THE RELEVANCE OF ESP

By

Femi U. Balogun

Auchi Polytechnic, AuchiEdo State, Nigeria

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ABSTRACT

This paper takes a panoramic view of language, situatesEnglish and ESP in the broad spectrum and argues thatpolytechnic students are ESP learners whose needs must beidentified before deciding on what to teach them. Thepaper explains the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)approach, the precursor of ESP, and makes somerecommendations which it hopes will enhance the relevanceof ESP in Nigerian Polytechnics.

Keywords: Approaches, Learners, Users, ESP, CLT.

INTRODUCTION

Language, a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means

of which the members of a society interact in terms of

their total culture, will constitute a source of confusion

and chaos among human beings if not properly codified,

processed, and managed (Balogun, 2000). This is why

efforts in this direction have been on the increase since

the interest in the scientific investigation of language

(linguistics) began many years ago. Foremost in these

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efforts of codifying and managing language are the pure or

theoretical linguists, who have successfully devised means

and tools for investigating it. The tools, of course,

refer to the various phonetic symbols. The applied

linguists, on the other hand, using the insights provided

by the theoretical linguists, scientists, psychologists,

sociologists, etc, have assisted in no little way in

processing language and rendering it more useful in every

field of human endeavour.

Having successfully given form and shape to these

“arbitrary vocal symbols” (Trager, 1949 in Wikipedia,

2006), the efforts of linguists, both pure and applied,

needed expansion, improvement or refinement in order to

cope with the increasing volume of information in a society

daily increasing in complexity. The need, therefore, led

to explorations in information technology in which the

pioneering efforts of a Linguist like Alexander Graham Bell

(1847 – 1922) and scientists like Heinrich Rudolf Hertz

(1857 – 1894) and Daniel Bernolli (1700 – 1782) are notable

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and remarkable (Balogun, 2000). Their efforts and those of

others have resulted in language being well-managed,

processed and domesticated for the service of mankind.

English is a language spoken in almost every part of

the globe. It is, today, a world language, the language of

science and technology and the language of international

law and diplomacy. In Nigeria, it is the official

language, the lingua franca although not a national

language. It is the language of government, politics,

commerce, law and education. In all the rungs of higher

education in the country, English language is the medium of

instruction. In the conventional universities and colleges

of education, apart from being the medium of instructions,

English is also taught and learnt as a discipline. But in

the Universities of Technology and Polytechnics, it is only

a medium of instruction. As a result of this, notes

Balogun (1999), English tends to be taken more seriously in

the former institutions than in the latter.

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Balogun (1999) explains further that in Polytechnics,

in particular, the language is a service course with a

common syllabus containing all that should be taught to the

students, irrespective of their disciplines. The meaning

of this, he notes, further, is that polytechnic students

are not regarded as learners of English but rather as users.

The syllabus, as contained in the Course Specification for National

Diploma and Higher National Diploma programmes prepared by the

National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) first in

1990, revised in 2000 and recently in 2013, presumes the

needs of these students as global. Thus, the engineering

students are taught the same thing as business and

environmental students. The salutary effect of this, as

experience has shown, is that most students, especially the

technological ones, do not attend English classes. They

always argue that there is nothing new for them to learn,

having got enough grounding in their English for General

Purposes (EGP) classes in their various secondary schools

and especially after obtaining credit passes in the

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subject. This attitude of the students has most often

frustrated many teachers of English in Polytechnics.

Besides this attitude of the students, experience has shown

that some engineering and environmental departments do not

allow their students to take English/Communication courses

beyond the National Diploma (ND) level. As if aware of the

problems the Polytechnic teachers of English in Nigeria are

facing, linguists came up with an approach by the middle of

the last century, that could make the teaching/learning of

English interesting to both learners and users at any

level. This is called the Communicative Language Teaching

method (CLT), the precursor of English for Specific

Purposes (ESP).

This paper, therefore, examines this method, an off-

shoot of the age-old English Language Teaching (ELT),

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and the relevance of

ESP and CLT to polytechnics in Nigeria. It also makes some

recommendations.

WHAT IS COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CLT)

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The history of language teaching (especially English)

has been characterized by revolutions. One school of

thought emerges, reigns and is then overthrown by another.

This is why there have been the traditionalists, the

formalists and now the functionalists. As each of these

schools of thought is overthrown, its approaches and

methods of language teaching usually give way to others

considered more modern or fashionable.

