ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSE PROGRAM

DEVELOPMENT
(PBI 748)

SESSION 2:
ESP AND LANGUAGE SKILLS

BY
Dr. IKHFI IMANIAH, M.Pd.

UNIVERSITAS ESA UNGGUL

2021
 SESSION 2
ESP AND LANGUAGE SKILLS

A. LEARNING OBJECTIVE
The students are able to understand the core of ESP and language skills,
e.g. listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Moreover, they can explore
the activities of ESP on those skills.

B. ESP AND LANGUAGE SKILLS

Chapters in this section also explore the implications of English as a lingua
franca (ELF) for both English for academic purposes (EAP) and English for
occupational purposes (EOP), raising questions about the usefulness of
distinctions between native and non-native speakers or even between
English as a second language (ESL) and English for specific purposes (ESP)
that have been dominant in ESP. These questions also remind us that learner
identity is implicated in all skills development, that learners come to any
learning context with a history, desires, needs and wants that will shape how
they learn what is being taught (Kanno & Norton, 2003).
As several of the authors of these important chapters tell us, developments
in technology are impacting on research and pedagogy in exciting ways that
are of relevance for both teachers and researchers. Corpus linguistics, for
example, is central to studies of vocabulary and large corpora of academic
lectures and other oral communications are now available for analysis and
the development of authentic learning materials (Paltridge & Starfield, 2013).
As Christine Feak and Christine Goh point out, historically research into
written genres has tended to take precedence over studies of oral
communication in ESP, possibly because, as is the case with EAP, they have
been seen as more critical to success. Until fairly recently, as Feak reminds
us, there were also significant methodological barriers to collecting spoken
data. It is now possible to collect and code large amounts of spoken data
using relatively inexpensive yet powerful equipment. In all these skills areas
learners are being expected to engage with texts that are increasingly
multimodal, and frequently digital, increasing demands on both learners and
teachers while suggesting interesting research possibilities.
In Christine Feak’ s chapter on speaking, she discusses the development of
speaking corpora such as the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English
(MICASE), the British Academic Spoken English corpus (BASE), the English
as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings corpus (ELFA), and the Vienna
Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) and the possibilities they
afford for deepening our understanding of speaking across contexts and in
lingua franca settings. The chapter reviews studies of speaking in academic
settings, and in a number of workplace and professional settings, some of
which are fairly well known and others of growing importance such as call
centres and aviation. Our attention is also drawn to emerging areas of
research such as conference presentations and humour and we are asked to
reflect on taken for granted assumptions about native and non-native
speakers’ speaking needs and the extent to which ELF speakers want to
achieve native speaker - like competence.
Christine Goh’ s up to date review of research on ESP listening examines the
construct of ESP listening and provides a detailed account of what is involved
in the development of listening skills and the metacognitive processes
needed for successful listening. She identifies a need for more research into
listening in non- academic contexts as most of the studies she reviews have
been in EAP settings. She clearly identifies areas for further research and
provides recommendations for teaching.
Alan Hirvela’ s chapter provides a thorough review of ESP approaches to
teaching reading from the early days of ESP to the present day. While earlier
approaches may have focussed more on discrete reading skills, current
approaches tend to adopt more situated and integrated approaches. Clearly
as he points out, reading and writing have had a reciprocal relationship from
the early work of John Swales (1981) on article introductions to more recent
work on genre pedagogy as the analysis of specialized texts is seen as key
to students’ learning to ultimately reproduce these genres. Although the focus
in this chapter is on reading in academic contexts, the theoretical and
pedagogical concerns noted would be applicable to other contexts too.
Ken Hyland’ s chapter pursues the notion that writing, like the other skills
discussed in this section, is not a generic transferable skill but is a literacy
practice, highly dependent on the specific social contexts in which particular
 texts are produced and received. He identifies three approaches to ESP
writing research: genre analysis, contextual studies which move beyond
looking solely at rhetorical structure to more qualitative explorations of the
environment in which texts are being produced via, for example, methods
such as observation, surveys, diaries, inter- views and focus group
discussions, and critical studies which focus on “how social relations, identity,
knowledge and power are constructed through written (and spoken) texts”
and how ideologies work to ensure that some texts have greater social value
than others. In her chapter on vocabulary, Averil Coxhead, opens her
discussion of this topic by posing the apparently straightforward question
“What vocabulary do ESP learners need?” Beginning with an examination of
definitions of specialized or technical vocabulary and of different approaches
to conceptualizing vocabulary and ESP, she then moves beyond single words
to lexical patterning in ESP, illustrating that, in fact, there are no simple
answers to this question. She concludes by looking at some of the challenges
for bringing ESP research on vocabulary into classrooms (Paltridge &
Starfield, 2013).

