A view on development of English for specific purposes (ESP) in Iran

Professor:

Mr. Lei Lei

Student name:

IMAN
S.N:

I201121235
Course:

English for specific purposes (ESP)

June 2012

A view on development of English for specific purposes (ESP) in Iran

Abstract
English for specific purposes (ESP) is an issue that came into existence in the mid 20th century under the influence of scientific and technical developments in west, some developments in the field of linguistics and educational psychology. In this half century, this issue has undergone many changes and developments. There was also a move toward this issue in Iran from the beginning of 1980s. Although these activities seemed promising in the beginning but at the end it was not very successful. The studies show that the lack of inappropriate educational sources and not employing experts in providing and teaching related materials are the main reasons for the lack of success in this field in Iran.

Introduction
Nowadays in the educational system of Iran, especially in universities, almost all the majors have ESP courses. The need for this course was due to the scientific developments in the mid 20th century in the world and in Iran. Perhaps, the purpose of syllabus makers in higher education in putting this course in university syllabuses was to help students to gain up to date necessary skills and better use of new and original English sources in different majors and fields. Now the question is that how much ESP courses could help students to achieve these purposes in higher education in Iran.

The birth of ESP (reasons)

It is said that three main developments in the 20 th century were the main reasons of the birth of ESP. Perhaps, the most important reason is the vast developments in the fields of science, technology and economy. Among the countries that were influential in this respect, the role of USA was more prominent and colorful (Fallahi 2005). These reasons made it necessary to learn English, especially technical English, to have access to western scientific and technical sources, especially in USA. Therefore, these reasons and the importance of time and financial sources led to developing English learning programs with specific aims and orientations. The second prominent reason in the birth of ESP was the developments in the field of linguistics (Fallahi 2005). Traditional linguists were interested in surface structures and characteristics of language, so they did not pay much attention to the functions of language. Following developments in linguistics, functional aims and the communicational role of language draw the attention of the linguists. This issue and the need to appropriate use of language in different contexts emphasized the needs toward ESP, because it introduced a kind of practical orientation in language use and followed different uses of language in different educational contexts. Perhaps the third reason could be the developments in educational psychology (Fallahi 2005). One of these developments could be the emphasis on the role of learners and their characteristics in the process of learning. This could be a reason to the birth of ESP in the way that ESP pays to the specific needs and educational interests of learners.

The development stages of ESP

Perhaps we can say that ESP came to be known in 1960s. Those who proposed teaching of English for specific purposes in that era believed that studying English texts by learners in the related scientific and technical fields would lead learners to obtain necessary language skills in their work and educational fields. According to this belief, the first educational programs of ESP were designed by selecting and using English texts and materials related to different fields. Some issues such as lack of aims and educational exercises and activities made the teaching of this course very troublesome, therefore researchers and designers of ESP programs felt the need for necessary changes in programs and therefore the second stage toward developing ESP was taken. The prominent idea in designing ESP programs in this stage was toward components of words and grammatical structures. The proponents of this move tried to achieve the educational aims of ESP by extracting and teaching lists of technical words and useful grammatical structures such as passive structures. The feature that made these educational programs distinctive with former stage programs was the emphasis on components of words and grammatical structures and in fact the new approach had no new feature to resolve problems in the former approach, therefore, the educational programs based on words components and grammatical structures could not lead the learners of ESP courses toward ideal skills. After the second stage, the researches about teaching ESP were based on discourse analysis approach. The proponents of this approach believed that paying attention only to surface characteristics of language such as words and grammatical structures could neglect the learners to pay attention to the communicational aspects of language. Therefore, the third stage of ESP came into existence by

proposing the importance of communication acts in designing educational materials of ESP. The proponents of this move tried to base the most important and related language communication acts such as, description, definition, classification, etc, which was used mostly in the studies, related to discourse analysis, on the design of ESP courses. As regards, this attitude toward teaching of ESP like former attitudes did not have a comprehensive teaching plan and in fact was looking in language teaching as particular and later the base of this approach went under attack. For example, Robinson (1991) in an analysis declared that basically two main components, special aim and the nature of learners language needs are determinants of design and frame of ESP teaching programs and the discourse analysis approach summarizes these two in communication acts and use. Therefore, he concluded that learning of some communicational skills of language might not create the ideal use of language. The ideas of Widdowson (1983) in applied linguistics, based the new approach or fourth stage of researches related to teaching of ESP. the model of Widdowson included two main key concepts that without describing them it is difficult to understand his theory. These two key concepts are learning purpose and nature of language use. In this ideational theory, the purpose of language learning unlike the former ideas is not based on some limited and specific skills. Since he discerned between ESP and EOP (English for occupational purposes), he believed that the former approaches were only accountable for the educational needs in the EOP frame and we should never limit the purpose of learning in ESP to obtaining some skills. For example, the language needs of an engineer or technician are not limited to learning some fixed formulas to use in some specific situations and surely, the language needs of these persons would be more than these ones. Widdowsnon

