Specificity in ESP


How is specificity related to ESP? What is its role in the teaching-learning process?
According to Oxford dictionary, specificity can be taken as the quality of belonging or relating uniquely to a particular subject. Having this definition, it can be said that specificity is related to ESP (English for Specific Purposes) because it involves having or focusing on specific topics according to the field of expertise.
Now, what is its role in the teaching and learning process?
Cheng (2011) presents the following figure to highlight the interaction that exists among the basic considerations in ESP teaching and learning. These factors were established, in order to organize the different aspects that happen and correlate during the process. These specific considerations remind us of what goes on in the classroom. For some people may be obvious to some extend because those thoughts are all the elements that are faced every day in the teaching lives. Yet, for some reason they have become so obvious that in some cases are forgotten or taken for granted by some teachers and administrators. Specificity brings back the light to these factors that are supposed to guide the process of learning and teaching, and should have never been overlooked.
If we pay attention to the image, it can be noted that all the considerations: social milieu, learning objectives, input materials and out activities, assessing student learning, and methodologies, can be summarized in students’ needs and situation analysis. These two aspects enclose all the others and relate in a well-organized syllabus.  ESP takes or should take into account all the steps in order to give the best and most specialized course serving and answering to the students’ needs in a specific context and situation.
Specificity is not just being “specific” in the class at random, there has to be an objective. For example, Hutchinson and Waters (1987), wrote different articles in regards to the controversy of the topics, and argued that “the fact the language is used for specific purposes does not imply that it is a special form of the language”. Taking this into account, it can be said that having only one view or modality can be sometimes demotivating or even irrelevant for students and that language cannot be “specific” for every area. Although some of the information is outdated it makes sense in some points.
Finally, I believe, there has to be a deep analysis involved, in order to gather all the data available for the future of language teaching, and also to generate improvement rather than gaps in the process. The approaches have to evolve and serve the current situation of the society. I think that ESP and specificity are related in that aspect: both of them work together to create a better way of learning and teaching. Both of them are tools in the process. And all of this cannot happen if there is no analysis in the mix. For teachers or researchers to tailor something better and up-to-date they have to work along side with the students and all the stakeholders to truly fulfill those needs.

Comments

  1. VivianApril 23, 2019 at 6:02 PM

    Hi! Glori

    I really like the way you have structured your reply: a figure to illlustrate your analysis and some questions to guide the discussion. Thus, specificity leads teachers to employ very different choices in terms of how much the teachers need to know of the speciality of their students. Well done!

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    Replies
    1. Glori ugaldeApril 28, 2019 at 8:04 PM

      It was a little difficult to wrap my head around the term...I guess that is why I wanted to write about it, so I tried to research about it and in most places it refered to the specificity in terms of content not specifically the teachers knowledge, but thank you for the clarification!

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