Teaching foreign language for professional purposes

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Teaching Foreign Language for Specific Purposes: Teacher Development
Conference Paper · October 2006
DOI: 10.13140/2.1.4011.4566

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Milevica Bojovic
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Teaching Foreign Language for Specific Purposes: Teacher Development
Milevica Bojović, MA, lecturer
Faculty of Agronomy Čačak, Serbia
milevib@eunet.yu
Abstract
Foreign Language Teachers for Specific Purposes have a lot in common with teachers of
general foreign language. For both it is necessary to consider linguistic development and
teaching theories, to have insights in contemporary ideas regarding their own position and
role as well as the position and role of foreign language learners in education and to face new
technologies offered as an aid to improve their methodology. The needs to understand the
requirements of other professions and willingness to adapt to these requirements differentiate
the foreign language teachers for specific purposes and their colleagues teaching general
foreign language. ESP teaching presumes teaching of English as a foreign language regarding
specific profession, subject or purpose.
Key words: ESP, teacher, teacher development, methodology.
1. INTRODUCTION
The teaching of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has been seen as a separate
activity within English language teaching (ELT). It is believed that for some of its teaching
ESP has developed its own methodology and its research draws on research from various
disciplines in addition to applied linguistics – this is the key distinguishing characteristic of
ESP. ESP, if sometimes moved away from the established trends in general ELT, has always
been with needs analysis and preparing learners to communicate effectively in the tasks
prescribed by their field of study or work situation. The emphasis of ELT is always on
practical outcomes. The theory of ESP could be outlined based on specific nature of the texts
that learners need knowledge of or need-related nature of teaching.
2. WHAT IS ESP?
As with most disciplines in human activity, ESP was a phenomenon grown out of a
number of converging trends of which we will mention three most important: 1) the
expansion of demand for English to suit specific needs of a profession, 2) developments in the
filed of linguistics (attention shifted from defining formal language features to discovering the
ways in which language is used in real communication, causing the need for the development
of English courses for specific group of learners), and 3) educational psychology (learner’s
needs and interests have an influence on their motivation and effectiveness of their learning).
Definitions of ESP in the literature are relatively late in time, if we assume that ESP
began in the 1960s. Hutchinson and Waters (1987) define ESP as an approach rather than a
product – meaning that ESP does not involve a particular kind of language, teaching material
or methodology. The basic question of ESP is: Why does this learner need to learn a foreign
language? The purpose of learning English became the core.
Strevens’ (1988) definition of ESP makes a distinction between 1) absolute
characteristics (language teaching is designed to meet specified needs of the learner; related
in content to particular disciplines, occupation and activities; centred on the language
appropriate to those activities in syntax, text, discourse, semantics, etc., and analysis of the
discourse; designed in contrast with General English) and 2) two variable characteristics