C. ESP AND SPEAKING

Introduction
The research lens of English for specific purposes (ESP) would appear to be
overall somewhat more focussed on writing than speaking. One factor
contributing to this phenomenon is that in some ESP contexts, specifically
English for academic purposes (EAP), written genres rather than oral genres
have been considered as more central to professional success. EAP - English
for Academic Purposes - refers to the language and associated practices that
people need in order to undertake study or work in English medium higher
education. The objective of an EAP course, then, is to help these people learn
some of the linguistic and cultural–mainly institutional and disciplinary-
practices involved in studying or working through the medium of English.
EAP is often considered to be a branch of English Language Teaching (ELT),
although not all EAP teachers have come though the ELT route. It is a type
of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) - along with English for Professional
Purposes (EPP) and English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) - in that the
teaching content is explicitly matched to the language, practices and study
needs of the learners. It is also considered to be ESP if we take Robinson's
(1991, pp. 2-5) features which are usually thought of as being typical defining
characteristics of ESP courses.
1. First, ESP is goal directed - the learners are not learning the English
language for the sake of it, but because they need, or will need, to use
English in their professional or academic lives. EAP learners are usually
current higher education students or members of staff or they are hoping
to go on to higher education after their EAP course. They need to learn
English in order to succeed in their academic careers.
2. Second, ESP courses must be based on an analysis of needs, which
aims to specify as closely as possible exactly what it is that the learners
have to do through the medium of English. This means taking into
account of the opinions of all the various stakeholders. For an
undergraduate student, this could mean the learner, his or her parents,
and sponsors, present and future lecturers, examiners, administrators,
materials writers etc. EAP, therefore, involves an attitude to learning and
teaching that believes that it is possible and useful to specify what
language and linguistic practices are required in a particular academic
context and that it is worthwhile to focus teaching on this. For that reason,
one important feature of EAP courses is the close attention that is paid to
the learners’ aims and what they are working on, studying or planning to
study. It is also important to take into account the learning or study needs
of the students, what they need to do in order to learn the language. The
first stage in any EAP, and EPP or EOP, course, therefore, is to find out
exactly why the learners are learning English and what language and
practices they will need to pay attention to.
3. Often there is a very clearly specified period for the ESP course.
Most EAP students are undertaking fixed term courses in preparation for
a particular task – such as an essay, dissertation or conference
presentation - or an academic course or they are studying English for a
short time every week along with their academic courses or jobs.
4. ESP learners tend to be adults rather than children. Most EAP
students are over 18 and they will either have made a difficult decision to
 study in an English medium university or, for example, researching,
publishing or teaching in English may be a requirement.
5. Learners may need specialist language, but this is not necessarily so.
It is the linguistic tasks – including language and practices - that the
students will need to engage in that define the course. As with all ESP,
an EAP lecturer would not take a text and ask, "What can I do with this
text?" The starting point is always, "What do my learners have to do?
What texts will they need to read? What will my students need to do with
this text and how can we help them to do it?"
6. In some cases, a very high level of proficiency is not necessarily
required, as long as the learners can succeed in their aims. Students,
for example, need to be able to understand their lectures, fellow students
and textbooks and obtain good marks for assignments and examinations.
The role of the EAP lecturer is to find ways to enable them to do this -
getting their present tenses correct may not be as important as
understanding the overall structure of the report they have to write.

