ESP, EAP

1. Dr. Ali Bakhshi
By: Sh. Tamizrad
Fall 2014

2. • Introduction
• In-house teaching material developed for engineering
students
• An academic speaking course
• A research study into workplace language
• Summary

3. Introduction
Although some ESP teaching or research
may rely on one type of description,
many ESP courses of instruction or
research projects involve a combination
or combine descriptions of language with
a focus on language skills.

4. • Genre-based language description + Grammar
• First part of the English 221 course
• Aim: To help the students write abstracts for reports
on engineering projects that involve innovative
procedures, techniques, or designs
• No focus on skills development
• Focus of the course is on features of the two written
genres (abstracts and recommendation reports)

5. • Information is given about the use of these
forms in general.
• Genre-based approaches to language
description often proceed from examination of
the purpose and positioning of moves in a
genre to analysis of grammar or vocabulary
use in those moves.

6. The approach used by Swales and genre
analysts generally is descriptive and is
concerned with the choice of grammatical
forms or vocabulary in relation to the
communicative purposes of the move and
the genre.

7. The material shown, progresses from
description of the structure of the genre
(the first move in the abstract) to a focus on
grammatical aspects of verb tenses in
general.

8. • Speaking-skills-focused course + Speech-act-based
language description
• skills practice and development
• Two units: Health and Education.
• a skills focus, and the course covers skills involved in
giving presentations (looking for ideas to shape a talk, giving an
overview, and rehearsing) and participating in discussions
• some language description of a number of speech acts
important to participation in academic speaking
(expressing opinions, asking questions, and asking for clarification)

9. • A skills focus, and the course covers skills involved
in giving presentations (looking for ideas to shape a talk, giving an
overview, and rehearsing) and participating in discussions
• Some language description of a number of speech
acts important to participation in academic
speaking (expressing opinions, asking questions, and asking for
clarification)

10. • Speech-act-based language research + Investigation of
aspects of social interaction
• A tanning factory in New Zealand
• The main speech act: directives (identified in line
with Holmes (1983) as acts to try to get others to do
things)

11. • Aim of the study: how workers and key figures in the
factory, such as the manager, the foreman, and the
accountant, used directives.
• Who used directives and when
• The syntactic choices the speakers used (declaratives,
interrogatives, and statements) in making directives in
the factory setting.

12. The data set was then analyzed for the following features:
1. The choice of syntactic forms by the participants.
2. The relationship between the forms selected by the
participants, strength of the directives, and the power
relationships and social distance between the speakers.
3. The use of modifying devices (hedges or other means to
minimize or maximize the strength of the directives) by the
participants.

13. • Different types of language description are
often merged in instruction in ESP and ESP
oriented research.
• Often it is the case that one type of description
predominates.