iv

9 Intertextual Patterns in English Legal DiscourseVIJAYK. BHATIA

10 English for Medical PurposesUNG SHI

11 Problem-Solving for Nursing PurposesDlANE BELCHER

PART 3: ENGLlSH FOR SOCIOCULTURAL PURPOSES

12 English for Community Membership:Planning for Actual and Potential NeedsHELEN DE SILVAJOYCE and SUSAN HOOD

13 Critical Citizenship Practices in ESP and ESL Programs:Canadian and Global PerspectivesBRIAN MORGAN and DOUGLAS FLEMING

Afterword: Where Have We Come From andWhere Are We Now?BRIAN I'ALTRIDGE

Index

CONTENTS

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297

What ESP Is and Can Be:An Introduction

DIANE BELCHERGeorgia State University

Gelleral (lal/guage (or 110 purpose) cO/<rses at allY proficiellcy level almostalways teach too much, e.g., vocabulary, skills, registers or styles some leamersdo 1I0t lIeed, alld too little, e.g., omittillg lexis alld gellres that they do. lllsteado( a olle-size-fits-all approach, it is more de(ellsible to view every course asillvolvillg specific purpases .... (LolIg, 2005, p. 19)

Ideally, as Michael Long suggests, English, or any language, is taught withspecific purposes explicitly in mind. The reality, of course, is that the pur-poses served in language instruction are not always those of the languagelearners, so the instruction may look ro learners like "language for no pur-pose," to borrow Long's words, or more troubling, like language for otherpeople's purposes (i.e., individuals or even national entities in positions ofpower; see Margan & Fleming, this volume). Commitment to the goal ofproviding language instruction that addresses students' own specific lan-guage learning purposes is what those who. take an English for SpecificPurposes (ESP)I approach see as distinguishing it from other approachesro English Language Teaching (ELT) (Hyland, 2002). However, while the

'We should note that the speciflc-purposes approach is nat exclusive to the teaching ofEnglish; it can be used ro teach any language, hence the broader term Lallguage (ar SpecificPurposes (LSP) also exists. Since this volume focuses primarily on the teaching of English, theterm ESP will be used throughout.

1.

2 ESP IN THEORY AND PRACTICE What ESP 15 and Can Be 3

goal of ESP-specific-learner-ccntered language instruction-may appearstraightforward enough, how best to meet the goal may be less obvious. Atthe very least, the ESP approach requires a willingness on the part of the lan-guage educator to enter (not unlike ESP students themselves) as a strangerinto strange domains-academic and occupational areas that may feel quiteunfamiliar-and to engage in a degree of reflection that attempts to sort outthe extent to which ¡earners' purposes are actually served when the languagepractices of any target discourse community are taught (Belcher, 2006). Formany involved in ESP, these intellectual and, so me would add, ethical chal-lengcs (Hyland, 2006; Pennycook, 1997) are among the main reasons whythey find ESP exciting, intellectually stimulating, and professionally and per-sonally gratifying.One gets a sense of the enormous range of domains that ESP specialists

enter into by noting just some of the seemingly endless acronyms gener-ated by the various branches of ESP. There are, and no doubt will be, asmany types of ESP as there are specific learner needs and target communitiesthat learners wish to thrive in. Perhaps the best known of these (especiallyamong language educators who are themselves most often situated in aca-demia) is EAP, or English for Academic Purposes, tailored to the needs oflearners at various, usually higher, educational levels (see Hyland, 2006,for an excellent overview of EAP issues and practices). Less well known (tomany academics) and potentially more diversified, given the breadth andvariety of the worlds of work, is EOP, or English for Occupational Purposes.The fastest growing branches of EOP are those associated with professionsthat are themselves constantly expanding and generating offshoots, such asEBP, English for Business Purposes; ELP, English for Legal Purposes; andEMP, English for Medical Purposes. There are also numerous other lesswell known but equally intriguing varieties of EOP, such as English for AirTraffic Controllers, English for Tourist Guides, English for Horse Breed-ers, and English for Brewers.2 The ESP picture is further complicated bynumerous hybrid permutations of EOP and EAP, combining elements ofboth, such as EAMP, English for Academic Medical Purposes (for health sci-ence students); EABP, English for Academic Business Purposes (for studentsmajoring in business), and EALP, English for Academic Legal Purposes (forlaw students). EAP, EOP, and still further combinations of both are not thewhole story either, as socially conscious ESP specialists have begun to con-sider highly specialized sociocultural purposes too (hence, English for Socio-

