A.

Development of language
Any ESP course make use of expilicit or implicit ideas about the nature
of language, these ideas are drown from the various language descriptions that
have been developed by succeding school of thought in linguistics. The various
ideas about language that have influenced ESP in some way. We cand identify
six main stage of development.
1. Classical or traditional grammar
Although language teaching has a long history stertching back to
ancient times ( see Howart, 1984), the ways of describing language
remained little changed until this century. Description of english and other
languages were base on the grammars of the classical language, greek and
latin. These descriptions were base on an analysis of the role played by each
word in the sentence. Language were described in this way because the
classical languages were case-based language where grammatical function
of each word in the sentence was made apparent by use of appropriate
inflections. Thus the from of a word would change according to whether it
was a subject, object, indirect object and so on. The prestige of the
oldclassical languages ensured the sirvival of this form of description even
after english had lost most of its case markers and become a largely word-
order based language.
Since ESP energed after the classical form of description had been
lagerly abandoned, its influence on ESP has never been strong. Never
theless, it has continued to provide the teacher with a useful indirect source
of guidance. Register analysis, for example, drew heavly upon its
terminology in syllabus design (see p,9), As alken and widdowson 91975)
say : teachers who wish to maintain a balanced view of linguistics should
not overlook the fact that traditional grammar has many useful virtues. The
traditional handbooks provided an array of terms and distrinctions which
most of us used in learning to talk about our own languagr and which many
people continue to find serviccable throughout their lives.”
 It can also be argued that, although cases may no longer be apparent in
the modern english, the concept they represent underlie any language
(fillmore, 1968 ). Thus a knowledge of the classical description can still
deepen our knowledge of how languages operate.
2. Structural linguistics
The first real challenge to the classical description of languages came
in the 1930 with the advent of structuralism, associated with linguistics such
as Bloomfied (1935). The structural or ‘slot and filler’ form of language
description will be familiar to most language teachers as a result of the
enormous influence it has had on language teaching since the Second World
War.
In a structural description the grammar of the language is described in
terms of syntagmatic structures which carry the fundamental propositions
(statement, interrogative, negative, imperative etc) and notions (time,
number, gender etc). By varying the words within these structural
frameworks, sentences with different meanings can be generated. This
method of linguistics analysis led i english language teaching to the
development of the substitution table as a typical means of explaining
grammatical patterns. In fact, the development of structural descriptions of
languages had little to do with english in its early stages, but came from the
need to describe the Indian languages of North America before the last
native speakers died. It soon became apparent, however, taht for a word-
order language such as english the slot and filter description would also be
particularly appropriate.
Apart from the substitution table, the most enduring application of
structural lingistics was the structural syllabus, which has proved to be a
very powerful means of selecting and sequencing language items. In such a
syllabus, items are graded so that simpler and more immediately useable
structures precede the more complex ones. An example of an ESP syllabus
based on structural precepts is that used by Ewer and Latorre (1969) (minor
details omitted) :
 a. Simple present active
b. Simple present passive
c. Simple present active and passive
d. Ing forms
e. Present perfect; present continuous
f. Infinitives
g. Anomalous finites
h. Past perfect; conditionals
The very simplicity of the structural language description entails that
there are large areas of language use that it cannot explain. In particular it
may fail to provide the learner with an understanding of the communictive
use of the structures ( Allen and Widdowson, 1974 ). Later development in
language teaching and linguistics have attempted to remedy this weakness.
3. Transformational generative (TG) grammar
The structural view of language as a collection of syntagmaticpatterns
held away until the publication in 1957 of syntactic structure by Noam
Chomsky, Chomsky argued that the structural description was too
superficial, because it only described the surface structure of the language
and thus could nor explain relationship of meaning which were quite clearly
there, but which were not realised in the surface structure. Thus these two
sentences :
John is easy to please
John is eager to please
Chomsky concluded that these problems arose because language was
being analysed and described in isolation from the human mind which
produces it. It must be viewed as a reflection of human though the syntax of
