Anyone current on the latest trends in Japanese higher education knows that university administrators and faculty in Japan are very interested in English for Specific Purposes (ESP). The recent increase in ESP publications, conference presentations, professional gatherings, Web sites, e-mail lists, invited lectures, consulting requests, and model program study-tours adequately testifies to this fact. Motivated by new policies and priorities at national and local levels, Japanese universities are now in the midst of rethinking their English language curriculums and searching for better options.
For more effective delivery of English instruction, Computer-Assisted Language-Learning (CALL) is rapidly becoming a popular choice. For more effective instructional content, ESP is considered an intelligent option. Unfortunately, many language program administrators and educators living Japan are not yet familiar enough with ESP theory, research, and education to know how to transform their existing EFL programs into ESP programs. In this short article, I offer partial remedy to this problem by proposing a simple guide for intelligent program reform.
Defining Our Terms
English for General Purposes (EGP) is essentially the English language education in junior and senior high schools. Students are introduced to the sounds and symbols of English, as well as to the lexical/grammatical/rhetorical elements that compose spoken and written discourse. EGP also focuses on applications in general situations: appropriate dialogue with restaurant staff, bank tellers, postal clerks, telephone operators, English teachers, and party guests as well as lessons on how to read and/or write the English typically found in textbooks, newspaper and magazine articles, telephone books, shopping catalogues, application forms, personal letters, e-mail, and home pages. Supplementary information about appropriate gestures, cultural conventions, and cultural taboos is also normally included in EGP curriculums. EGP conducted in English-speaking countries is typically called ESL, and EGP conducted in non-English-speaking countries is normally called EFL. Pedagogically, a solid understanding of basic EGP should precede higher-level instruction in ESP if ESP programs are to yield satisfactory results.
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is research and instruction that builds on EGP and is designed to prepare students or working adults for the English used in specific disciplines, vocations, or professions to accomplish specific purposes. As Dudley-Evans (1998) explains, ESP may not always focus on the language of one specific discipline or occupation, such as English for Law or English for Physics. University instruction that introduces students to common features of academic discourse in the sciences or humanities, frequently called English for Academic Purposes (EAP), is equally ESP.
ESP Curriculum Reform for Japan
ESP curriculum design has received some attention in the profession's literature over the years, both in theory ( Hutchinson & Waters, 1987; Mackay & Palmer, 1981; Pennycook, 1997) and in specific applications (Orr et al., 1995; Swales & Mustafa, 1984); however, few articles have been written on ESP curriculum design for the specific needs of university students in Japan. Those that have been written, however, (and many of them quite good) unfortunately appear in minor publications with small circulations and even smaller readerships. (See <http://www.u-aizu.ac.jp/~t-orr/esp-j-bibliography.html> for a fairly complete list of articles written about ESP work in Japan.) In addition, they frequently deal with specific applications of ESP rather than addressing the broader issue of reforming university English programs in their entirety. In an effort to fill this gap, I offer, in the sections that follow, a brief guide for ESP curriculum design for those who are currently considering revision of their entire English program.
Needs analysis
ESP is driven by the specific learning needs of the language learner. The first step for ESP curriculum reform is research to identify the specific learning needs of your students, for these will inform the decisions you make about your ESP program. Before you begin a needs analysis, however, you must first answer the following crucial question:
Will your students use English at your university or in their jobs after graduation? If the answer is no, then ESP is not a reasonable option for your university's English language program. The university will have to justify its existence and improve the program via other means. If the answer is yes, however, then ESP is probably the most intelligent option for your school's curriculum reform. ESP needs analysis lays a solid foundation for a stable ESP program. In an ESP analysis, answers to the following questions should be sought.
Establishing learning targets
Begin with some basic questions to survey what you think will be needed. Will students use English at my university or in their jobs after graduation? In what situations? For what purposes? What language skills will be required? (reading, writing, listening, speaking) What are the significant characteristics of the language in these situations? (lexicon, grammar, spoken scripts, written texts, other characteristics). What extralinguistic knowledge of academia, specific disciplines, specific vocations, or specific professions is required for successful English usage in these areas?