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(ESP may be restricted to the language skills to be learned, e.g. reading; and not taught
according to any pre-ordained methodology).
Robinson’s (1991: 3) definition of ESP is based on two criteria: 1) ESP is normally
‘goal-directed’, and 2) ESP courses develop from a needs analysis which aim to specify what
exactly it is that students have to do through the medium of English, and a number of
characteristics which explain that ESP courses are generally constrained by a limited time
period in which their objectives have to be achieved and are taught to adults in homogenous
classes in terms of the work or specialist studies that the students are involved in.
Each of these definitions have validity but also weaknesses. Considering Hutchinson
and Water’s definition, Anthony (1997) noted that it is not clear where ESP courses end and
General English courses begin because numerous non-specialist ESP instructors use ESP
approach in that their syllabi are based on analysis of learner needs and their own specialist
personal knowledge of English for real communication. Strevens’ definition, by referring to
content in the second absolute characteristic, may confirm the impression held by many
teachers that ESP is always and necessarily related to subject content. Robinson’s mention of
homogenous classes as a characteristic of ESP may lead to the same conclusion. However,
much of ESP work is based on the idea of a common-core of language and skills belonging to
all academic disciplines or cutting across the whole activity of business. ESP teaching should
always reflect the underlying concepts and activities of the discipline. Having all these on
mind, Dudley-Evans and St John (1998) modified Strevens’ definition of ESP
1. Absolute characteristics: a) ESP is designed to meet specific needs of the learner;
b) ESP makes use of the underlying methodology and activities of the disciplines it serves;
and c) ESP is centred on the language (grammar, lexis, register), skills, discourse and genres
appropriate to these activities.
2. Variable characteristics: a) ESP may be related or designed for specific
disciplines; b) ESP may use, in specific teaching situations, a different methodology from that
of general English; c) ESP is likely to be designed for adult learners, either at a tertiary level
institution or in a professional work situation; it could be used for learners at secondary school
level; d) ESP is generally designed for intermediate or advanced learners; and e) Most ESP
courses assume basic knowledge of the language system, but it can be used with beginners.
3. TYPES OF ESP
ESP is traditionally been divided into two main areas according to when they take
place: 1) English for Academic Purposes (EAP) involving pre-experience, simultaneous/inservice and post-experience courses, and 2) English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) for
study in a specific discipline (pre-study, in-study, and post-study) or as a school subject
(independent or integrated). Pre-experience or pre-study course will omit any specific work
related to the actual discipline or work as students will not yet have the needed familiarity
with the content; the opportunity for specific or integrated work will be provided during inservice or in-study courses.
Another division of ESP divides EAP and EOP according to discipline or professional
area in the following way: 1) EAP involves English for (Academic) Science and Technology
(EST), English for (Academic) Medical Purposes (EMP), English for (Academic) Legal
Purposes (ELP), and English for Management, Finance and Economics; 2) EOP includes
English for Professional Purposes (English for Medical Purposes, English for Business
Purposes – EBP) and English for Vocational Purposes (Pre-vocational English and Vocational
English); in EAP, EST has been the main area, but EMP and ELP have always had their
place. Recently the academic study of business, finance, banking, economics has become
increasingly important especially Masters in Business Administration (MBA) courses; and 2)
EOP refers to English for professional purposes in administration, medicine, law and

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business, and vocational purposes for non-professionals in work (language of training for
specific trades or occupations) or pre-work situations (concerned with finding a job and
interview skills).
The classification of ESP courses creates numerous problems by failing to capture
fluid nature of the various types of ESP teaching and the degree of overlap between
“common-core” EAP and EBP and General English - e.g. Business English can be seen as
mediating language between the technicalities of particular business and the language of the
general public (Picket, 1989), which puts it in a position between English for General
Purposes (EGP) and specialist English. Therefore, some authors suggest (Dudley-Evans and
St John, 1998) the presentation of the whole of ELT should be on a continuum that runs from
General English courses to very specific ESP courses as illustrated in Table 1.
Regarding positions 2 and 3, it is only the overall context of the program that decides
whether a particular course is classified as ESP or not. At position 4, the work is specified in
terms of the skills (it is important to choose appropriate skills to focus on - e.g., some doctors
will need to read some medical journal, others will need oral skills to talk with their patients)
taught, but the groups are not homogenous from one discipline or profession (scientists,
engineers, lawyers, doctors), so the individual members can need texts dealing with their
specific profession. Teaching materials prepared need contexts acceptable and understandable
to all branches. At position 5 the course becomes really specific – the key feature of such
courses is that teaching is flexible and tailored to individual or group needs.
Tab.1 Continuum of ELT course types
General
Position 1
English for
Beginners

Specific
Position 2
Intermediate to
advance EGP
curses with a
focus on a
particular skills

Position 3
EGAP/EGBP
courses based
on commoncore language
and skills not
related to
specific
discipline or
profession

Position 4
Courses for
broad
disciplinary or
professional
areas (e.g.
Report writing
for Scientists
and Engineers,
Medical
English, Legal
English,
Negotiating
skills for
Business
English)

Position5
1) An academic
support course
related to a
particular
academic
course.
2) One-to-one
work with
business people

