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West
First known textbook writer to take into account the scientific and commercial needs of his target audience. -
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Evolution
It emerged as an evolution that responded to the needs of language learners for science, technology and business, especially after the Second World War. -
Approach
It is defined as an approach and not as a product, which means that ESP doesn’t imply a specific type of language, didactic material or methodology. -
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The concept of special language: registry analysis
The works of Peter Strevens (Halliday, Mclntosh 1964), (Ewer and Latorre, 1969) and John Swales (1971). Starting from the basic principle that the English of, for example, Electrical Engineering constituted a specific register different from that of, for example, Biology or General English, the objective of the analysis was to identify the grammatical and lexical features of these registers. The teaching materials then took these linguistic features as a syllabus. -
A Course in Basic Scientific English
The teaching materials took linguistic features as a study program.
New developments in educational psychology also contributed to the emergence of ESP by emphasizing the central importance of students and their attitudes toward learning. -
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English for Science and Technology (EST)
Most work from this era focused on English for Science and Technology (EST), and for a time, ESP and EST were considered almost synonymous. What emerged was the opinion that the English needed by a certain group of students could be identified by analyzing the linguistic characteristics of their area of work or study specialization. Tell me what you need English for, and I will tell you the English you need became the guiding principle of ESP. -
Oil crisis
Oil crisis, led to a massive flow of Western funds and knowledge into oil-rich countries, English became big business and commercial pressures began to exert an influence. Time and money constraints created the need for cost-effective courses with clearly defined objectives. -
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Production of materials.
(1973), Allen and Widdowson (1974), Widdowson (1978) and Trimble (1985) showed ways of analyzing scientific and technical texts that led to the production of materials. -
Allen & Widdowson
They consider that the difficulties encountered by students arise not so much from a defective knowledge of the English system, but from a lack of familiarity with the use of English, and that, consequently, their needs cannot be met by a course that simply provides more practice in composing English sentences, but only by those who develop an understanding of how sentences are used in the performance of different communicative acts. -
Analysis of the target situation
The analysis of the target situation is the system established by John Munby in Communicative Syllabus Design, Munby's model develops a detailed profile of the needs of the students in terms of communicative purposes, the communicative environment, the means of communication, the skills linguistics, functions, structures. -
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Creation of a research space (CARS)
Swales's work on the academic article and Bhatia (1993) on types of business letters are extremely insightful about the ways in which writers manipulate these texts and also very productive in terms of generating appropriate teaching stratagems. -
Form genres
Masuku argues that movements and genres are elements of discourse and that the difference between them is that movements combine to form genres. At a range below movement, "we enter the domain of grammar." Also, John (1996) analyzes various types of material and offers a brief description of the main textbooks. -
Gledhill
He shows how introductions to medical articles on cancer research use limited, predictable phraseology. This research has great potential, especially the potential to relate the more general findings of genre analysis to the specific use of language and therefore to the production of materials. -
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Present
In recent years, there has been renewed demand for English courses for specific purposes. Their reasons for this increased interest include improved student proficiency levels, plus there is greater sophistication in ESP teaching, with a focus on adapting to technological trends and integrating interdisciplinary knowledge to meet the specific needs of students and the global labor market. -
Richards & Schmidt
They define special-purpose languages as languages "used for particular, restricted types of communication (e.g., for medical reporting, scientific writing, air traffic control) and containing lexical, grammatical, and other linguistic features that are different from ordinary language." They also add that "the content and objectives of the ESP course are set by the specific needs of a particular group of students." -
Basturkmen
He groups ESP courses into three main branches, each with its own subdivisions: 1) English for Academic Purposes (EAP), such as English for Academic Publications; 2) English for Professional Purposes (EPP), including medicine, law, military, etc.; and 3) English for Occupational Purposes (EOP), for example, English for technicians. It is also grouped into pre-experience, during-experience and post-experience.