believes that the purpose of ESP is different from EOP and basically the purpose of ESP programs is to create the needed potentials in learners in order to solve issues, create meanings and gain learning principles; in the way that learners could answer their educational and professional needs in predictable and unpredictable contexts by using obtained skills. The idea of Widdowson about the second concept (language use) is the same as the process happening in first language use. Maybe an example would clarify this concept: in a research conducted by Fillinbun, Clark and Clark (1977), they gave a listening task to some participants and asked them to write the meaning of the sentence. The sentence was John dressed and had a bath, more than 60 percent of the participants had noticed the abnormality in the sentence and while reporting they revised the meaning. In fact those participants got the sentence as John undressed and had a bath. In the analysis of this issue, it is said that experience of language learning and use create some organized meaning frames related to different issues in the environment in the mind of person and therefore when s/he faces a concept which is different from the truth, his/her mind tries to match that with the help of those meaning frames mentioned above. In the example above the meaning frame in our mind tells us that when we take a bath, we undress. Therefore, when somebody says I undressed and had a bath, our mind according to principles would not accept that, except in some specific contexts and for some specific reasons. These two concepts have many details and there are many discussions about them that it is impossible to pay to all of them in this article, but I hope I could have clarified these concepts by above explanations. However, something that seems necessary here is the way to bring this idea into context and apply that in educational settings. Perhaps the first step to use this concept for design of educational materials is to study and analyze the educational needs of learners. According to these needs and with the purpose of creating and reinforcing learners educational capacity, the desired educational plan would be

designed. Regarding this plan and by using phonological, semantic and syntactic components in the context of language skills, the educational materials would be designed in a way that have the maximum relation to the learners majors and the learners could use language in the way that Widdowson has described.

The history and position of ESP in Iran

Before Cultural Revolution (1970) in Iran, there was not any intensive management in preparation or supervision on providing ESP materials. The first activities in providing materials for ESP were done by University of Tehran Press in 1970 (Farhady 1998). This new established center in that year, provided some textbooks for teaching ESP in universities. These textbooks were generally according to the first and second generations of ESP; i.e. these textbooks covered technical and semi-technical texts and most of their educational activities were based on vocabulary and grammar. It worth mentioning that the activities mentioned above were conducted in the early 80s while in that time, the third generation of ESP was in its last days in developed countries and it seemed the new changes for the fourth generation are approaching. Although this issue shows that there were much distance between the developments of ESP in Iran and other countries, but this does not devalue the activities conducted by experts in that time. In 1984, the organization for Researching and Composing University textbooks in the Humanities were established (Farhady 2009). One of the major activities of this organization was to publish ESP textbooks for university majors. Along establishing this organization, there was a great development in producing and publishing ESP textbooks and nowadays almost all the majors in universities in Iran have their own ESP textbooks. But what draws the attention of the experts in this field is that beside all these activities in publishing and providing these ESP

textbooks, there are no activities to optimize and improve the qualities in teaching these textbooks and even it is noticeable that there are much quality loss in some ESP classes comparing to the first generation of ESP in Iran. Some of the abovementioned textbooks are just like the first generation ESP textbooks; i.e. some unrelated texts without any educational exercises and activities are put together and in this way, the ESP textbooks are produced. It worth mentioning this fact that the experts in this field did not use the models used in other countries to improve the quality of ESP textbooks and teaching in Iran. Beside the problem of irrelevant educational materials, ESP is faced a serious management problem. In any major in universities there are two credits of general English taught by teachers trained and educated in English language and there four credits for ESP course which are mainly taught by teachers who havent studied in English language. These ESP teachers despite having knowledge over technical courses and in some cases even good command of English, they often cannot use appropriate teaching techniques due to lack of necessary English teaching knowledge. Therefore, in the best case in these classes, the process of language learning would only be the translation from English to Persian. Since the idea of teaching ESP in Iran is related to the first and second generation of ESP and the teachers treat it as a course in which learners should only get familiar to a list of technical vocabularies, generally it is believed that the teachers trained specially in English language teaching could not teach these ESP courses. Except some few universities that employ ESP teachers with academic background in English teaching, other universities employ teachers who mostly do not have even the least command of English language; as a result, in these classes learners just learn a list of technical vocabularies with incorrect pronunciations.

Conclusion
As a conclusion to this issue, it is recommended to assign those teachers with academic education in teaching English language for ESP courses, because there are many experts in this field ready to serve as teachers in these courses in Iran. Probably, if the policy makers in education pay more attention to this issue and regard ESP as an in dependent course and use models used in improved countries to teach ESP, this could be a regarding move toward improvement in ESP in our country and as a result the graduates could get optimum advantage from using original English sources in their fields of studies and even they could gain the skills needed to present their articles in international conferences and participate in related technical discussions held in English. Surely, the first move toward this aim could be to assign teachers with education in English language teaching for ESP courses. The opponents may declare that these teachers do not have the command of technical concepts in different majors. In the answer to this issue, we can say that if the expertise is the necessary criterion for being ESP teacher, so the expertise of those who have studied years in language teaching and most probably how to teach ESP courses in their education should not be neglected. It is worth mentioning that getting familiar to some technical concept in one major is not a burdensome and difficult task to these teachers while it would be more difficult for those who havent being trained in English teaching and they need to spend much time and effort to gain these skills.

Bibliography
Clark, H. H. & Clark, E.V. (1977). Psychology and language. New York: Harcourt Fallahi, M, (2005). Application of contrastive linguistics in EFL/ESP curriculum development in Iran. Journal of Iranian Language Teaching 29: 85-101 Farhady, H. (1998). A critical review of the English section of the BA and MA university entrance examination. Journal of the faculty of foreign languages. Tehran, Iran: Tehran University Press Farhady, H (2009). Language assessment policy in Iran. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. USA: Cambridge University Press. Halliday, M. A. K. (1973). Exploration in the functions of language. London: Edward Arnold. Robinson, P. (1991). ESP today: a practitioners guide. New York and London: Prentice Hall International Widdowson, H. G. (1983). Language purpose and use. Oxford: Oxford University Press