'For more extensive lists of ESP varieties sec Dudley-Evans & Stojohn (1998), Hutchinson& Waters (1987), and Orr (2002).

cultural Purposes, or ESCP; see Master, 2000, and de Silva Joyce & Hood,this volume) by addressing such needs as those of language and literacylearners who are incarcerated, coping with physical disabilities, or seekingcitizenship (Belcher, 2004, 2006; Morgan & Fleming, this volume). WhatHyland (2006) has recently observed of EAP is arguably also an apt descrip-tor of ESP in general: its motivation to help those especially disadvantagedby their lack of language needed for the situations they find themselves in,hope to enter, or eventually rise aboye.This commitment to the purposes of the ¡earners themselves is, to reiter-

ate, what unites all the various branches of ESP. What the commitmententails is (l) first and foremost (before, during, and even after instruction),finding out what learners' needs are, then (2) developing or adapting materi-als and methods to enable needs-responsive instruction while concurrently(3) acquiring the expertise to function as needs-knowledgeable instructors(Dudley-Evans & Sr. John, 1998; Robinson, 1991).

Needs FirstAs a learner nccds-based approach, ESP practitioners are, not surprisingly,particularly interested in the gap between learners' current and target com-petencies. This may at first sight not seem so different from the interests ofmany other language educators, even those teaching language for general-or in Long's terms, "no"-purposes. lt is probably safe to say that most lan-guage instruction attempts to address learners' present needs, having gaugedcurrent proficiency levels (e.g., elementary, intermediate, advanced) with thehelp of test scores or educational background information. Less commonoutside of ESP, however, is a determination ro identify and explicitly addressspecific target needs-that is, not the needs of generalized language learn-ers but those of specific learners eager to join the "literacy clubs" (Smith,1988) or ongoing conversations of target discourse communities, or whatAnn Johns (this volume) refers to as the "target situation." Far from assum-ing that they already know what their students at a certain proficiency levelneed, ESP specialists accept responsibility for finding out what their learnerswilllikely need (and want) to be able to read, write, speak, and comprehendas listeners to achieve their goals.Acceptance of this needs-identifying responsibility means that well before

actual instruction begins, ESP course designers will have collected and exam-ined data, usually in the form of sample texts and audio or video recordings,from the target community, often with guidance, via interviews, from com-munity insiders (see Long, 2005, for much fuller discussion of needs analy-

sis than possible here). Informed by recent developments in genre theory(Hyland, 2004; Paltridge, 2001; Swales, 1990,2004), ESP specialists pro-ceed with discourse-sample analysis, by considering, ideally, both macro-(rherorical, whole-text) and micro- (lexicogrammatical) leve! characteristicsof the writren and spoken genres (i.e., routine communicative events) rep-resented, such as memos, conference presentations, progress reports, ¡obinterviews, or whatever el se seems salient. Of interest will be not just thesegenres in isolation, but the contexts in which they function and interact withother genres: how one genre responds ro others (intertextuality or interdis-cursivity), such as application letrers in response ro job ads, and how they,in turn, form large community-specific genre colonies or networks (Bhatia,2004, this volume; Cheng & Mok, 2008). Atrention is also ideally givenro how target genres vary within and across communities, how they allowroom for personal agency or "voice," as well as ro how they change overtime. Rapidly evolving cyber genres like videoconferences, blogs, and emailas used in specific communities are conspicuous examples of the dynamismand variability of genres, as new media and rhetorical situations develop,that ESP needs analysts need ro be mindful of (see Nickerson & Planken,this volume).While advances in technology, with resulting increased instability and pro-

liferation of genres, may make the aims of ESP needs analysis seem like amoving target (metaphorically and actually), technology now aIso offers themeans of making such assessments easier, more efficient, and more thor-oughly empirical, and therefare less dependent on analyst intuition aboutspecific registers (i.e., the linguistic features characteristic of genres in specificdomains; see de Silva Joyce & Hood, this volume). Corpus linguistics, or com-puter-assisted collection and analysis of massive amounts of language data,has given ESP specialists access ro mega-databanks of authentic spoken andwritten discourse (for a broader overview of what corpora can offer ESP, seeGavioli, 2005). Probably the best known, and certainly the largest, of theseis the more than 500 million word (and still growing) Bank of English, withsamples of writren and spoken English representing a huge range of sources,including newspapers, textbooks, websites, television and radio broad-casts, meetings, and conversations (see, for example, www.titania.bham.ac.uk). Of increasing interest to many in ESP, as a result of the global spreadand use of English, is the new corpus VOl CE, the Vienna-Oxfard Inter-national Corpus of English (www.univie.ac.at/voice/index.php). focusingexclusively on spoken English as a Lingua Franca (or ELF, English asused by speakers whose first language is not English, such as Korean and

'Long (2005) urges us not to over-privilege learners, or "newcomers," as informants onpresent and, especially, future needs. Morgan and Fleming (this volume), however, worry thattoo often not enough attention is givcn to learner concerns. Both vicws serve to underscorethc value of multiple perspectives for nceds analysis (i.c., triangulation, or bctter yet, analyticinduction, on which see Silverman, 2006), as any single perspective is inevitably partia!.

