In my current role as Coordinator of IATEFL's ESP SIG, I receive a surprising number of enquiries from teachers all over the world asking for help in understanding what ESP is (or isn't!) and soliciting advice about what materials or teaching methodology they should use. As a result of these enquiries, I think it is worthwhile revisiting some of the differences between General English and ESP and against the backdrop of two questions that I am very often asked, I would like to explore some of the issues that travellers between these two camps are likely to face.

Q1. I'm quite happy teaching General English - why do I need to know about ESP?

As in every other profession, TEFL is constantly changing and practitioners need to be upgrading their skills-base to meet market demand and to stay competitive. As is evidenced by the number of institutes now offering their students EAP/Study Skills courses and even more commonly, training in Business English, the newly qualified TEFL teacher may well find him/herself in an ESP situation much sooner than might have been the case, say, twenty years ago. As the traditional qualification routes into TEFL don't always include much, if any, of an ESP focus in their syllabi, it seems to me that quite a gap may now be developing between supply and demand. Consequently, until we see instruction on ESP as an integral part of every certificate-level training course, I would urge new teachers to take the bull by the horns themselves and become familiar with ESP principles, methodology and coursebooks - in the bigger scheme of their career progression, gaining such knowledge can only be to their advantage.

Q2. My DoS has asked me to teach an ESP class - how much knowledge do I need to have of my students' specialism?

For teachers new to ESP, the question of how much they should already know about their students' specialism is perhaps one of the first issues that they are likely to face. As with most areas of language teaching, however, there is no 'catch-all' answer to this question and in fact, the literature that does deal with it, is quite divided. Whereas some writers have argued that teachers should have a very good grasp of specialist content in order to assess the accuracy and validity of what their students say (Chirnside, 1986), others have expressed the concern that teachers may not even be able to understand their students' content matter without undergoing comprehensive training themselves (Greenall, 1981). And as this latter author has pointed out, without such specialist training, there may in fact be a very real danger that such teachers will only choose subject matter that they themselves can cope with.

My own stance on this issue is that the problem can be simplified by considering a number of variables relating to both the students and the teacher. In the case of the former, two questions immediately spring to mind:

How knowledgeable are the students about their specialism?

And more specifically:

Are the students pre-experience, post-experience or are they studying their specialism concurrently with English?

Depending on the answers to these questions, we can expect the students to react differently to being taught/not being taught material that is highly subject-specific. In the case of an ESP class as it relates to say, medical English, there is likely to be quite a big difference between a class of first-year undergraduate students at a university and a class of General Practitioners that are actually using English for their daily work. In the case of the former, the subject knowledge base of both teacher and student may in fact be quite similar, meaning that materials pitched at, or only slightly above, a layperson's level of understanding, may in fact work best. To go too subject-specific in this case might be to court disaster, because if the students don't understand the content of the English class, they may then expect to be taught it by their English teacher and as anyone who has ever worked in such a situation will know, this can lead to all sorts of conflicts between the English teacher and the academic departments responsible for teaching the actual discipline.

In the case of our class of General Practitioners, unless the teacher happens to be a retired GP him/herself, the shared subject knowledge base between teacher and student is, by necessity, going to be much narrower, which means that the teacher will have to take on a more collaborative role. In ESP, much more than in EGP, the traditional roles of teachers and students are often changed, with teachers no longer being perceived as the undisputed holders of all the knowledge. In the ESP classroom, the teacher/student relationship often becomes more equally balanced, with both parties holding knowledge and therefore 'power'. The teacher may command respect as an authority on language, but the student (in this case, perhaps client is a better term) will command just as much, if not more, respect as an expert in his/her own field. In this situation, the teacher must be willing to learn from the student and the issue is not so much one of how much the teacher knows about the student's subject area, but a matter of knowing what the right questions are to ask. For teachers new to ESP, relinquishing their position as the 'main classroom authority' may be perceived as a loss of power and/or control and this, perhaps more than anything else, I think, is what many new entrants to ESP find so unsettling.

A related question on the issue of subject-specificity is:

What do the students perceive their teacher's role to be?

Although the course sponsors' (the company; the academic institute, etc.) reasons for requesting English training may be quite specific, the way in which the students themselves perceive English may be something quite different. Even in a situation when the students need English for their jobs, such as our class of General Practitioners, they may still gauge their ability and fluency in terms of how successfully they can interact on more general levels and the teacher may need to add an element of this to the course. It goes without saying that teachers must respect the wishes and aims of the sponsor, but if they choose to act in a way that completely goes against the expectations of the students, then their teaching is unlikely to be much of a success. As Davies and Currie (1971) have pointed out, 'A method which frustrates the predictions of the learner is patently bad.'

The issue, then, of how much specialist knowledge ESP teachers need to have, is not always an easy question to answer, but I would like to propose the following framework:

The three C's

1 Curiosity

Strevens (1988) refers to 'the educated layman' and encourages teachers to become familiar, at least on a basic level, with the language of the subject. I would endorse this view, adding that teachers should at least be interested in the subject matter they have been asked to teach and open-minded about finding out more.

2 Collaboration

This is a theme that I have touched on already and I would argue that it is absolutely essential. Teachers should seek out subject specialists in the field and be prepared to show them their work and not be afraid of getting feedback. In a medical English setting, such as the General Practitioners that I mentioned earlier, taking the time to find out as much as possible about what your clients actually do and need English for, will obviously pay major dividends when it comes to designing their course. It also means that they will respect you more as a professional in your own right. In a university setting, working closely with subject specialists has the extra benefit of defusing the threat that ESP teachers often seem to present to members of other faculties, and helps to neutralize the idea that English teachers shouldn't encroach on the subject specialists' territory.

3 Confidence

As I have explored above, perhaps part of the reason why new teachers find the prospect of ESP classes somewhat daunting, is that they lack confidence about their own knowledge of the subject area. As I have already described, realizing from the beginning that your role as a teacher is going to change and then being willing to show interest in the new subject matter and collaborate with specialists in the field, will help confidence to grow.

Conclusion

Without doubt, differences between teaching General English and ESP do exist and in this short paper, I have barely scratched the surface. However, for teachers faced with the shock of leaving the safety of their General English classroom to teach ESP for the first time, I hope to have raised an awareness that the journey need not necessarily be an impossible one. For those interested in finding out more, then membership of the ESP SIG might well be an option worth considering ...

References

Bell D (1999) Making the transition from EGP to ESP: Strategies to help new teachers cope. Paper prepared for the 4th Bilkent University International ELT Conference, Ankara, Turkey, February 18th-20th

Chirnside A (1986) Talking For Specific Purposes. In Harper (Ed.) ESP for the University pp41-48

Davies A & W Currie (1971) Aptitude and Nativeness. Paper prepared for the BAAL Conference, University of Essex, September 24th-26th

Greenall G (1981) The EST Teacher: A negative view. In British Council (Eds.) The ESP Teacher: Role, Development and Prospects, ELT Document 112. London: British Council English Teaching Information Centre

Strevens P (1988) The Learner and Teacher of ESP. In Chamberlain D & R J Baumgardner (Eds.) ESP in the Classroom: Practice and Evaluation pp39-44, ELT Document 128, Modern English Publications