4. FEATURES OF ESP COURSES
Considering the characteristics of ESP courses, Carver (1983) states that there are
three characteristics common to ESP courses:
1) authentic materials – the use of authentic learning materials is possible if we accept the
claim that ESP courses should be offered at an intermediate or advanced level. The use of
such materials, modified by teachers or unmodified, is common in ESP, especially in selfdirected studies or research tasks. The students are usually encouraged to conduct research
using a variety of different resources including the Internet;

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2) purpose-related orientation – refers to the simulation of communicative tasks required by
the target situation. The teacher can give students different tasks - to simulate the
conference preparation, involving the preparation of papers, reading, note-taking and
writing. At Faculty of Agronomy in Cacak, English course for Agribusiness Management
involves students in the tasks of presenting a particular agricultural product, logo creation,
negotiating with the clients (suppliers and buyers), telephone conversation. They also
practice listening skills, though the application is restricted because they employ newly
acquired skills during their ESP classes with their colleagues and teacher.
3) self-direction – means that ESP is concerned with turning learners into users. For self –
direction, it is necessary that teacher encourage students to have a certain degree of
autonomy – freedom to decide when, what, and how they will study. For high-ability
learners it is essential to learn how to access information in a new culture.
Since ESP courses are of various types, depending on specific scientific field or
profession, and have specific features, teachers teaching such courses need to play different
roles and acquire certain knowledge.
5. ROLES OF ESP TEACHERS
As ESP teaching is extremely varied some authors (Dudley-Evans and St John, 1998)
use the term “practitioner” rather than “teacher” to emphasize that ESP work involves much
more than teaching. ESP practitioner can have several roles.
5.1. The ESP practitioner as a teacher ESP is a practical discipline with the most important
objective of helping students to learn. However, the teacher is not the primary knower of the
carrier content of the material. The students, especially where the course is specifically
oriented towards the subject content or work the students are engaged in, may know more
about the content than the teacher. The teacher has the opportunity to draw on students’
knowledge of the content in order to generate communication in the classroom. When the
teaching is a specific course on, for example, how to write a business report, it is vital that the
teacher adopts the position of the consultant who has the knowledge of communication
practices but needs to “negotiate” with the students on how best to explore these practices to
meet the objective they have. The relationship is much more of a partnership. In some
situations the role of ESP teacher extends to giving one-to-one advice to students (e.g., in
non-English speaking countries students will have to publish in international journals and
need advice in both language and discourse issues). ESP teachers need to have considerable
flexibility, be willing to listen to learners, take interest in the disciplines or professional
activities the students are involved in, and to take some risks in their teaching.
5.2 The ESP practitioner as course designer and material provider Since it is rarely possible
to use a particular textbook without the need for supplementary material – sometimes no
really suitable published material exists for identified needs - ESP practitioners often have to
provide the material for the course. This involves selection of published material, adapting
material if it is not suitable, or writing it. ESP teachers also need to assess the effectiveness of
the teaching material used whether it is published or self-produced. However, since the
teachers are encouraged by their employees to write new material there is a danger of constant
re-invention of the wheel; advantages of published materials are ignored even when they are
suitable for a given situation.
5.3 The ESP practitioner as researcher Research has been particularly strong in the area of
EAP (genre analysis). Regarding the research into English for Business Purposes, there is a
growing interest in investigating the genres, the language and the skills involved in business
communication. ESP teachers need to be in touch with the research. Teachers carrying out a
needs analysis, designing a course, or writing teaching materials need to be capable of