German business associates) (see Planken & Nickerson on BELF, BusinessEnglish as a Lingua Franca, this volume). A somewhat different perspectiveon the global use of English is offered by ICE (International Corpus ofEnglish, see www.ucl.ac.uk!english-usage/ice). with both writren and spo-ken material representing a growing number of national and regionalvarieties of English. Another more specialized corpus, especially usefulfor EAP, is MICASE, the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English(www.hti.umich.edu/m/micase). with transcriptions and sound files of highereducation speech events like dissertation defenses, large and small class lec-tures, seminar discussions, student advising sessions, and service encounters.With the help of relatively accessible concordancing software,

such as MonoConc Pro and Wordsmith Tools (for extremely teacher-friendly concordancing assistance, see The Compleat Lexical Tutor athtrp://132.208.224.131), ESP specialists can now even compile and ana-Iyze their own small, specialized corpora of expert and learner texts, andthus determine the distribution of specific lexical and grammatical featureswithin and across texts (Coxhead & Byrd, 2007; Reppen, 2001). Frequencydata obtained with such software also make it possible to identify differ-ences (and parallels) between domain-specific genres and more everydaylanguage use through comparison of self-compiled carpora with data fromexisting large general carpora such as the Bank of English (Flowerdew,2005; Gavioli, 2005). Even ESP students themselves, when trained in corpustool use, can contribute to needs analysis by mapping the distance betweentheir own and their target community's communicative performances (seeLee & Swales, 2006). As Lee and Swales remark, such tooIs have the addedbenefit of empowering learners to determine their own target needs, orgoals, without reliance on "native speaker" (or even teacher) judgments of

appropriateness.Other recent deve!opments in both qualitative and quantitative data col-

lection have greatly in crea sed the ability of ESP specialists to collect both"subjective" and "objective" needs data, or newcomer perceptions and old-timer expectations (Hyland, 2006; Lave & Wenger, 1991 ).3 Scientific surveymethods, for example, can tap into the varied, not-infrequently conflicting

5What ESP 15and Can BeESP IN THEORY AND PRACTICE4

6 ESP IN THEORY AND PRACTICE What ESP 15and Can Be 7

perspectives of large numbers of stakeholders, as Chia, johnson, Chia, andOlive (1999) found in their survey of more than 300 Taiwanese medicalstudents' and their professors' differing views of the main English languagecompetencies needed by the students. still more fine-tuned target needs datacan be collected through ethnographic methods, as Bosher & Smalkoski(2002) discovered in their on-site observation and interviews of faculty andimmigrant students in a U.S. nursing programo journal entries from thestudent nurses augmented the ethnographic needs assessment by opening awindow on culture and gender-related issues and revealing a need for asser-tiveness training that might not have otherwise surfaced. Another ethno-graphic technique, prolonged participant engagement, which jasso-Aguilar(1999) very actively accomplished by working alongside hotel housekeeperlanguage learners, can pro vide a deeply emic (insider) perspective on theactual day-to-day language needs and desires of learners, and may uncover,as it did for jasso-Aguilar, the limitations (and possible motivations) of top-down managerial views of what learners need. Analysis of ethnographicdata itself can be greatly facilitated by concordancing technology. Concor-danced transcriptions of recorded data from Shi, Corcos, & Storey's (2001)months-Iong study of Hong Kong hospital ward teaching sessions helpedreveal to researchers the common topics, types of interactions, and inter-locutor roles, but also the importance of bilingual competence, in colloquialCantonese and technical English, for successful patient/student/preceptorcommunication.As valuable as recent theoretical, technological, or methodological

advancements ha ve been for needs analysis, an equally if not more signifi-cant contribution to the efficacy of needs analysis is the seemingly simplerealization that needs assessment is best when ongoing. Learners them-selves, especially when already in the target setting, can provide crucial dataon the effectiveness of concurrent EsP instruction and identify new targetneeds that emerge as their community immersion deepens. Even after anEsP course ends, there is good reason for needs analysis to continue. Eggly's(2002) use of extended post-course videotaping of international medicalresidents interacting with their patients in a U.S. clinic not only providedinformation on any additional individualized ESP support needed but, at thesame time, served as a means of helping the residents monitor and considerhow to address their own ongoing needs (see Hussin, 2002, p. 35, on devel-oping a "reflective practice model").If needs analysis is now seen as previously too narrowly procedurally con-