Answers to these fundamental questions will begin to specify the target skills and language required to function successfully in target English language situations. Clear objectives make program design much easier. It should be noted, however, that identifying, understanding, and describing the spoken and written discourse considered appropriate by specific academic, professional, and vocational discourse communities is not an easy, one-time task. Many scholars in theoretical and applied linguistics devote the bulk of their careers to this work. Initially, careful local inquiry supplemented with input from a balance of practical and scholarly ESP literature is enough to begin an ESP program, but the content and instruction must be continually refined according to input from on-going local research and new findings announced in the professional literature. Stagnation will damage ESP as easily as it does EGP.
Establishing entry levels
Identifying the language targets toward which students must aim may comprise the largest percent of needs analysis, but it does not comprise it all. We must also discover where our students currently stand and how much distance lies between them and the target before we can begin to determine where instruction is necessary. Many good publications exist on language testing, so the issue need not be discussed here in detail; however, it should be noted that the goal of testing for ESP instruction is to determine what portions of the target language students don't know--not to test their knowledge of EGP. TOEFL, TOEIC, and other popular tests can be useful for testing how much general English students know, but they can't provide adequate data on student competence in the spoken scripts and written texts characteristic of a specific discipline or vocation, such as medicine or shipbuilding. The vocabulary and grammatical/rhetorical structures that surface most frequently in many work situations lie beyond the narrow range of English tested in popular standardized tests.
Program Design
Program design is guided by three parameters: 1) target learning goals, 2) entry-level language competence, and 3) available resources for education. These three elements shape the design of ESP and make it unique in every university. Though curriculum designs and their development will inevitably vary from context to context, I believe the following will work well at most Japanese universities.
Content selection
The following steps will aid you in content selection.
1. Identify the following in the target language:
･ essential vocabulary
･ essential grammar
･ essential spoken scripts
･ essential extralinguistic features
2. Determine which elements your students don't know.
3. Consider your resources:
･ time available for instruction
･ faculty size and qualifications
･ facilities and equipment
･ budget
･ other relevant matters
4. Prioritize your content material by degree of necessity.
5. Determine how much of the content material can be reasonably taught given student entry-levels, the quantity of teaching material, available time, and other available resources.
Content arrangement
Once the exact content your school is able to offer has been determined, the next concern is how to organize it. In Japan, I recommend ESP content material be organized and presented in the following three phases: Phase 1: Transition and Review; Phase 2: Listening/Speaking Instruction & Reading/Writing Instruction; and Phase 3: Integrated Applications.
The first phase provides transition to university-level education and review in the basics. It assists students switch gears from the educational style and material accustomed to in Japanese high schools to that appropriate for learning at your university. It also reviews fundamental English listening/ speaking/ reading/ writing skills and content in areas where EGP and ESP overlap in order to equip students for hard-core ESP in the second and third phases. For example, if students have trouble with passive constructions normally taught in EGP, and the ESP target language makes frequent use of passives, then this material is reviewed in the transition and review phase of ESP instruction.
The second phase in this system offers students what I will call "hard-core" ESP. One part focuses on mastering spoken ESP discourse, and the other on written ESP discourse. These two groupings in the second phase will comprise the bulk of a university ESP program and may be divided into several different courses, arranged in increasing levels of difficulty. The amount of time and attention given to the second phase will depend on how necessary English is to graduate or find employment for students in your institution. Universities where half of a student's major courses are taught in English and where target employment situations require near-native English proficiency will naturally devote a larger percent of their curriculum to English education than those where English is seldom needed on campus or in their students' careers. The actual needs of your students will determine how much ESP is necessary.