Structuralism was an approach of the formalists, among

whose exponents were Bloomfield and Henry Sweet. It gave

way to the Transformational-Generative (T.G.) approach

championed by Noam Chomsky and his school. Today, the T.G.

approach is being strongly challenged for supremacy by the

functionalist school of thought. Functionalism, explains

Bells (1981:112 in Balogun, 2012) is an approach which

holds a view of language as:

a dynamic, open system by means of which membersof acommunity exchange information. This is incontrast with

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the static, closed system view of language(formalism) whichhas been, until recently, the commonly acceptedorientation since de Saussure (1915), seeing language as acode made up of elements and their relationship with eachother.

The approach of functionalism is known as

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). This communicative

approach of the functionalists aims at helping language

learners to turn their considerable dormant grammatical

competence into a real practical mastery of the target

language. Thus, the learner is taught to acquire

“competence as to when to speak, when not, and as to what

to talk about with whom, where and in what manner” (Hymes,

1972). Whereas the approach of the formalists emphasized

grammatical competence, the functionalists’ approach

emphasizes communicative competence.

As with every approach, a corresponding teaching

method usually evolves. The Communicative Language

Teaching method (CLT) thus evolved with communicative

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approach. CLT evolved as a result of a dissatisfaction with

the methods and achievements of the grammar-based methods

which focused largely on inculcating linguistic competence

and knowledge of grammatical rules.

Richards and Schmidt (2002) report that the

communicative approach was developed particularly by

British applied linguists in the 1980s in reaction against

grammar-based approaches such as “Situational Language

Teaching” and the “audio lingual method”. According to

them, the major principles of Communicative Language

Teaching are:

1. Learners use a language through using it tocommunicate;

2. Authentic and meaningful communication should bethe goal of classroom activities;

3. fluency and accuracy are both important goals inlanguage learning;

4. communication involves the integration ofdifferent language skills;

5. learning is a process of creative constructionand involves trial and error (p. 90)

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They reveal further that communicative language teaching

led to a re-examination of “language teaching goals,

syllabuses, materials, and classroom activities and has had

a major impact on changes in language teaching world-wide”

(p.90).

English for Specific Purposes (ESP), an out-growth of

the age-old English Language Teaching (ELT) is a

crystallization of the communicative approach and

communicative language teaching method. Although the

study of languages for specific purposes has had a long and

interesting history going back, some would say, as far as

the Roman and Greek Empires, since the 1960s, ESP has

become a vital and innovative activity within the Teaching

of English as a Foreign or Second Language movement

(TEFL/TESL) (Howart, 1984). It is a movement, according to

Johns and Price-Machado (2001:43) that is based on the

“proposition that all language teaching should be tailored

to the specific learning and language use needs of

identified groups of students”. Most of the movement’s

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practitioners, they explain further, are teachers of

adults, those students whose needs are more readily

identified within academic, occupational, or professional

settings.

WHAT IS ESP

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is a branch of

applied linguistics that focuses on relating the teaching

and learning process to learners’ needs. Widdowson (1981)

in Balogun (2012), commenting on the general concept of

ESP, says that if a group of learners’ needs for a language

can be accurately specified, then this specification can be

used to determine the content of a language programme that

will meet these needs. What distinguishes ESP from General

English is not the “existence of a need as such, but

rather, an awareness of the need” (Hutchinson and Waters,

1987). Never before, in the history of English Language

Teaching (ELT), had there been a focus on the learner as a

main consideration in course design until in the last four

decades when ESP evolved. Even when it evolved, it paid no

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attention to the question of how people learn, focusing

instead on what people learn” (Hutchinson and Waters,

1987:2). The theory argues that if learners, sponsors, and

teachers know why learners need English, that awareness

will have an influence on what will be accepted as

reasonable content in the language course and what

potential can be exploited. The implication of this is

that the learner and his needs are now taken as central to

the problem of deciding course content. The ESP approach,

thus, uses the Needs Analysis (NA) framework as the main

tool to define learners’ needs in a specific field because

the awareness is more recognizable in a specific target

situation representing a real life-situation (Alharby,

2005).

Hutchinson and Waters (1987), Strevens (1988), and

Robinson (1991) have all provided definitions of ESP.

While Hutchinson and Waters (1987) see ESP as an “approach

rather than a product, which does not involve a particular

kind of language, teaching material or method” Strevens’

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definition according to Dudley-Evans and St John (2010)

“makes a distinction between four absolute characteristics

and two variable characteristics”. The absolute

characteristics are that ESP consists of English Language

Teaching which is:

designed to meet specific needs of the learner

related in content (that is in its themes andtopics) to particular discipline, occupations and

activities;

centered on language appropriate to those activitiesin syntax, lexis, discourse, semantics and so on,

and analysisof the discourse;

in contrast with ‘General English’

the variable characteristics are that ESP

may be restricted as to the learning skills to belearned (for example reading only);

may not be taught according to any pre-ordained

methodology.