ceived as a one-time-only, pre-instruction investigation, it is now also seenas having been too ideologically narrow (Benesch, 2001j Pennycook, 1997;

see also Basturkmen, 2006, on ESP's need for more widely encompassingsocial theory). Key to this critical-theory-informed reconceptualization isrecognition that any target discourse community is situated in other, stilllarger socioeconomic and political realities, and any coml11unity member, orwould-be member, holds numerous subject positions, as citizen/non-citizen,insured/uninsured, steadily employed/transiently employed, or minority/majority race/ethnic group member, etc. (Morgan & Fleming, this volumejVandrick, forthcoming). Too narrowly defining the target discourse com-munity or the goals of those on the periphery of it can lead to too pragmati-cally identifying learners' target needs as what is necessary for assimilationin and accommodation to an existing hierarchy, which in turn could limitfuture options (on the need for critical pragmatism, see Pennycook, 1997).In her own broadly conceived needs analysis of immigrant factory workersin Chicago, Garcia (2002) found that while they certainly needed languageto successfully function in the workplace, they had other goals and inter-ests that extended well beyond their immediate factory floor needs, such aslearning to use computers.Target discourse communities may themselves too narrowly define what

they are, as, for instance, in the case of academic communities viewed bydomain experts as places where students should cover a certain amountof subject-area material in a certain amount of time no matter what theireducational/linguistic/cultural backgrounds. Re-visioning needs analysis asrights analysis, Benesch (2001) has argued, can enable ESP practitionersand their students to see target communities of practice as not solely definedby those in power, but as places where newcomers have rights too-tobe included and accommodated-hence as interactiv~ social systems thatcan, and should, change as new members join (see also Casanave, 2002).Cadman's (2002) redefinition of EAP as "English for academic possibilities"captures this broader way of defining any target discourse community andrelated "needs" of learners.

Needs-Responsive Materials and MethodsIt would make little sense to seek needs assessment data as input for ESPcourses if those who develop and teach them were then to choose generic,ready-made commercial materials unresponsive to the specific target needsso carefully identified. In addition to the input that needs analysis providesfor course design, another noteworthy advantage to performing it is thatthe very materials collected can also serve as authentic, needs-specific coursematerials and task stimuli. Hussin (2002) notes how effectively materials

8 ESP IN THEORY ANO PRACTICE What ESP 15and Can Be 9

"produced for purposes other than ro teach language" (p. 27)-such asaudiotaped phone messages, videotaped interactions, and written docu-ments gathered on-site-can function as language teaching tools. Viewingneeds analysis as ongoing, as recommended, has an added course materialsbenefit as wel!. Students' written and spoken texts analyzed as an ESP courseprogresses, and any additional expert texts collected, can inform the designof "data-driven" materials, derived from instructor-compiled learner/expertcorpora (T. Johl15, 1994j T. Johl15 & King, 1991). Technology facilita tesnot just the archiving and analysis of such data, but also relatively easy cre-ation of tailor-made materials (see Jabbour, 2001, for examplesj Coxhead &Byrd, 2007, on "gap-maker" software) and direct, anytime/anyplace accessfor students.While tailor-made ESP materials have clear advantages in terms of

authenticity and specificity, discerning ESP practitioners can make effectiveuse of carefully chosen commercial materials, especially those produced byother ESP speci::.lists knowledgeable about relevant discourse/genre researchand theory as ""dI as target-domain data. One such off-the-shelf resourcefor business English purposes, Nickerson and Planken (this volume) tellus, is Koester's (2004) The Language of Work, a textbook unusually wellgrounded in recent research and replete with authentic workplace data. Forwider-angle approaches, as often needed in EAP classes with students srudy-ing a variety of subject areas, somewhat less specialized texts can be use-fu!' Swales and Feak's (2000, 2004) textbooks for graduate students andjunior-level professional academics are excellent examples of texts basedon authentic academic materials for use with disciplinarily heterogeneouslearners. The Swales and Feak texts acrually offer the best of both wideand narrow angle approaches, by encouraging learners ro move from moregeneral observations about academic discourse ro ethnographic analysis ofdata in their own fields.Students can, indeed, provide significant course materials themselves

