3. To communicate effectively with specialist and non-specialist audiences in job-related
tasks. For example, writing memos and letters.

8.  Situations which certain subjects are taught in English
 There is no particular or general tradition of English-medium education in the
country, and the school system mostly uses the national language to teach all
subjects.
 Thus students have to make the adjustment from studying all subjects in their
national language at school level to studying subjects such as science, medicine
and engineering in English at university level. (Students have to adapt what they
have learnt in their national language to English).
 The courses are teaching with lower level of English than ESL.
 Lectures are in a mixture of English and national language. Examinations and
assignments are in English.

9.  The crucial thing is, How English is really used?
 Formal orderVs . informal order Formal
 Formal order is the official view of how the course runs and
how students succeed or fail within system .
 Informal order is the same institution asperceived and
operated by its members

10.  The medium of instruction= the national language.
 Class methodology: it resembles a problem-solving classes in
applied discourse analysis with the teacher and students analyzing
in great details the workings of an English text.
 For example, the classes are taught in Portuguese and this enable
the teacher to lead some very detailed discussions about the
linguistic features of the text and the techniques of deducing
meaning from the text .The commitment of the teachers and
their involvement in the writing of materials lead to high
motivation .

11.  The motivation problem ignores the real needs of students.
 In theory , their focus is on skills , but in practice, students are
more motivated by the materials than the skills.
 The classes are in-sessional.
 Delayed needs vs. Immediate needs
 Problem= English is taught just in the first year of academic
education.
 The mismatch between the institutions perception of students’
needs and their real or true needs and wants lead to lack of
student motivation.

12.  EGAP refers to the teaching of the skills and language that are
common to all disciplines .
 EGAP isolates the skills associated with study activities such
as reading textbooks, listening to lectures, writing essays,
dissertations, reports, etc.
 For example: reading almost any textbook involves
understanding the main ideas, making notes on the main
ideas, to skim to understand the main idea, etc.

13.  ESAP : refers to the teaching of the features that distinguish
one discipline from anothers.
 ESAP integrates the skills work of EGAP with help for
students in their actual subject tasks. It adapts a
developmental role by showing how students can transfer the
skills they have learnt in EGAP classes to the understanding of
their actual lecture or reading texts.
 This kind of work generally involves cooperation .

14.  Widdowson’s dichotomy of training and education
 Training involves the development of certain skills and
familiarity with specific schemata. ESAP concerns with
training.
 Education aims to develop a general capacity or set of
procedures to cope with a wide range of needs. EGAP
concerns with education.

15.  For subject-specific work, there are three levels of
cooperation:
1.Cooperation
2.Collaboration
3.Team-teaching

16.  It involves the language teacher taking the initiative in asking questions
and gathering information about the students’ subject course, how
English fits into their course and what the department and students see
as priorities.
 This is part of theTarget Situation Analysis required for needs analysis .
 It is finding out about the conceptual and discoursal framework of the
subjects students are studying and occasionally introducing material that
provides a slightly different perspective on that content.

17.  Cooperation is encouraged by the language teacher taking an
interest in other aspects of the courses that students are
following.
 In any discipline there is a discourse of cycle which encapsulates
the basic underlying principles of the discipline taught in the first
year of the undergraduate programme . i.e. there is a relationship
between the past (process) and the present (product) features of
the discipline which we call it discourse cycle.

18.  Collaboration involves the more direct working together of language and subject, to
prepare students for particular tasks or courses.
 In collaboration the language and subject teacher work together outside the classroom.
 Three options for collaborative work:
1. The planning of a series of classes where the language class prepares the students for a
subsequent subject class taught in English.
2. The running of a class on a specific skill or related to a specific task where the subject
department has a specific input to the materials or the language teacher uses material
produced by the department.
3. The adjunct model in which the adjunct acts as back-up class to the subject, helping
students with difficulties with that class.
 Adjunct model: the adjunct classes focus on the difficulties that students are facing in the
following lectures, reading the prescribed texts or writing the assignment set.

19.  It is the actual working together in the classroom of the
subject and language specialists : team-teaching.
 Team-teaching usually focuses on two skills of listening
comprehension and academic writing.

20.  Listening comprehension Involves the recording of a subject lecture and
the setting up of a follow-up tutorial run by both the language and the
subject lecturer who actually gave the lecture.
 The procedure is in four stages:
1. The language lecturer records the subject lecture.
2. The language lecturer listens to the recording and prepares handout
with comprehension questions on key points of the lecture and a check
on understanding of the language used in it.
3. The language lecturer checks the questions with the subject lecturer.
4. The session itself.

21.  The focus is on the writing of examination answers.
 The subject lecturer chooses a relevant question, and the
language teacher manages the discussion about the meaning
of the question and the planning of the answer.
 The subject lecturer again acts as a kind of advisor
commenting on the students’ suggestions about the meaning
of the question and the plan.
 The session often ends with students writing part of the
answer and both lecturers providing feedback .

22. 1. As far as possible the roles of the two teachers have been
clearly defined.
2. The program makes relatively few demands on the time of
an individual subject lecturer.
3. There is a mutual respect between the two teachers and an
acceptance of the others’ professionalism in his or her area
of specialization.

23. 1. Begin with cooperation
2. Discuss with subject teachers points about their courses and
the way they use language
3. When everything goes well, extend to collaboration and then
to team-teaching.

24.  As noted In introduction, EAP is divided into: English for
Science andTechnology (EST) English for Medical purpose
(EMP) English for Legal Purpose (ELP)
 What is problematic about these categories is that they seem
to fall between two points: on one hand, the focus on
common-core EAP and, on the other, the concentration on
the particular features of a specific discipline that we have
emphasized in the previous section on cooperation.

25.  Do the very disparate discipline in science and technology such as
geology, biology ,etc. have features in common that distinguishes
them as a set of disciplines from courses in the social sciences and
humanities?
 When we discuss a more specialist branch of ESP, such as Medical
English it is not always clear whether we are talking about the
needs of medical students (EAP), or practicing doctors, or
consultants in hospital (EOP) each of these groups needs
awareness of and an ability to use different genres. Medical
students , for example, have to read textbooks and articles, and
write essays and short clinical reports .

26.  These are EAP needs: practicing doctors have different needs;
as well as reading specialist articles, they may prepare paper
and slide presentations for conferences and, if working in an
English-speaking country, interact with patients in English .
These are EOP needs.
 Nurses have EAP needs while following the academic part of
their course and EOP needs when on ward.