There is often discussion whether these two terms - EAP and study skills -
mean the same. It is useful to make a distinction between general study skills
that are not concerned with language and language study skills that will
probably form part of an EAP course. There are many study skills books
available and they usually concentrate on matters such as where to study,
when to study, time management, remembering, developing study habits,
filing and organising books, how to spend leisure time and so on, although
they do often deal with aspects of study skills that involve language such as
planning essays and taking notes. These general study skills are obviously
important to our students in higher education, but they are not usually the
main objective of EAP courses. The main objective of EAP courses is to
teach the language, both general academic language and subject specific
language as well as language related practices such as summarising and
writing introductions. The language of the learners' academic subject and
language related study skills will form the main component of the EAP skills
classes.
Areas of Inquiry: An Overview
English for Academic Purposes Speaking
Speaking as the most demanding skill to be mastered in the ESL/EFL
teaching context. This is caused by the prime priority of students who want
to study English in order to be able to use English for communicative
purposes. Knowledge of language functions has a vital role in supporting a
speaker to be more involved in the real interaction. The aims of this study are
to identify and analyse the kinds of language functions and how their use in
the speaking for academic purposes course (Menggo et al., 2019).
The Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education of the
Republic Indonesia has legalized Indonesian qualification frameworks
which aim to manage Indonesian qualification standards for higher education
throughout Indonesia. An Indonesian qualification framework has categorized
three types of speaking subjects include informal speaking, formal speaking
and speaking for academic purposes (Direktorat Jenderal Pembelajaran dan
Kemahasiswaan, 2018). The learning outcome of informal speaking is
students are able to speak English at the pre-intermediate level in informal
interaction settings, formal speaking encourages students to be able to speak
English in the formal interaction settings. Then, speaking for academic
purposes students are boosted to speak English at the advanced level
fluently, accurately, and acceptably by using a several of language functions
in formal activities.
Learners unaware of the importance of talk for learning may think of talk as
just usual chat – and learning falls away as they slip into social talk. This
notion engages speaking skill is significantly to be mastered by ESL/EFL
learners (Choi & Nunan, 2018). In line with Choi & Nunan, Harmer (2012)
said that speaking is a skill to convey thought, idea or opinion precisely
toward interlocutor (Menggo et al., 2019). Similarly, Kayi (2006:1) defines
speaking as the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of
verbal and non-verbal symbols in a variety of contexts. Moreover, Celce-
Murcia (2001:112) states that speaking is a mean of communication in which
there are two ways relationship between speakers and listeners, which has
certain purposes either in social life interaction or pedagogy of the classroom
interaction (Menggo et al., 2019). A speaker is sued to convey the thought
effectively; therefore she/he must understand what will be communicated. A
speaker must be able to evaluate his/her communication effect toward
interlocutor and know the basic principles in the communication either
generally or personally.
A speaker is strongly suggested to understand some important components
to make the message ca be easily understood by interlocutor, such as (1)
the utterance or pronunciation of speaker should be clear and accurate; (2)
conveying the ideas must be in the complete sentences. It must be clear the
position of main idea and supporting ideas in the utterance; (3) a speaker
must be able to develop main idea by providing the examples; (4) the
utterances delivered are in line with interlocutor’s cognition rank; and (5) a
speaker may use verbal and non-verbal communications in assisting
interlocutor’s comprehension.
In achieving the learning outcome of speaking for academic purposes
course, a speaker should understand micro and macro skills of speaking
itself (Brown, 2004:142-143) in (Menggo et al., 2019). Brown further
described about micro skills in speaking are (1) speaker is able to produce
chunks of language of different lengths, orally producing differences among
English phoneme and allophonic variants; (2) be able to produce English
stress pattern, words in stressed and unstressed position, rhythmic structure,
and intonation contours; (3) be able to produce reduced forms of words and
phrases, using and adequate number of lexical units (words) in order to
accomplish pragmatic purposes, producing fluent speech at different rates of
delivery; (4) be able to monitor one’s own oral production and use various
strategies devices-pauses, filler, self-correction, backtracking to enhance the
clarity of the message; (5) be able to use grammatical words lasses (noun,
verb, etc), system (e.g. tense, agreement, pluralization, word order, pattern,
rules, and elliptical forms; (6) be able to produce speech in natural
constituents in appropriate phrases, phrases, pauses group, and sentences,
expressing a particular meaning in different grammatical forms; (7) be able to
use cohesive devices in spoken discourse.
Moreover, the macro skills in speaking are (1) speaker is able use
appropriate styles, registers, implicature, redundancies, pragmatic
conventions, and conventions rules, floor keeping and yielding, interrupting,
 and other sociolinguistics features in face to face conversations; (2) be able
to convey the links and connections between events communicate such
relations as focal and peripheral ideas, events and feeling, supporting ideas
of new information and given information, generalization and exemplification;
(3) be able to use facial features, kinesics, body language, and other
nonverbal cues along with the verbal language to convey meanings; and (4)
be able to develop and use a battery of speaking strategies, such as
emphasizing key words, rephrasing, providing a context for interpreting the
meaning of words, appealing for help, and finding how well one’s interlocutor
is understanding other.