when taught to function as ethnographers, that is, ro find and learn fromdata in their own areas of interest, and hence pro mote their own academic(or occupational) literacy (awareness of a community's usual communica-ti ve practices; see Ann Johns, 1997, and this volume, on this "socioliterate"approach). The products of such ethnographic work, student-generatedportfolios-which may include genre samples from srudent-selected subjectareas in the form of hard copies or digitized versions of expert and stu-dent texts, recordings of lectures, or notes on informant interviews-greatlyincrease the likelihood of individual srudents' access to authentic materials

truly relevant ro their needs (on portfolio use for EAP undergraduates, againsee Ann Johns, 1997; for graduate-Ievel EAP srudents, see Hirvela, 1997;Lee & Swales, 2006).At this point, it should be noted that the presence of authentic materi-

als in a classroom is no automatic guarantee of authenticity. Some haveeven suggested that once removed from the contexts where they naturallyoccur, authentic materials are anything but that (see Widdowson, 1979).One approach ro enhancing authenticity is the use of simulation, or tasksinspired by real-life communicative activities. For instance, to use EMPagain as an example, students can engage in role plays as patients and medi-cal practitioners after watching videos of experienced medical professionals(see Bosher & Smalkoski, 2002; Eggly, 2002; Hussin, 2002). Problem-basedlearning (PBL) is an increasingly popular type of simulation in various EOPand EAP contexts. PBL activities are designed to engage srudents in col-laborative solving of typical field-specific problems, simulated or actuallyoccurring, using as resources materials that the learners themselves find andcritically analyze (see Belcher, this volume; Shi, this volume; Wood & Head,2004). As with all ESP instruction, the goal of such authentic-as-possibletasks is not just ro serve as vehicles for developing communicative compe-tencies but to equip students with language learning and personal problem-solving strategies (i.e., increased metacognitive awareness) that they cancarry with them into their target communities.Of course, it would be impossible ro fully prepare learners for all the

routine (and less routine) communicative events they will eventually needto engage in, all the spoken and written genres they will want to be func-tionally competent with. Even if all the crucial target situations could beanticipated and delineated, classroom time constraints would force instruc-tors ro make difficult choices. Another type of strategy training beyondsimulation and PBL that can help address this pedagogical challenge is rhe-rorical and lexicogrammatical consciousness raising, or, increasing aware-ness of how written or spoken texts accomplish what they aim foro Genreawareness, Devitt (2004; see also Ann Johl15, this volume) argues, is a muchmore realistic goal than actual acquisition of a wide array of target genres,and it is a goal best met by first teaching students ro analyze more famil-iar "antecedent" genres, such as personal narratives. With genre-analyti-cal tools in hand and an awareness of discourse as discourse-eapable ofbeing deconstructed and demystified (Hyland, 2006)-learners can moveon to analyze and eventually produce more sophisticated genres with, andlater without, instructor guidance. Another scaffolded approach, aiming

10 ESP IN THEORY ANO PRACTICE What ESP 15 and Can Be 11

nor jusr ar genre awareness but also acquisition of a sequence of progres-sively more challcnging genres (see de Silva Joycc & Hood, this voJume)involves a careful clinc of instructor support: first immersing students ingenre samplcs, thus providing a text and context-rich environment, fol-lowed by teacher modeling of text construction, collaborative text consrruc-tion, independent generation of texts, and finally critical reflection on whathas becn learned about rhe genre itself (as well as related doma in knowl-edge)-both how it enables and how it constrains (Feez, 2002; Macken-Horarik, 2002; see also Cruickshank and de Silva Joyce & Hood, both thisvolume).

\XThile learner autonomy may be the ultimare goal of any ESP course, orof any type of instruction at all, success in ever more demanding environ-ments may be srill more likely if learners are supportcd by further scaf-folding in their new settings. ESP instrucrion, like needs analysis, is nowseen as ideally extending beyond the classroom through support of moreexperienced others that newcomers will likely come in contact with (andmay need to please). With such support in mind, Hussin (2002) has offerednursing preceptor workshops aimed at boosting mentoring skills, withadvice on communicarion srraregies and guidelines for giving construc-tive performance feedback. In academic contexts, subject-area faculty havebeen helped by EAP spccialists to make their classrooms more language-learner friendly rhrough such scaffolding strategies as vocabulary glosses,previews of complex lecture content, peer collaboration opportunities,and more frequent and incremental feedback on student writing-types ofsupport helpful, certainly, to all students (see Snow, 1997). ESP specialistsmay not be able to radically transform target environments into more tol-erant, accepting places for all language ¡carners (but see Cruikshank, thisvolume, on collective contextual change efforts) or to significantly alter per-formance expectations, bur they can work as change agents by contribut-ing to heightened understanding of how to help ¡carners meet academic,workplace, and their own expcctations (see Hafernik, Messcrschmitt, &Vandrick, 2002) As more diverse learner populations succeed in more fullyparticipating in their target discourse communiries, the learners themselves,through their presence and involvement, will alter not just the composi-rion of those communiries but very likely the tenor of interactions in thcm(on "tenor" and power rclationships, see de Silva Joyce & Hood, this vol-ume; for more on transformative pedagogies, see Morgan & Fleming, thisvolume).

