English for Specific Purposes in Theory and Practice

Diane Belcher, (ed.) English for Specific Purposes in Theory and Practice, Ann Arbor, M.I.; University of Michigan Press, 2009, 308 pp.

(ISBN-13: 978-0-472-03384-3)

English for Specific Purposes in Theory and Practice is a three-part collection of articles reviewing the literature and illustrating common themes in the areas of English for Academic Purposes (EAP), English for Occupational Purposes (EOP), and English for Sociocultural Purposes (ESCP). The editor, Diane Belcher, opens the book with an extended introduction explaining some of the key features of ESP methodology, including its diverse range of sub-disciplines, the importance of needs analysis, the recent use of corpus tools, and the importance of needs-knowledgeable instructors. This is followed by four articles covering EAP, seven chapters covering EOP, and two chapters covering ESCP. Then, Brian Paltridge closes the book with an afterword on the past and current state of ESP, in which he comments on the increasingly complex picture of language that ESP researchers have discovered.

Many of the book's chapters are written by very well-known and active researchers in ESP, and so, it provides an excellent insight into some of their latest work. However, the authors approach the chapters in quite different ways giving very different weightings to the two themes of 'theory' and 'practice.' Some authors focus almost exclusively on defining and reviewing previous research in the target area. This is most noticeable in the second part of the book covering EOP. Other authors provide a more balanced presentation that discusses current trends in the target area and then illustrates these using case studies or examples from their own research. Even in these chapters, however, readers should not expect to find detailed task designs or lesson plans. The overall emphasis of the book is clearly on reviewing the work being carried out by ESP researchers rather than providing step-by-step guides to help novice teachers manage a new class. In this respect, the book title may be slightly misleading to some readers. It is interesting to note that the presentation of the chapters also varies widely, with each author choosing very different sub-headings, and one author even avoiding sub-headings altogether. Most likely, the editor's intention is that each chapter is read in isolation. But, for those readers who read the book from beginning to end their is a slightly disjointed feel to its design.

Part One of the book is comprised of four chapters looking at EAP. In Chapter One, Ken Cruickshank discusses TESOL education to international students as an example of EAP. He opens the chapter with a rather controversial argument that "all TESOL in school contexts falls under the umbrella of EAP" (p. 23), and then proceeds to discuss TESOL programs in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Although the content of the chapter is interesting, many of the described teaching practices closely resemble those of English for General Purpose (EGP) teachers around the world. As a result, readers may be confused about the use of the term ESP in this context, particular when compared with the definition given by Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998). In Chapter Two, Ann M. Johns considers what the purpose of EAP education should be at the university undergraduate level. Again, controversially, she argues that the primary aim should NOT be to identify the specific needs of learners based on expected target situations and analyses of target discourses, but instead to help learners become rhetorically flexible. To defend this view, she reviews the work on genre and describes exemplars practices before offering a set of goals for EAP classes based on Carter's (2007) taxonomy of writing processes in different disciplines. In Chapter Three, Christine Feak gives a detailed account of why and how graduate students should be taught critical writing skills. She proposes asking students to write research commentaries as an effective alternative to writing book reviews. Finally, in Chapter Four, Ken Hyland looks at writing for scholarly publication. First, he reviews work plotting the growth of English as the language of academic journal publication, and then reviews the literature on successful instructional practices that address journal targeting, paper-writing strategies, sentence and discourse structure, and revising and negotiating.

Part Two of the book is comprised of seven chapters looking at EOP. In Chapter Five, Brigitte Planken and Catherine Nickerson look at business English and review work that shows that traditional ESP teaching materials are perhaps too narrowly defined and do not match real-world practices in the business world. Next, they review work defining and describing practices of real-world Business English specialists, suggesting that this work can provide a framework for developing effective ESP materials. Unusually, Chapter Six is also written by Planken and Nickerson (in reversed order). Here, they review work defining written business English and then discuss effective teaching practices for written business English. The focus and mood of Chapter Seven, by Jane Lockwood, Gail Forey, and Neil Elias is rather different. Here, the authors look at the problems of using scorecards to assess call-center operators working for US companies in the Philippines. Next, they perform a discourse analysis of a call-center interaction to show how current scorecards are ineffective. Chapters Eight and Nine look at legal English. In Chapter Eight, Jill Northcott reviews work describing the characteristics of legal English and then discusses some effective teaching practices. Like most of the reviews in the book, the author here only very briefly introduces the work, expecting the reader to refer to the source text for details as the example below illustrates,

"Northcott gives an account of an unusual legal teaching context – a training program for interpreters in the courts of Zimbabwe, concluding that demands of a new teaching assignment can act as a catalyst for teacher education."

In Chapter Nine, Vijah K. Bhatia discusses intertextuality in legal texts. Intertextuality refers to the appropriation of words, phrases, and sections from one text into another. Bhatia discusses four different functions where intertextuality plays an important role, i.e., signaling textual authority, providing terminological explanation, facilitating textual mapping, and defining legal scope. Chapters Ten and Eleven look at medical English. In Chapter Ten, Ling Shi first defines English for Medical Purposes (EMP). Next, she reviews research on the characteristic features of written and spoken medical texts before looking at various approaches to needs analysis in an EMP setting. Finally, in Chapter Eleven, Diane Belcher introduces problem-based learning (PBL) as a new model for nursing education in which real-world problems are discussed and solved.

Part Three of the book is a short two-chapter section discussing ESCP. In Chapter Twelve, Helen De Silva Joyce and Susan Hood look at English courses for adult immigrants in Australia aimed at facilitating their early entry into community life. Although the authors explain that the theoretical framework for the courses is based on genre and register principles, they regrettably do not discuss any needs analysis. As a result, the distinction between ESP and EGP again becomes blurred, as it did in the first chapter of the book. Providing an interesting contrast to Joyce and Hood's work, in Chapter Thirteen Brian Morgan and Douglas Fleming look in detail at the concept of citizenship and argue that a critical aspect of a successful program is the definition of learner needs.

In summary, this collection of articles presents an unusually broad picture of ESP theory and practices that on occasion may cause readers to start questioning the distinction between ESP and EGP. The book leans heavily towards work in EOP and EAP, with only two chapters dealing with ESCP. Clearly, the book is aimed at an audience of applied linguistics, and it gives them a useful list of references that can initiate or support new research projects. However, the book provides little for ESP practitioners that are looking for in-class teaching materials and methodologies. Each chapter should be read in isolation and readers should be aware that the authors' weightings of theory and practice vary considerably. The editor has clearly given each author a large degree of freedom in writing each chapter, which allows them reveal their individual characters and writing styles. However, perhaps it would have been useful if the editor had guided the authors a little more to ensure consistency in content and presentation across chapters.

References

Dudley-Evans, T. and M. J. St John. (1998). Developments in English for Specific Purposes: A

multi-disciplinary approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Carter, T. (2007). Ways of knowing, doing, and writing. College Composition and Communication, 58,

        385-418.

Laurence Anthony

Professor, Director of CELESE

Center for English Language Education in Science and Engineering (CELESE)

Faculty of Science and Engineering

Waseda University, Japan

anthony0122@gmail.com