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incorporating the findings of the research, and those working in specific ESP situations need
to be confident that they know what is involved in skills such as written communication.
5.4 The ESP practitioner as collaborator It is believed that subject-specific work is often best
approached through collaboration with subject specialist. This may involve cooperation in
which ESP teacher finds out about the subject syllabus in an academic context or the tasks
that students have to carry out in a work or business situation. Or it may involve specific
collaboration so that there is some integration between specialist studies or activities and the
language. It might involve the language teacher specifically preparing learners for the
language of subject lectures or business presentations. Another possibility is that a specialist
checks and comments on the content of teaching materials that the ESP teacher has prepared.
The fullest collaboration is where a subject expert and a language teacher team-teach classes;
in EAP such lessons might help with the understanding of subject lectures or the writing of
examination answers, essays or theses, while in EOP they might involve the language teacher
and a business trainer working together to teach both the skills and the language related to
business communication.
5.5 The ESP practitioner as evaluator The ESP practitioner is often involved in various types
of evaluation - testing of students, evaluation of courses and teaching materials. Tests are
conducted 1) to assess whether students have the necessary language and skills to undertake a
particular academic course or career which is important in countries such as the UK, USA,
Australia where large numbers of international students do postgraduate course or research
and need internationally required tests, e.g. International English Language Test Service
(IELTS), Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), and 2) to asses the level of their
achievement – how much learners have gained from a course. Evaluation of course design and
teaching materials should be done while the course is being taught, at the end of the course
and after the course has finished, in order to assess whether the learners have been able to
make use of what they learned and to find out what they were not prepared for. Evaluation
through discussion and on-going needs analysis can be used to adapt the syllabus.
6. TRAINING OF ESP TEACHERS
Most teacher training courses contain four basic elements:
1. Selection, initial and terminal, is necessary because not every human being would
become an adequate language teacher. Each teacher has continuing responsibility
throughout a career which can last for thirty years or longer. This responsibility makes
it essential that potentially ineffective individuals should be discouraged from entering
the profession by adequate pre-training or post-training selection procedures.
2. Continuing personal education. Teachers should be well-educated people. Minimum
standards accepted for teachers vary from country to country. There are variations in
how the trainee’s personal education is improved – either simultaneously with his/her
professional training; or consecutively where first two or three years of study with no
elements of training as a teacher are followed by the fourth year containing
methodology of foreign language teaching or one year post-graduate course of teacher
training; or, as in many countries, by in-service courses. Either way, the assumption is
that graduates’ level of education is to be regarded as insufficient.
3. General professional training as an educator and teacher. This element involves what
all teachers need to know regardless of which subject they teach – the components are
as follows: a) educational psychology, the study of child development, social
psychology, and the principles of educational thought – the component intended to
lead the trainee to understanding of the nature of education; b) an outline of the
organization of education in a particular country – the teacher should be aware of the
different kinds of schools, of normal and unusual pathways through educational

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network, of responsibility, control and finance, of sources of reform and change, of the
main features of history of education in the country where he will teach; c) an
awareness of the moral and rhetorical function of the teacher: the building of
standards, character, enthusiasm;
d) knowledge of, and skill in, class management, discipline and handling of various
groups of students; e) knowledge of, and skill in, basic instructional techniques, and
understanding teacher-learner interaction; f) Acceptance of the fundamental need for
the preparation of lessons; g) understanding the role of curriculum, syllabus and
teaching materials; h) a teacher should be committed to keeping in touch with the
teaching profession.
4. Special training as a teacher of a foreign or second language. The complexity of this
training which constitutes the core of most teacher training courses can be made
simpler if the distinction is to be made between three aspects of it. They are:
1) The skills component which includes three different skills required by the
teacher: a) command of the language the teacher is teaching – this component must
ensure that teacher’s command of foreign language is at least adequate for class
purposes; b) teaching techniques and classroom activities – the major part of teacher
training is to assimilate a great body of effective techniques; c) the management of
learning – it is a crucial part of teacher’s classroom skills to learn how to assess from
moment to moment the progress of each individual in the class and how to manage the
classroom activities so that most able learners are not frustrated by being held back,
while the slowest are not depressed by being left behind.
The skills component requires practical training in performing the skills
themselves. There is a great range of activities which can be summarized as follows:
a) the observation of specially-devised demonstrations of specific techniques and of
complete lessons; b) the observation of actual class; c) practice in the preparation of
lesson plans; d) micro-teaching – the teaching (by the trainee) of several items or
techniques with the possible use of camera recordings; e) peer group teaching (i.e.
teaching fellow-trainees) as a form of exercise; f) being a teacher’s assistant in real
class; g) teaching real classes under supervision; h) discussion of the trainee’s
teaching; i) post-training, in-service courses of various kind (ESP courses for teaching
EMP or EBP).
2) The information component – the needed body of information can be
divided into three parts: a) information about education – about different approaches
to the task of teaching language; b) information about the syllabus and materials he
will be using – the syllabus, the prescribed textbooks, other teaching materials
(readers, workbooks, etc.) and aids (flashcards, wallcharts as well as tape recorders
and language labs) make up the tools of the teacher’s profession; c) information about
language – when the teacher enters his course of training, his understanding of the
nature of language is likely to be scanty; this information refers to knowledge of
normal stages in the infant’s acquisition of his mother tongue, the existence of
common speech defects and whose job is to treat them, relation between speech and
writing, literacy and education, notions of the ‘correctness’ and social judgments on
language, language variety including dialects and accents, language in contact,
artificial language, language and thought, and many more. The information content
can be learned from reading or lectures.
3) The theory component – the language teaching profession makes
connection with theoretical studies in several disciplines such as linguistics,
psychology, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, social theory, education. The
theoretical studies are likely to find a place when the trainee has attained a sufficient