The third and final phase in this system is devoted to integrated applications. By this, I mean integration of the four language skills in realistic or genuine target situations for which students have been preparing. For example, ESP instruction in this phase might include supplementary support for academic English activities, such as providing assistance with writing graduation theses or dissertations in English, or it might include supplementary instruction for students who use English in an apprenticeship context prior to university graduation. In this phase, the ESP teacher acts more as a language counselor or behind-the-scene language assistant to help students succeed in their first encounters with a target English language situation they have been preparing for. Again, whether or not this final phase gets much attention in a particular university will depend on actual student need.
Content delivery
After you select your instructional content and sequence it, you must decide how you will deliver it. The nature of the content, the staff and facilities available, and the nature of your students will guide your decisions. Will you create a self-study program where students can learn some parts of the material at their own pace via CD-ROMs? Will you balance lectures with groupwork or class discussion? Will you put your course syllabi on Web pages with links to lecture notes and interactive exercises? Will you work on projects cooperatively via Internet with students in other countries? Will you invite specialists from the target vocation or profession to deliver some of the extralinguistic material? No matter what you decide, it is advisable to keep your students' specific learning goals in mind so that your modes of deliver will complement the material. For example high-tech, individualized computer-assisted instruction might be best suited for ESP students preparing for the computer field, whereas formal lectures, discussion, and debate may be better suited for ESP programs aimed at training future lawyers. Again, specific learning needs will uniquely shape every ESP program.
Materials development
One of the most time-consuming activities for many ESP programs is the preparation of appropriate teaching materials. Few materials sold in bookstores fit the specific needs identified in a needs analysis. ESP textbooks, for example, must appeal to consumers in a wide variety of contexts to turn a profit. Consequently, the best course of action is to find as much prepared material as possible that genuinely meets your students' needs, and then supplement it with material you design yourself.
In principle, if efforts at one or more universities can be coordinated, where learners share similar goals, the process can take less time. Unfortunately,in actual practice this is rare. University faculty are notorious for pride in their work and confidence in their opinions. If levels of competence and "professional" opinion differ too greatly, then it's usually more efficient to work alone and let time tell which ESP materials are effective and which are not. Universities with genuine concern for quality ESP materials do not allow politics to interfere with material development and quickly eliminate poor teaching materials if they prove ineffective.
Implementation, evaluation, and refinement
The final step for creating a good ESP program includes implementation, evaluation, and refinement. Here, plans are implemented, student progress measured, educational effectiveness evaluated, and the program improved when better ideas surface. Viewing ESP programs as organic entities in states of eternal growth is best, since they are designed to meet the changing needs of students and the continual demands of new discoveries and new technologies.
Conclusion
ESP is growing in popularity and university educators in Japan are expressing great interest in this new phenomenon since it seems to hold promise for more effective and genuinely useful English language instruction for Japanese students who increasingly need English for specific purposes in academic, vocational, or professional contexts. The simple plan outlined above offers one possible option for intelligent program reform to transform 20th-century EFL to 21st-century ESP. As ESP scholarship and experience grow in Japan, other educators can expand this advice further for the benefit of us all.
References
Dudley-Evans, T. (1998). An overview of ESP in the 1990s. In T. Orr (Ed.), Proceedings 1997: The Japan conference on English for specific purposes (pp. 5-12). Aizuwakamatsu, Japan: University of Aizu.
Hutchinson, T., & Waters, A. (1987). English for specific purposes: A learning-centred approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mackay, R., & Palmer, R. D. (Eds.). (1981). Languages for specific purposes: Program design and evaluation. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Orr, T., Bowers, R., Busch, D., Kushner, S. Mueller, E., & de Prospero, A. (1995). Serving science and technology: Five programs around the globe (Tech. Rep. No. 95-5-001). "Aizuwakamatsu, Japan: University of Aizu. Colloquium presentations at the 29th Annual TESOL "International Conference, Long Beach, CA. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 389 173).
Pennycook, A. (1997). Vulgar pragmatism, critical pragmatism, and EAP. English for Specific Purposes: An International Journal, 16(4), 253-269.
Swales, J., & Mustafa, H. (Eds.). (1984). English for specific purposes in the Arab world. Birmingham, UK: The University of Aston.