D. ESP AND LISTENING

Introduction
In a recent review of materials for English for specific purposes (ESP),
McDonough (2010) identified over 20 professional areas in which English
was needed for effective communication. These included aviation,
commerce, customer care, engineering, finance, human resources,
information technology, law, law enforcement, maritime communication,
media, medicine, nursing, telecommunications, and tourism. Two points
arising from McDonough’ s review are particularly relevant to the discussion
of ESP and listening in this chapter. Firstly, for most if not all of the materials
surveyed, the explicit emphasis was on learning specialized vocabulary.
While grammar and language skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing)
are also important in many of the materials she described, the emphasis
given to each of these areas was uneven. Where oral communication skills
are crucial to an area of work (for example, aviation and maritime
communication) the focus tended to be on speaking and the correct
pronunciation of technical words. On the whole, attention to listening in the
materials McDonough surveyed took the form of tried - and - tested language
teaching techniques (e.g. gap filling, sentence/ dialogue completion, picture
questions and labelling diagrams) while, in other cases where speaking was
emphasized, attention to listening was incidental. Secondly, there is a
disjunction between ESP teaching and research. McDonough observed that
many of the materials she reviewed did not seem to have been based on
research. Although this observation was about ESP in general, it is especially
true of listening in the area of English for occupational purposes, where so
little research has been carried out. In academic listening, where more
research has been conducted over the past few decades, we are beginning
to see materials that pay greater attention to issues such as culture and
discourse that are based on research.
A further point that merits consideration in our discussion of ESP listening is
the limited interface between general ESL listening and listening for specific
purposes. Although the labels they bear seem to imply differences between
the two types of listening, in fact the two share many fundamental
characteristics. Fulcher’ s (1999) discussion of content validity in English for
academic purposes (EAP) tests offers insights that can help illuminate this.
He argued that EAP testing within the broader framework of ESP had
focussed too much on subject knowledge and this had detracted from the
main purpose of drawing valid inferences about language knowledge, skills
or abilities from test scores. This situation had arisen, Fulcher reasoned, as
a result of the perceived need within EAP to be “authentic” by ensuring that
relevant content from real life is included. Fulcher further highlighted research
which showed that variance in EAP test scores had been mostly due to
language proficiency, not subject knowledge. From Fulcher’ s discussion, we
may draw the following implication for ESP listening: While specificity of
subject/domain content for ESP listening is useful, it is the general ability to
listen in the target language (ESL listening competence) that would have a
greater impact on learners’ overall ESP listening performance.
One reason for the perceived differences between ESP and ESL listening is
the assumption that learners who require ESP training already possess some
level of proficiency in the language that enables them to communicate in
English. Learning materials for these learners therefore tend to focus on
developing the specific vocabulary of the field of work or study, a conclusion
that McDonough (2010) drew from her survey of current ESP materials. In
the aviation industry, for example, pilots, air traffic controllers and ground
crew are expected to use and recognize phrases specific to their area of work
so that they can communicate effectively with speakers of English from
different countries. Similarly, students enrolled in English - speaking
universities are expected to have a level of mastery of English as indicated
by scores on international standardized tests of English such as the Test of
English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), the IELTS (International English
Language Testing Service) test, and the Michigan English Language
Assessment Battery (MELAB). The purpose of academic listening instruction
in tertiary institutions is typically to develop skills such as lecture
comprehension that will help these students participate and succeed in
academic or academic - related discourse.
Feak and Salehzadeh (2001), in discussing the challenges in developing a
video listening placement assessment, noted that some academic listening
programs also valued, amongst other things, students being active in the
classroom beyond the act of note - taking. It is important therefore that EAP
learners have strong listening comprehension skills not only for
understanding lectures but also for interacting with others in face - to - face
communication. Equal attention should therefore be given to helping learners
improve their basic comprehension processes and to addressing
comprehension problems they face as second language listeners. In some
English for occupational purposes (EOP) contexts, the basic listening
proficiency of learners may be even weaker than that of those studying in
tertiary institutions. In other words, ESP listening teachers could do more
by way of pedagogy to enhance comprehension processes that
influence how learners make sense of what they hear in a language over
which they have inadequate control. It would be beneficial to the field
therefore if material writers and researchers were cognizant of the discussion
and research in general second language (L2) listening, and their possible
implications for ESP listening pedagogy.