Needs-Knowledgeable Instructors

Being an ESP instructor may now look like an even taller order than mightfirst have been envisioned, calling for knowledge of genre thcory, corpustools, scaffolding techniques, as well as metacognitive and metadiscoursalawareness-building strategies. Ycr all of these are areas clearly connecredwith language teaching and are more and more likely to be included in theELT training that pre-service teachers receive (though insrrucrion on appli-carion of ELT merhods to ESP goals may be far less common). Whar ELTreacher training programs do not undersrandably usually aim to provide,however, is rhe specialisr-area knowledge that ESP instructional merhodsoften require. Ir is not usually a comforting rhoughr, to say rhe lea sr, forany reachers, novice or experienced, to realize that their studenrs may knowmore about a crucial subject area (or the "carrier conrent") of a languagecourse than rhey, the teachers, do. This for many may be rhe single mosrdaunting aspect of the ESP approach to language teaching. The questionrhat remains to be, addressed he re is, How can ESP instructors meet rheirown teacher knowledge needs? Considered in a possibly more helpfullight,it might be, How have ESP practitioners succeedcd in gaining control of theknowledge they need to address their studenrs' needs?Some ha ve suggested that ESP practitioncrs may nor really need as much

specialist (or target situation) knowledge as has been assumed. According toFerguson (1997), what ESP practitioners actually need is knowledge aboutan area-that is, irs values (e.g., what counts as support for arguments) andpreferred genres, rather than in-depth knowledge of an area. Dudley-Evansand St. John (1998) similarly remark, "Business people do nor expecr aBusiness English teacher to know how to run a business; they expecr knowl-edge of how language is used in business" (p. 188). In many EAP situarions,such as those involving first- and second-year tertiary studcnts not yet in amajor field of study, knowing about academic lireracies in general may serveinstructors well, especially with respect to equipping srudents with rhetori-cal tlexibility, ability to move with relarive ea se from rhe literac)' dcmandsof one subject area to another (Ann Johns, this volume). Even when reach-ing a more disciplinarily homogeneous group, such as engineering students,a very narrow-angled approach may not be cssential. Miller (2001) haspointed out his own successful use of more generally accessible topics frompopular engineering periodicals, which kept him and his students confidcntin his expertise vis-a-vis the material.

Anorher means of keeping rhe subjecr marrer ar manageable levels, forborh students and insrructors, is rhe susrained conrent-based approach toinsrrucrion (SCBI), or, essenrially, subjecr-area course simularion. SCBIclasses focus on a limired range of closely relared ropics for an entire term,wirh materials taken from actual subject-area textbooks, such as introduc-rory biology or world history, bm usually ar a lower grade level than tharof rhe students, such as elementary or secondary school books for a classof rertiary language students. In rhis way, specialisr knowledge demands onthe instructor and language demands on rhe srudents are kept at less thanoverwhelming levels (Weigle & Nelson, 2001).There are times, however, when a more narrow-angled approach would

seem ro serve students besr, as when they are already immersed in a work-place or in advanced study of a discipline, such as dissertation writers orlaw students (Northcott, this volume). In such cases, increasing one's owncontent-area knowledge may be essential (not to mention invigorating), anddipping into actual texts that one's students are coping wirh may be helpful(see Bruce, 2002, on the value of ton textbooks and Nonhcott, this volume,on other resources for ELP; see Eggly, 2002, on medical journals and text-books for EMP). ESP practitioners should remember, though, thar they neednor see themselves as working in complete isolarion (though physically theymay be) and that others may have faced similar content-area challenges andshared solutions in rhe ESP research literature, in such journals as Eng!ish(or Speci(ic Purposes, the ¡ouma! o( English (or Academic Purposes, andrhe ESPecialist. Orher professional resources include such medical Englishwebsites as www.englishmed.com and www.hospiralenglish.com and con-ferences, such as those held by BALEAP, the British Association of Lecturersin English for Academic Purposes.Content-area specialists can also serve as significant resources for more