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level of personal education and when he is preparing to teach high-level learners.
Alternatively, they can be included in postgraduate teacher training as the
interdisciplinary approach of applied linguistics which integrates appropriate parts of
the disciplines most relevant to language teaching. The theory component can be
assimilated from discussion, practice in solving problems, tutorial explanations and
time to absorb new ways of thinking.
Currently, in Serbia ESP teacher training courses are run as in-service courses; as
high-education level courses they are for the first time included in new curriculum as an
optional subject in fundamental academic studies (the fourth year of study) at the institutions
dealing with educating language teachers, Faculty of Philology in Belgrade in particular
(Faculty of Philology, 2006).
7. CONCLUSION
Using skills as a framework of ESP, ESP teachers are provided with the necessary
knowledge and tools to deal with their own students’ specializations. It should be remembered
- ESP teachers are not specialists in the field, but in teaching English, their subject is English
for the profession but not the profession in English. They help students, who know their
subject better than the teachers do, develop the essential skills in understanding, using, and/or
presenting authentic information in their profession. A professional ESP teacher must be able
to switch from one professional field to another without being obliged to spend months on
getting started. He/she simply brings the necessary tools, frameworks, and principles of
course design to apply them to new material. The material (the content) should be provided by
the professors or experts in the subject. It should always be authentic (the main purpose of
teaching skills is to enable students to deal with authentic information despite their level of
English), up-to-date (the informational exchange is growing more intense), and relevant for
the students’ specializations (they ought to be given the information representative for their
target language use situation).
Unfortunately, ESP teachers often feel isolated both from professionals in their
students’ specializations and their colleagues in other institutions. They also have difficulty in
getting or exchanging information in the field. We can conclude, therefore, that the necessary
ESP network should be provided.
REFERENCES
Anthony, L. (1997). ESP: What does it mean? ON CUE. http://www.interserver.miyazakimed.ac.jp/~cue/pc/anthony.htm Retrieved August, 2006.
Carver, D. (1983). Some propositions about ESP. The ESP Journal, 2, 131-137.
Dudley-Evans, T., and St John, M. (1998). Developments in ESP: A multi-disciplinary
approach. Cambridge: CUP.
Gatehouse, K. (2001) Key issues in English for Specific Purposes: (ESP) Curriculum
development.
TESL
Journal
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VII,
No.10,
October
2001,
http://www.iteslj.org/Articles/Gatehouse-ESP.html, Retrieved August, 2006.
***Informer for students of Faculty of Philology, Faculty of Philology, Belgrade, 2006.
Hutchinson, T., and Waters, A. (1987) English for Specific Purposes: a Learning –centered
Approach, Cambridge: CUP.
Picket, D. (1986) Business English: Falling between two stools. Comlon 26: 16-21.
Robinson, P. (1991) ESP Today: a Practitioner’s Guide. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall
International.
Strevens, P. (1978) New Orientations in the Teaching of English. Oxford: OUP.
Strevens, P. (1988) ESP after twenty years: A re-appraisal. In M. Tickoo (Ed.), ESP: State of
the Art (pp. 1-13). Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Centre.

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