Robinson (1991), while accepting the primacy of needs

analysis in defining ESP, based her own definition on two

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key defining characteristics as follows: that ESP is

normally goal-oriented, and that “ESP courses develop from

a needs analysis which aims to specify as closely as

possible, what exactly it is that students have to do

through the medium of English” (Robinson, 1991:3)

In their own definition, Dudley-Evans and St. John (2010:4)

say: “our definition is:

1. Absolute Characteristics:

ESP is designed to meet specific needs of the

learner;

ESP makes use of the underlying methodology and activities of the discipline it serves

ESP is centred on the language (grammar, lexis,register) skills, discourse and genres appropriate to these

activities.

2. Variable Characteristics

ESP may be related to or designed for specific

disciplines;

ESP may use, in specific teaching situations, adifferent methodology from that of General English;

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ESP is likely to be designed for adult learners,either as a tertiary level institution or in a professional worksituation. It could, however, be used for learners at secondaryschool level;

ESP is generally designed for intermediate oradvanced students. Most ESP courses assume basic knowledge of language

system, but it can be used with beginners.

A strand that is visible and runs through all the

definitions above is the concept

of the needs of the learners. Hutchinson and Waters

(1987:19) put it succinctly that ESP is “an approach to

language teaching which aims to meet the needs of

particular learners” as well as “an approach to course

design which starts with the question: Why do these

learners need to learn English?’’’ They explain further:

Thus, if we had to state in practical terms theirreducible minimum of an ESP to course design, it would be needsanalysis, since it is

the awareness of a target situation – a definableneed to communicate

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in English – that distinguishes the ESP learnerfrom the learner of

General English.

Consequently, the ESP approach represents a shift in

focus from a Chomskyan influenced register analysis to

needs analysis and stands as the diagnostic tool of the

functionalists the way Contrastive Analysis (CA) and Error

Analysis (EA) stood for the formalists. Hitherto, language

needs had been based on formal linguistic categories

focused theoretically on creating a register to develop a

special language for a certain group of learners. This

method is called register analysis and is based on the

principle that different groups of learners require

different lexical and grammatical rules to learn English

(Hutchinson and Waters, 1987) for example; English for

engineers requires a special register that includes the

most common grammatical and lexical features used in their

field.

HOW ESP IS DIFFERENT FROM ESL OR GENERAL ENGLISH

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Fiorito (2005) provides a vivid insight into the

difference between English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and

English as a Second Language (ESL) or general English. The

most important difference, according to him, lies in the

learners and their purposes of learning. Whereas ESP

students are usually adults who already have some

acquaintance with English and are learning the language in

order to communicate a set of professional skills and to

perform job-related functions, ESL students are not

necessarily adults. While in ESL, all four language skills

– listening, reading (receptive), speaking, and writing

(productive) are stressed equally, in ESP, it is a needs

analysis that determines which language skills are most

needed by the student, and the syllabus is designed

accordingly. ESP concentrates more on teaching language in

context than on grammar and language structures. It covers

subjects varying from accounting or computer science to

tourism and business management.

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The ESP focal point is that English is not taught as a

subject separated from the student’s real world; instead,

it is integrated into a subject matter area important to

learners. Thus, ESP combines subject matter and English

language teaching. Such a combination has been found to be

highly motivating because students are able to apply what

they learn in their English classes to their main field of

study, whether it be accounting, business management,

economics, computer science or tourism. In conclusion, ESP

assesses needs and integrates motivation, subject matter

and content for the teaching of relevant skills identified

by means of needs analysis

POLYTECHNIC STUDENTS AS ESP LEARNERS

When English for Specific Purposes (ESP) practice

first started in Europe, it was thought that it was

necessary only in a first language environment when

immigrants to Britain were taught the type of English that

would enable them to cope with their jobs. The relevance

of ESP in a second language situation was not realized

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until in the eighties. In Nigeria, in particular, the

Communication Skills Project (COMSKIP) which the Overseas

Development Administration (ODA) of the British Government

in Collaboration with the National Universities Commission

(NUC) organized in the late eighties, finally established

firmly the relevance and place of ESP in a second language

situation. The project led to the investigation of the

needs of Nigerian students in some Federal Universities.

As Ubabakwe and Ntia (1990:ii) note, the aim of the project

is to improve the communication skills in English among

Nigerian Federal University students in order to increase

the effectiveness of manpower development and technology

transfer through undergraduate education. In the

Polytechnics, this aim is no less necessary.

From the onset polytechnic students were excluded.

