SHL 4203 ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES

ASSIGNMENT 1: CRITICAL REVIEW ON THE STRUGGLE FOR A PLACE IN THE SUN: RATIONALIZING TESP IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

PREPARED BY: AINUL ATHIRAH BINTI ABDUL RAZAK

MATRIC NO: AP100021

SUBMITTED TO: PROF. DR. MASPUTERIAH BINTI HAMZAH

DATE OF SUBMISSION: 29th OCTOBER 2013

CRITICAL REVIEW ON THE STRUGGLE FOR A PLACE IN THE SUN: RATIONALIZING TESP IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY BY CHAU MENG HUAT This paper is a review of an ESP journal article entitled The Struggle for a Place in the Sun: Rationalizing TESP in the Twentieth Century written by Chau Meng Huat. This particular journal article focuses on ESP but the main concerned are the issues in teaching English for Specific Purposes. Chau emphasizes on definition of TESP and justifications made for a situated approach in TESP as well as some challenges the language teacher has to face in the ESP classroom. Besides, solutions to the challenges are offered too. ESP or Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) as stated by the leading scholars of the field such as Evans and John (1998) and Hutchinson and Waters (1987) refers ESP through listing some significant characteristics for ESP. They believe that any ESP courses should cater the target learners specific needs be it academic or professional. They further explained that the content, language and skills should be aimed at preparing learners with the necessary knowledge and most importantly are to enable them to perform effectively in the target community. Chau supports that by saying language is used by people to accomplish certain goals. However, different speech communities use different language to achieve their goals. For example, English for Civil Engineering is different from English for lawyers. Therefore, ESP is named English for Specific Purposes as the content is specific and narrowed. Furthermore, Chau discusses some justifications of situated approach to TESP in five aspects i.e. contextualization of language use, relevance and learner motivation, situated cognitive theory of learning, the discourse domain hypothesis and different disciplinary demands. Based on the first aspect, Chau talks about the variation a single language can have which is called registers. Every discipline is said to have different register. As mentioned earlier, English for Civil Engineering is different from English of lawyers. Therefore, I believe that ESP teacher as the language expert should be able to show the learners how language differs functionally and semantically in different contexts of language. This will make the learners clear with the objectives of learning ESP. Speaking of the relevance and learner motivation, Chau has emphasized on learners readiness in learning ESP along with learners motivation. He is right by saying that learning becomes more motivating to the learner when the content, language and skills are aimed directly related to the particular field of the learner. Chaus point of view is supported by Valeria (2010) who stated that ESP

learners are highly motivated as their needs are catered to. They are learning the language in order to perform some particular, job-related functions. Besides, the language skills are useful for them to accomplish certain professional tasks. In other words, the English language is taught as a subject related to the learners real needs. Wright (1992) indicated that learners are highly motivated when they are aware of their specific purposes for learning English. All in all, when the learners see the relevance of the content and what they are learning, language learning becomes meaningful and the process of imparting learning to the learners become successful. Other justifications of situated approach to TESP mentioned by Chau in this particular journal are situated cognitive theory of learning and the discourse domain hypothesis. In this theory of learning, he states that knowledge is acquired effectively if the learning experience is situated within the actual contexts in which the knowledge occurs. In other words, learning takes place easily when the materials presented is related to the learners

Generally, teachers play big role in imparting knowledge to the learners. Same goes to the role of a teacher in teaching ESP in the classroom. Teachers role is seen as the vital part in teaching and learning process. Being as ESP teacher is a challenging task. Chau discusses two issues related to the challenges that the language teacher has to face in the ESP classroom. One of the major challenges for language teachers in the ESP classroom is obviously the lacking of the expertise and knowledge to teach in the learners chosen discipline. His point of view on this issue should be agreed. It is undeniably true that a course should involve a specialist language as well as the content. However, in most cases, ESP teachers failed to act like one as most of them are not specialists in the students professional skills. Chaus point of view is supported by Kolegija (n.d.) that problems aroused when teachers find themselves having to teach with texts whose content they know little or nothing about it. Therefore, they are not capable of deciding by himself or herself on which topics to be covered in the syllabus. These will not only making the teachers to feel demotivated but to lose their confidence in teaching. Another issues raised by Chau concerning the idea of ESP is that the idea of ESP is too difficult for learners at lower level of English proficiency. I cannot help but to agree with this statement. This is true as some of the learners really need to master the basic forms of general English in all contexts before they can pursue ESP. In addition to that, they need to

control core forms before getting on to specific and presumably more difficult features of language (Hyland, 2002). Overall, I believe that students should at least have an intermediate level of English before they study ESP. Chau does not view the challenges as the problems but instead prompt him to find the solutions to every challenge. He suggested that in order to solve the first challenge of lacking expertise to teach ESP, the particular ESP teacher should have a strong bond between the specialist informants which consist of the subject specialist and the students of a particular field. Bhatia (1994) mentioned that ESP practitioners should make an effort to acquire the knowledge of the discipline by getting associated with the professional community where Chau claimed them as the subject specialist. The reason an ESP teacher should meet the subject specialists and seek advice form them is because as the name suggests, they are expert in knowing the content of the subject but they are not expert in the language. Therefore, such collaborative work benefits both of them. Moreover, developing a sort of team-teaching programme with the subject specialists in developing the ESP materials would be a great idea too. Besides analyzing the characteristics and issues in TESP, Chau discusses the role of the learners in ESP classroom.