language. The grammar of a language is, therefore, not the surface
structures themselves, but the rules that enable the language user to generate
the surface structures from the deep level of meaning.
But for ESP the most important lesson to be drawn from Chomsky’s
work was the distinction he made between perfomance (i.e the surface
 structure) and competence (i.e the deep level rules). Chomsky’s own
definition of perfomance and competence was narrowly based, being
concerned only with syntax. In ESP we need to take a much broader view,
but the basic distinction itself is still valid. Put simply, describing what
people do with the language (perfomance) is important, but of equal, if not
greater importance is discovering the competence that enables them to do it
(Hutchinson and waters, 1981).
In the early stage of its development, ESP put most emphasis on
describing the performance needed for communication in the target situation
and paid little attention to the competence underlying it. Indeed, accustomed
as we are to seeing language and language learning in terms of perfomance,
it can be difficult to grasp the importance of the competence/perfomance
distinction. But it is one of crucial importance for ESP and we shall return to
it in the ensuing chapters. As we have argued elswhere: we need to make a
distincion between the perfomance repercoire of the target situation and the
competence required to cope with it. The competence, providing, as it does,
the generative basis for further learning...is the propet concern of
ESP.’(ibid)
4. Language variation and register analysis
The important point is that, if we view language use shows
considerable vanety. The whole communicative act is made up of a number
of contextually dependent factors. Varying one or more of these factors will
have ‘knock on’ effects on the other factors.
The concept of langiage variation gave rise to the type of ESP which
was based on the register anaylisis. If language varies, according to context,
it was argued, then it should be possible to identify the kind of language
associaated with a spesific context, such as an area of knowledge of
knowledge (legal english, social english, medical english, bussiness english,
scientific english etc). Much ESP research was focussed as a result on
determining the formal characteristics of various register in orfer to
establish a basis for the selection of syllabus items.
 The classic example of this is the use of the passive in scientific
english. But even this may have been overemphasised. The important poin
is that even particular register favour certain forms, they are not distinctive
forms. They are simply drawn from the common stock of grammar of the
language. Though attractive at first sight, the assumption that language
variation implies the existence of identifiable varieties of language related to
spesific contexts of use has, in effect, proved to be unfounded.
5. Functional/ notional grammar
Function are concerned with social behaviour and represent the
intention of the speaker or writer, for example , advising, warning,
thereatening, describing etc. They are the categories into which the mind
and thereby language divides reality, for example, time, frequency, duration,
gender, number, location, quantity, quality etc.(see e.g. Johnson and
Morrow, 1981,pp. I-II).
The functional view of language began to have an influence on
language teching in the 1970s, largely as a result of the Council of Europe’s
efforts to establish some kind of equivalence in the syllabuses for learning
various languages. Equivalence was difficult to establish on formal grounds,
since the formal structure of languages show considerable variation.
The move towards functionally based syllabuses has been has been
pasticularly strong in the development of ESP, largely on the pragmatic
grounds that the majority of ESP students have already done a structurally
organised syllabus, probably at school. Their needs, therefore, are not to
learn the basic grammar, but rather to learn how to use the knowledge they
already have.
The attraction of the functional syllabus is that it appears to be based
on language in use, in contrast to the structural syllabus, which shows only
form. For example, compare this syllabus with the Ewer and Latorre
syllabus above: the functional syllabus, however, has its own drawbacks. It
suffers in particular from a lack of any kind systematic conceeptual
framework and as such does not help the learners to organise their
 knowledge of the language. The main problem with the functional syllabus,
however, is not the syllabus itself, but the fact that it is too often seen as a
replacement for the structural syllabus.
6. Discourse (Rhetorical) analysis
This next development has also had a profound effect on ESP. Till this
point language had been viewed in terms in terms of the sentence. Now the
emphasis moved to-looking at how meaning is generated between
sentences. This was a logical development of the functional/notional view of
language which had shown that there is more to meaningthan just the words
in the sentence. The context of the sentence is also important in creating the
meaning.
If we take tjis simple sentence : “it is raining and we put it into three
different dialogues, we can see how the meaning changes.
Can i go out to play?
It’s raining

Have you cut the grass yet?