narrow-angled approaches. The same specialist informants consulted forneeds analysis can function as conrinuing sources of support, lendingsample documents and recommending authentic communicative tasks (seeDudley-Evans & St. John, 1998). Some subject-area specialists are evenwilling to act as specialist mentors while students in their discipline takeEAP classes, providing feedback on student performance to complement(and often reinforce) that of the EAP teacher (see Cavusgil, 2007). Othersubject-area specialists collaborate even more extensively by team-teachingcourses with ESP specialists, thus giving students access to subject and lan-guage experts simultaneously (Cruickshank, this volume; Dudley-Evans,1995; Shi, this volume). Anorher more common type of subject-area and

ESP specialisr collaboration is in the form of linked ESP and subject-areaclasses, or "Iearning communities" (Ann Johns, this volume). Members ofa learning community take rhe same cluster of classes-for example, thesame EAP and introductory psychology and geology classes. Subject mat-ter in the shared subject areas can then beco me a source of marerials andtasks for the EAP class, and instructors of the clustered classes can easilyconsult with each other on the needs of rhe language learners (for EA",see Ann Johns, 1997; for an EMP example, see Johnson, 2000). Ideally,students in learning communiries also beco me sources of content knowl-edge, linguistic knowledge, and emotional support for each other (Benesch,2001).Students are, in fact, probably the most readily available sources of spe-

cialist knowledge in any ESP classroom. Dudley-Evans (1997) has observedthat what may be most crucial to the success of any ESP practitioner iswillingness to learn from and with one's own students. Student-compiledponfolios and problem-based-learning presentations referred to earlier canbe significant resources not only for students but for their instructor as wel!.Collaborating with students on investigarions of disciplinary or workplacediscourse and even on assessment of learner performance, acknowledgingthe students' content-area expertise while serving as rhe language specialist,not only scaffolds the specialist-knowledge learning curve for rhe instructor,but also gives the student a valuable confidence-boosting role to play (whichmay be especially helpful to adult language learners; see Orsi & Orsi, 2002,on their work with professional brewers).While respect for students' subjecr-area knowledge, that of doma in

experts, and for the specialist area itself is vital to any ESP endeavor, it ispossible to be overly respectfu!' As suggesred earlier, domain specialists inparticular, beca use of the racitness and automaticity of their expert knowl-edge of discourse practices, limired understanding of language and literacyacquisition, and perhaps too distant memories of being novices, may notbe especially sensitive to newcomers' needs or knowledgeable abour howto meet them (Benesch, 2001). The traditional epistemologies and goals oftheir doma in can keep insiders from recognizing the interests and needs ofincreasingly locally diverse and globally connected populations of studentsor workers (Jasso-Aguilar, 1999). As doma in outsiders, discourse analysts,and language/lireracy-learning specialists attuned to cultural diversity, ESPpractitioners are especially well positioned to critically reflect on and helpothers consider how a community can promote more inclusive participa-tion. ESP specialisrs have their own professional expertise to offer-to those

12 ESP IN THEORY AND PRACTICE Whal ESP 15and Can Be 13

14

ESP IN THEORY ANO PRACTICE

who already belong to communities that can be enriched by greater inc1u-siveness and to those who hope to join them.

Overview of Contents

This volume is divided into three parts: English for Academic, English forOccupationaJ, and English for Sociocultural Purposes. The EAP sectionconsiders academic Contexts at progressively more advanced levels, fromsecondary school to the pursuit of a profession in rertiary-Ieve1 academia.The EOP section, an immensely diverse branch of ESP, focuses on what are,ro all appearances, the fastest growing EOP offshoots: English for Business,Legal, and MedicaI Purposes. There is invariabJy sorne overlap berweenEOP and EAP, as business, Jaw, and medical schools fall under rhe "aca-demic" umbreIla, yet the interesrs of ESP specialisrs in rhese areas range wellbeyond learners' needs in school settings and indeed inc1ude the needs ofthose already at work in rheir professional communities. The ESCP sectionpushes the boundaries of ESP to encompass the needs of rhose who do norneatly fit into either academic or occuparional categories but who definirelyseek membership in communities new ro them, communiries anywhere fromimmediare neighborhood to narion-srate levels. Throughour rhis volume,readers wiIl find sorne recurring morifs, such as globalizarion, English as aLingua Franca, and migrant popularions, which, in effect, function as unify-ing srrands across many of rhe chaprers and reminders that despite rhe dis-rinct purviews of EAP, EOP, and ESCP, there are many concerns rhar rhosecommitted to addressing learner-focused needs share.