Yet when Polytechnic education started in Nigeria in the

early seventies, it was made clear that the aim was to

train middle-level manpower. This does not, however,

reduce from the Polytechnic the qualification as higher

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education or post-secondary institution. In fact, the

definition of higher education necessarily includes

Polytechnics.

But while the place of Nigerian University students as ESP

learners has been firmly established with the introduction

of English for Academic purpose (EAP) in their curriculum

and the production of some commissioned texts like:

1. Needs Analysis of Communication Skills in Nigerian Universities Editedby Ubabakwe, Ebo and Ntia U. Ntia.

2. EAP Syllabus for the Nigerian Universities Edited by Aliyu; I.S.,I.A. Olaofe and E.J. Otagburuagu.

The place of the Polytechnic student remains poorly

defined, at the best and at the worst, undefined. Yet this

group of learners qualifies more as ESP learners than any

other group. The structure of their program, which is two-

tier, makes them so. Polytechnic students, after two years

of study are required to acquire one year industrial work

experience before returning for another two years of study.

This arrangement, therefore, qualifies them to need English

both for academic and occupational or professional

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purposes. This assertion finds support in Alexander

(1988), who conducted a needs analysis of pre-experience

learners in European Business studies in Germany and found

out that the learners, who must take one year off their

studies to acquire industrial work experience, needed

English for both academic and occupational purposes. Back

home in Nigeria, Balogun (1997) who investigated the needs

of Secretarial Studies students at Auchi Polytechnic, Auchi

also found out that the students need English for academic

and occupational purposes.

Apart from the forgoing, in institutions of higher

learning, as noted by Odejide,

B., Soola, D., Oyetade, W., & Mosuro T. (1995), reported in

Balogun (2013), students perform a variety of academic task

through the medium of English. They have to explain or

describe a concept or an object, argue a point of view,

demonstrate a process either in speech or in writing. In

addition, to these, they have to read a variety of

materials in their disciplines and in other subject areas,

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listen to lectures, find out information from available

sources and use them appropriately. These are tasks

towards which English for Academic Purpose (EAP) in the

Universities is directed. These academic tasks are also

carried on in the Polytechnics with no less vigour, and so,

if the task mark university students out as ESP learners,

they qualify Polytechnic students no less. Polytechnic

students engage in them in addition to other occupational

tasks in the industries. This is why they qualify more as

ESP learners needing English for both academic and

occupational purposes.

RELEVANCE OF ESP IN NIGERIA POLYTECHNICS

If there is anywhere ESP is needed in Nigeria, it is

in the polytechnic where middle-level pourer is produced.

Perhaps the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE)

has realized this; hence in its last revision of the

syllabus, it gave appropriate titles to some English

courses as follows: Business Communication I & II,

Technical Report Writing, Technical English. These are all

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ESP courses that should be taught by English teachers with

background in ESP or Applied Linguistics. These courses

have been appropriately titled and their syllabus content

drawn up after a needs analysis could have been done with

regard to the departments concerned.

In order to make meaning out of the various

fabrications, inventions and constructions that take place

in Nigerian polytechnics, ESP cannot be overlooked. It is

when the learners are taught how to write manuals and

reports accompanying the inventions that people will know

the way to handle all such creations. The manuals that

accompany our cell phones, fans, pressing irons are all

written by those who have been exposed to ESP courses at

one point or the other. Since polytechnic products are to

be found in all spheres of the economy, they should be able

to document their experiences and it is by exposure to ESP

that such can be achieved.

Reports are written every now and then about our

activities, whether in the industries or in offices.

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Proper and better reports can only be produced by those who

have been privileged to be exposed to ESP the way Lawyers

produce legal documents with professional touches.

CONCLUSION

This paper, starting with the meaning of language, has

taken a look at English as a language, English for Specific

Purposes, how it is different from English as a Second

Language and argues that polytechnic students are ESP

learners, which establishes firmly the relevance of ESP in

Nigerian polytechnics.

RECOMMENDATIONS

A paper of this nature need not end without making

some recommendations.

(i) The National Board for Technical Education (NBTE)

should collaborate with the NUC and the British

Council to designate some Polytechnics as centers of

Applied Linguistic Research for advancing studies in

ESP.

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(ii) Applied Linguists should come together to produce

textbooks for use in

Polytechnics such as has happened in the universities

(Balogun, 1999)

(iii) Business Communication, Technical Report Writing

and Technical English which are ESP courses should be

taught by only those with a background in ESP or

Applied Linguistics. If left in the hands of any

other persons, not much will be derived from the

courses by the learners.

(iv) English teachers in polytechnics should endeavour to

acquire higher qualifications in ESP or Applied

Linguistics

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