It’s rainng

I think i’ll go out for a walk

It’s raining

In the first dialogue a parent could be talking to achild. The child is

asking permission to go out. The parent’s reply of “it’s raining” acts as a
refusal of the request. The meaning of this same sentence changes with the
different context. This change is brought about by two factors. The first
factor, as we have seen, is the sociolinguistics context: who is speaking to
whom and why. The meaning change according to the relationship with the
participants in the dialogue and according to their reason for speaking. But
there is another factor which influence the meaning the relative positions of
theutterance within the discourse. An utterance acquires meaning by virtue
of what uttarences it procedes or follows. We might call this the discoursal
meaning.
B. Varieties of language
The term variety refers to registers of language use, such as English in
banking, English in medicine, English in academic settings, and everyday
conversation. According to Bloor and Bloor (1986), there are two perspectives
on the term language for specifi c purposes. One is that a specifi c-purpose
language is based on and extends from a basic core of general language (the
common core plus). The second is that all language exists as one variety or
another and that there is no basic core (‘general-purpose’) language.
1. The common core plus
It can be argued that there is a common core of general language that
is drawn on in all areas of life and work. This can also be referred to as
‘basic’ language.
The inner section represents basic language and includes common
words and sentence structures that can be used in all situations. The
common core is represented as a general pool of language of high frequency
items that predominates all uses of languages. Pitt Corder (1993) described
this view as an abstraction. He argued:
The utility of such a notion is rather doubtful. If, for example, a
learner wishes to converse with lawyers in a foreign language, then those
items which are part of legal language are central to his needs; many of
them, however, have very low ‘relative frequency’ in ‘the language as a
whole.’ (p. 66–67).
The idea that different varieties of English are based on a common set
of grammatical and other linguistic characteristics has been widespread
(Bloor & Bloor, 1986). The idea is refl ected in the following quotation
from Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartik (1972), who argued that
learners need to come to grips with basic English before they study English
for specifi c purposes:
Attempts to teach a ‘restricted’ language (‘English for Engineers’) too
often ignore the danger in so doing of trying to climb a ladder which is
 sinking in the mud; it is no use trying to approach a point on the upper rungs
if there is no foundation. (p. 29)
Coxhead and Nation (2001) categorize vocabulary for teaching and
learning into four groups of words: high frequency words, academic
vocabulary, technical vocabulary, and low frequency vocabulary. They
argue: ‘When learners have mastered control of the 2,000 words of general
usefulness in English, it is wise to direct vocabulary learning to more
specialized areas depending on the aims of the learners’ (pp. 252–253).
2. All Language is Specific Purpose
A second perspective is that there is no common core of language
preexisting to varieties. The core is, rather, an essential part of any one of
the innumerable varieties of the language (Bloor & Bloor, 1986). In short,
‘basic’ language is what is present in all varieties of English, where the
varieties overlap. All languages are learned in some context or another.
There is thus no ‘basic’ variety-less English, there is no ‘general English’ or
English for no specifi c purposes. All English exists as some variety or
another. Bloor and Bloor (1986) assert:
All language learning is acquired from one variety or another, even if
it is ‘classroom English’ variety. A language learner is as likely to acquire
‘the language’ from one variety as from another, but the use of language,
being geared to situation and participants, is learned in appropriate contexts.
This view supports a theory of language use as the basis of language
acquisition theory. (p. 28)
According to Bloor and Bloor (1986), teaching a specifi c variety of
English (ESP) can start at any level including beginners. Moreover, learning
from the specifi c variety of English (for example, English for doctors,
English for hospitality), is highly effective as learners acquire structures in
relation to the range of meanings in which they are used in their academic,
workplace, or professional environments. Figure 3.2 represents this second
perspective. The fi gure shows three varieties of English (V1, V2, and V3).
A. Conclusion