Areas of Inquiry: An Overview

English for Academic Purposes Listening
Listening is the receptive skill that we use the most in everyday and
professional life. Moreover, listening is the underlying skill that helps master
a foreign language and thus require proper attention in the teaching practice.
The main difficulty with developing good listening skills is the fact that it
involves understanding spoken language, which is different from written
language in many ways. First of all, spoken language disappears as soon as
the speaker finishes talking, and it is often impossible to ask for repeat. Also,
spoken language is typically not very well organized, containing incomplete
sentences, single words, frequent changes of topic, and so on. Finally, we
might need to listen to a wide range of text types, for example, lectures,
announcements, interviews, news reports, all being produced at a
different speed and in various accents. As a result, one should rely a lot
on intonation, gestures and facial expression of the speaker as well as on the
context of interaction to get a better comprehension of the spoken language.
For that reason, it is essential to differentiate between a number of
listening sub-skills, and concern yourself with both top-down and bottom-
up listening practice. The difference between top-down and bottom-up
listening strategies is that the former suggests focusing on the general
meaning of the message, while the latter involves understanding at a sound
or word level. As such, most common top-down listening activities include
comprehension questions, predicting, guessing, listing, sequencing
information, and require drawing on one’s background knowledge of the
listening context, topic, speakers, etc. Bottom-up listening activities, on the
other hand, are made to pay close attention to particular details of the
language used in the listening text, such as the pronunciation, grammar, and
vocabulary, so that one needs to separate the stream of speech into
individual words, and decode the sound signal bit by bit.
Most ESP practitioners tend to prefer top-down activities to bottom-up
ones, saying that the ability to recognize the topic and the key words of a
listening situation will help the listener cope with unfamiliar vocabulary or
grammar structures it may contain. However, in real-life listening, we have to
use both strategies, relying more on either of these two, depending on the
reasons for listening. Bottom-up approach to listening is data-driven,
while top-down approach is a conceptually-driven process. In fact,
different cognitive skills are involved when we start decoding and interpreting
the listening text, coming in the end to adequate comprehension of the
information we hear and preparing a relevant response. Therefore, both top-
down and bottom-up strategies of processing the aural input must be
practised in the foreign language classroom, fostering the development of
different listening sub-skills.
There have been made several attempts to design an overall taxonomy of
listening sub-skills, and probably the most detailed classification of listening
micro-skills, which is built on various communicative purposes for listening
in a social action, include:
1. listening for gist (listen for global understanding, that is to understand the
main idea);
2. listening for specific information (listen to find out some details, key
words, etc.);
3. listening in detail (listen to understand as much information as possible);
4. listening for mood/ attitude (listen to identify the attitude, feeling, or mood
the speaker is expressing);
5. inferring meaning from context (guess the meaning of an unknown word
by using the information in a situation);
6. predicting content (use clues or prior general knowledge to make it easier
to understand what you hear);
7. relating the listening text to the social and situational context;
8. recognizing the communicative function of the listening text;
9. intensive listening (listen to focus primarily on how language is used).