Part 1 opens with Ken Cruickshank's chaprer on secondary-leve1 EAP.As Cruickshank nores, while EAP is most frequently associared wirh posr-secondary serrings, efforts to serve English language learners siruated in anyschool COntext are, in facr, a rype of EAP. Cruikshank's concerns lie primar-dy with the effeets of increasing global migrarions and the Jarge numbers ofsrudents in English-dominant settings, many with interrupted educations,who must cope with learning a new language and learning academic sub-ject matrer alongside well-acc1imated students. The challenges of rransirion-ing from secondary to post-secondary school, especiaIly for immigranr orGeneration 1.5 srudenrs, have long been rhe concern of Ann ]ohns. In herchaprer, Johns readiJy acknowledges and addresses the difficulries EAP prac-ririoners face in attempting to meet the needs of rhis population, beginningundergraduates whose targct siruations are as diverse as are their own oftenundecided academic goals.

15

The lasr two chaprers in Part 1 borh consider the chal!enges of muchmore advanced, post-baccaJaureate language use in academia. Althoughrhe goals of those already in a specific field of study may be more easilydefined than those of many undergraduates, a disciplinarily heterogeneousclass of graduate students is far from undemanding for EAP practitioners.In her chapter, Christine Feak identifies graduate-Ievellearner needs rhar cutacross disciplinary boundaries, needs rhat EAP specialists are well quali-fied to address. Interested in rhe high-srakcs language-use challenges thatconfront rhose who complete rheir graduate degrees and pursue careersas professional academics, Ken Hyland highlights in his chapter srrategiesthat are likely to be of value ro academics wriring for publication in anydiscipline.Part 2 begins wirh Brigitre Planken and Catherine Nickerson's paired

chapters on English for Business Purposes (EBP), the first focusing on spo-ken discourse, the second on writren discourse. While other EOP branchcscan be described as rapidly growing, EBP's growrh is actually explosive,as businesses continue ro barre1 ahead toward globalizarion and English isincreasingly rhe preferred medium (ar lea sr for now). In rheir firsr chaprer,Planken and Nickerson point ro grear srrides in our undersranding of BELr;or Business English as a Lingua Franca. In rheir second chapter, Nickersonand Planken cal! our artention to research on rhe rypes of mulri-modal com-munication increasingly crucial ro day-ro-day operarions in internationalbusiness settings.Jane Lockwood, Gail Forey, and Neil Elias focus on one very specific

subarea of EBP in which rhe recent phenomena Nickerson and Planken dis-cuss-rhe global spread of business, English, and rechrlology-al! come intoplay. Lockwood, Forey, and Elias consider the lallguage rraining necds ofoutsourced call centers, needs not currently addressed by popular assess-ment strategies developed in English-dominant settings.At first sight, law may seem an EOP area less likely ro be greatly affecred

by globalization, as laws are quite specific to local contexts, yet, as Jil!Northcott remarks in her chapter, globalizarion is expanding the demandfor legal English instrucrion (or ELP). While legal English may well be themost challenging of al! occuparional varieties of English for outsiders rocomprehend, Northcott assures us rhat there is a growing body of resourcesavailable to ELP instructors. Among these resources is rhe work of legalgcnre analysr Vijay Bharia, whose chaprer sheds light on one of the maincontributors ro the density and complexity of legal discourse, llamely, inter-textuality.

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Bhatia, V. K. (2004). Worlds of writtell discourse: A gellre-based view. London:Continuum.

17

Bruce, N. (2002). Doverailing language and contenr: Teaching balanced argument inlegal problem answer writing. English for Specific Purposes, 21, 321-346.

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What ESP 15and Can BeESP IN THEORY ANO PRACTICE16

The impact of globalization on medicine in so me respects parallels thaton law, rhough professional mobility in rhe medical sciences may be evengreater as English-speaking nations become increasingly dependenr onimmigrant health care personnel. In her chaprer on medical English, LingShi reports that EMP specialisrs have been in the vanguard among ESP prac-titioners in invesrigating face-ro-facc communicarion, especially its culturaland sociopoliricaI dimensions. In my own chapter, 1 discuss the benefits thara recent developmenr in medical education itself, problem-based learning,offers ro EMP pcdagogicalpractice.Thc focal area of Part 3, English for Sociocultural Purposes (ESCP), can

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18ESP IN THEORY ANO PRACTICE

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What ESP 15and Can Be 19

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20 ESP IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

Part 1

ENGLISH FORACADEMIC PURPOSES