It should be noted here that ESP listening sub-skills are typically integrated
skills in the sense that they are combined with one or more other language
skills. For example, in the academic settings listening to lectures is usually
accompanied with notes-taking, and in the business meetings listeners must
be able not only to listen critically, but also respond quickly and accurately.
In this respect, it is advisable to design wisely the successive steps in an
ESP listening lesson. Pre-listening stage must prepare the learners for
what they are going to hear by activating their schemata to predict the
content of the listening text. At while-listening stage the learners are
exposed to the aural input to fulfil a certain task – listen for gist, listen for
specific information, or listen in detail. They can be encouraged to check their
answers in pairs or groups, and listen to the recording for the second time,
either to check themselves and get more confidence, or to answer more
detailed questions. In any case, it is important that the learners should be
given a different task to do every time they listen again to the same recording.
The final post-listening stage lies in checking answers in class, discussing
language difficulties, such as particular grammar, phonology, unknown
vocabulary, functional language, etc., and completing a follow-on speaking
or writing activity as a response to what has been heard and discussed.
In general, pre-listening activities may include discussions of questions or
statements, doing quizzes, analysing/ ordering pictures, making predictions,
and brainstorming. It might be reasonable to pre-teach some of the
vocabulary (meaning, pronunciation, form) as well. Among while-listening
activities one can find checking predictions, matching/ ordering pictures,
answering general questions (listening for gist); finding specific data (e.g.
names, dates, countries, numbers), sequencing, gap- filling (listening for
specific information); True-False statements, open questions, multiple
choice questions (listening in detail). As for post-listening tasks, they can
focus on language (vocabulary, grammar, phonology, functional language)
and/ or development of productive skills (speaking/ writing), leading to such
activities as role plays, discussions/ debates, projects, writing a review,
summary, essay, report, etc (Maslova, n.d.).
Another thing to consider is the fact that compared to general English classes
ESP lessons tend to be based more on practical tasks and authentic listening
materials are vital. Therefore, both ESP practitioners and learners must have
access to various technologies, like corpora and audio visual media on the
internet, that offer plenty of opportunities to practise listening skills relevant
to academic or workplace-related demands. What is more important, these
resources can be employed for increasing the pragmatic awareness of often
subconscious rules of discourse management and sociolinguistic language
use in academic and professional communication contexts. In this
connection, authentic videos (interviews, news reports, conference talks,
lectures) are considered as the most useful source for ESP listening
comprehension activities as they represent the behaviour of speakers and
can be analysed in terms of verbal and non-verbal means of communication.
Given the diversity in the range of ESP learning needs and discourse
conventions, a further research must be certainly done to gain a deeper
understanding about the development of ESP listening skills but the present
overview may serve as a helpful tool in designing a productive ESP lesson.

Exploring the Construct of ESP Listening

The goal of second language listening instruction is to develop active listeners
and this is also the goal of the more defined area of ESP listening. The term
“active listener” refers to “someone who constructs reasonable interpretations
on the basis of an underspecified input and recognizes when more specific
information is required. The active listener asks for the needed information
(Brown 1990:172). To listen actively, language learners need to:
1. have an available source of relevant knowledge to support cognitive
processing;
2. use listening skills to facilitate comprehension and interaction;
3. engage in metacognitive processes to enhance and regulate their own
comprehension and listening development. (Paltridge & Starfield, 2013)
Active listening can occur in all types of listening contexts and is not
restricted to situations where the individual is interacting with others. It is
needed when one is talking to another person (interactive listening) or when
listening to a talk or a lecture (one-way listening). In interactive listening,
listeners engage their interlocutors in repeating and explaining messages to
obtain greater clarity in their attempt to construct an understanding of the
message. In one-way listening, where the context does not allow them to do
this, active listeners will make use of appropriate strategies to cope with
difficulties and facilitate their comprehension by making predictions or
drawing inferences, as well as monitoring and evaluating their
understanding. ESP listening as a construct has many similarities to ESL
listening. It involves the same cognitive processes that draw from a number
of similar knowledge sources to process spoken input, and requires the use
of the same core (or “macro”) skills that enable effective attention to
information in accord with the purpose for listening. Where the two types of
listening differ is in the additional skills and specific types of knowledge
required for EAP and EOP purposes.
ESP learning materials are typically developed for learners who have roughly
an intermediate level of proficiency. One might also assume that such
 learners are able to understand spoken discourse on everyday topics and
can participate in a selected range of spoken interactions by making
appropriate responses. In reality, however, this may not always be the case,
with some learners needing to work hard to build up their rather low level of
listening ability while at the same time learning to develop new skills needed
for their specific domains. This is where a learner’s development of ESL
listening and ESP listening competence overlap. It is useful, therefore, to
conceptualize ESL and ESP listening development as being interrelated,
instead of considering ESP listening development as an “ add on ” to a set
of skills that learners already possess. While undergoing training in ESP
listening skills, a learner is likely to be concurrently developing his or her
second language listening competence. Research suggests that the listening
problems encountered by learners in both general English and ESP contexts
are similar and are linked mainly to factors that influence fundamental
cognitive processes, for example: accents), and the demands of interactive
listening that require quick and appropriate responses (Paltridge & Starfield,
2013).

E. ESP AND READING

Introduction
Reading is a complex, purposeful, interactive, comprehending, flexible
activity that takes considerable time and resources to develop. Reading is
rapid, which means that readers should maintain flow of information at a
sufficient rate to make connections and inferences vital to comprehension.
The reader has a purpose for reading, whether it is for entertainment,
information, or research. Reading for a purpose provides motivation - an
important aspect of being a good reader. It is interactive activity - the reader
makes use of information from his/her background knowledge as well as
information from the printed page; reading is also interactive in the sense that
many skills work together simultaneously in the process. The reader typically
expects to understand what s/he is reading. Reading is flexible, meaning
that the reader employs a range of strategies to read efficiently. Finally,
reading develops gradually; the reader does not become fluent suddenly, or
immediately following a reading development course.
Reading is not merely a process of exact identification of letters, words, and
ultimately sentences leading to comprehension built from letter to word to
phrase to sentence. Readers make use of their existing background
knowledge (schemata) to make predictions about what is coming next in the
text and about how some new, unfamiliar piece of information relates to what
is already known. It is clear that basic decoding processes are important for
comprehension and are used by readers in interaction with the more complex
processes of meaning generation. However, it is equally clear that readers
engage in reading in order to gain information. Reading purpose is a
central concern of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), and purpose resides
in the language learner's relationship to the learning task. The purpose is
assumed to be comprehension of the message. Comprehension in
instructional settings is translated into some product, such as completion of
comprehension questions, a written summary, or an oral report (Bojovic,
2010).

Foundations of Reading in ESP

Foundational Aspects
To gain a better understanding of current perspectives on and approaches to
ESP and reading, it is helpful to see where reading has come from as related
to ESP. Like ESP itself, interest in reading began to shift in the 1970s. As
Peter Strevens (1977:109) commented while noting a significant pedagogical
change taking place at that time: “the pendulum may have swung too far in
the direction of speech, and many teachers are now seeking to increase the
effort applied to learning and teaching a command of the written language,
and especially to the learning and teaching of reading” (Paltridge & Starfield,
2013). Reinforcing this different view of reading, McDonough (1984:70)
pointed out that “English is the language of textbooks and journals” (Paltridge
& Starfield, 2013). In other words, for very many learners, English is a “ library
language”, especially in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts. Thus,
there was a new climate in which to approach reading.
Teaching Reading Skills
In a university setting where the medium of instruction and communication is
not English, but where students are required to read textbooks in English,
there is a need for reading comprehension courses in English for specific
purposes (ESP). The texts assigned in academic content-courses require a
high level of linguistic proficiency and presuppose extensive background
knowledge. Stevens argued that this compounded problem is particularly
acute in the first year of undergraduate programs, since students are not
familiar with the academic jargon and conceptual issues of their respective
field.
When designing a reading course, it is extremely important to strike a
balance between content and language. Questions asked about the
content must vary in their cognitive level to allow for intellectual involvement
on the part of the student. Nation states that ESP academic reading
courses should emphasize both reading to learn (activities that stress
comprehension of subject matter content) and learning by doing
(activities that call for utilization of the ideas in the text). The former deals
with the text at hand, exclusively the latter takes the learner beyond the text
and into some kind of reformulation of the facts, information and concepts
found in it, for example in reading to learn, emphasis is given to close reading
of texts, often paragraph by paragraph, in order to find the function which
each paragraph fulfils in the passage (Selbe & Young, 2011).
Reading to learn also involves complex thinking skills in which students must
be able to make the material their own through activities which guide them
into analysing texts, such as summarizing passages and chapters, finding
comparison and contrast or cause and effect examples, following an
argument in the text. Many of the reading -to- learn activities lend themselves
to thematic or topic-centered reading in which a set of material is composed
of a variety of passages, all with common subject area focus. By reading in
depth around a particular subject area, students experience marked growth
in background knowledge.
Learning by doing activities help students extract meaning from texts by
using note-taking skills, following directions. Solving problems set up in the
text and similar methods. By manipulating the data, learners gain more
experience with the language as well as with the underlying organizational
systems presented in the material.
The selection of ESP reading texts can rely on the following criteria (Selbe &
Young, 2011):
1. Most terms incorporated in such texts are the specialized terms that are
vital to the comprehension of each text. This means that such texts
involve various word formations that contribute a lot to the mastery of
vocabulary in the specialty concerned.
2. The texts relate to student's background through which they can create
more ideas and some novelty ones. In this regard, stipulates that if
students have a difficult subject from the specialization concerned they
will find themselves tangled in complicated terminology and difficult
concepts that they cannot understand.
3. While simple statement patterns dominate most of the texts, other
sentence structures can be adopted. If other complicated structured are
used, students may face difficulties in self- expression and
comprehension of the given texts.
4. The texts should be devoid of any form of complexity and difficulty with
meaning, vocabulary, structures ideas, styles, etc. As to the ideas
chosen, they should be formulated in a simple, clear, interesting and
stimulating way. Otherwise, student's reluctance to provide ideas may
arise occasionally.
5. Concerning the kind of ESP texts, expository and argumentative texts are
the most desirable since they can stimulate in students the diversion of
thoughts that make them create some novelty ones. However, factual
texts such as narrative and descriptive ones are so easy for students to
express and comprehend.

The balance which has to be maintained between the linguistic and the
conceptual level of students is perhaps more evident in ESP programmer
than general English.
In addition to all the criteria above, careful instruction in the significance and
value of using English as a means of improving knowledge, skills and
attitudes related to a particular specialization should be provided for the
 students. The English language provides ESP students with the most up-to-
date scientific and advanced knowledge concerning their specialty. Any lack
of such convincement may adversely influence their performance in the
foreign language.
In conclusion, students should be exposed to a variety of strategies that are
suitable for learning the unknown words they encounter in reading different
academic texts. The most important step in helping students to use different
strategies which would lead to success is organizing strategy training
sessions with students in every class so that our students can learn words
more effectively.

F. ESP AND WRITING

Introduction
Writing is perhaps the central activity of institutions. Complex social activities
like educating students, keeping records, engaging with customers, selling
products, demonstrating learning and disseminating ideas largely depend on
it. Not only is it hard to imagine modern academic and corporate life
without essays, commercial letters, emails, medical reports and
minutes of meetings, but writing is also a key feature of every student’
s experience. While multimedia and electronic technologies are beginning to
influence learning and how we assess it, in many domains conventional
writing remains the way in which students both consolidate their learning and
demonstrate their understanding of their subjects. With the continuing
dominance of English as the global language of business and scholarship,
writing in English assumes an enormous importance for students in higher
education and on professional training courses. Countless individuals around
the world must now gain fluency in the conventions of writing in English to
understand their disciplines, to establish their careers or to successfully
navigate their learning. Written texts, in fact, dominate the lives of all students,
even those in emergent,practice - based courses not previously thought of as
involving heavy literacy demands, as Baynham ( 2000:17) illustrates when he
asks us to think of in (Paltridge & Starfield, 2013):
The harassed first year nursing student, hurrying from lecture to tutorial,
backpack full of photocopied journal articles, notes, and guidelines for an
 essay on the sociology of nursing, a clinical report, a case study, a
reflective journal.

These kinds of experiences are extremely challenging to students and can

be especially daunting to those who are writing in a second language. This is
not only because different languages seem to have different ways of
organizing ideas and structuring arguments but because students’ prior
writing experiences in the home, school or elsewhere do not prepare them
for the literacy expectations of their university or professional workplace.
Their trusted ways of writing are no longer valued as legitimate for making
meaning in these new institutional contexts and they find the greater formality,
impersonality, nominalization, and incongruence of these discourses
mysterious and alien.
Moreover, their experience in their new context underlines for students that
writing (and reading) are not just key elements of learning and professional
practice, but that it cannot be regarded as an homogeneous and transferable
skill which they can take with them as they move across different courses and
assignments.

ESP Conceptions of Writing

Unlike older “process” traditions which saw writing as a kind of generic skill
which could be taught by modelling expert practices, ESP conceptions of
writing focus on assisting students towards competence in particular
target genres. Teachers do not simply “teach writing” but teach
particular kinds of writing which are valued and expected in some
academic or professional contexts. The literacy demands of the modern
world, therefore, challenge ESP teachers to recognize that their task involves
far more than simply controlling linguistic error or polishing style. Instead it
encourages them to respond to a complex diversity of genres, contexts and
practices. In recent years the field of ESP has become increasingly sensitive
to the ways in which texts are written and responded to by individuals acting
as members of social groups. Ideas such as communicative competence in
applied linguistics (Canale & Swain, 1980), situated learning in education
(Lave & Wenger, 1991), and social constructionism in the social sciences
 (Berger & Luckmann 1966) have contributed to a view that places community
at the heart of writing and speech. Basically, it encourages us to see that not
all writing is the same and that that we use language to accomplish particular
purposes and engage with others as members of social groups (Paltridge &
Starfield, 2013). For these reasons, the concept of needs retains its position
as a key feature of ESP practice while ESP itself steadfastly concerns itself
with communication, rather than isolated bits of language, and with the
processes by which texts are created and used as much as with texts
themselves.

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