This summary discusses Diane Belcher's article on English for Specific Purposes (ESP). It outlines some key aspects of ESP, including needs assessment, content-based instruction, and tailored teaching methods. It also discusses the importance of learner-centered approaches and addressing the specific contexts and needs of learners. Finally, it touches on issues like authenticity, genres, corpora, and the role of ESP instructors in developing communicative strategies suited for learners' needs in a globalized world.

1. Yeditepe Unıversıty
MA in ELT
EDEN 589 ESP COURSE
Summarizing the Article by Diane, D. BELCHER
English for Specific Purposes: Teaching to Perceived
Needs and Imagined Futures in Worlds of Work, Study
and Everyday Life
Simge ADA

2. • This summary of the article overviews the current state of
ESP and the related items one by one by referring to the
most crucial studies by the authorities in the field. The
goals of needs assessment, and the specificity in
instructional methods are questioned and being followed
by two other crucial aspects of ESP field; genre theory,
corpus enhanced genre studies, theory –informed
pedagogical strategies for literacy and spoken discourse.
• Unlike many other educational practices, ESP is claimed
to have some “prominent distinguishing features,
involving needs assessment, content-based teaching
methods and content-area informed instructors and also
it’s assumed that the problems within the field of ESP are
unique to specific learners in specific contexts and thus
must be carefully delineated and addressed with tailored-
to-fit instruction

3. • There exists a definite influence of learner-centered approach
(Nunan,1988); Hutchinson and Waters claim that, ESP has
become more learning-centered not just by focusing what
people do with language but more about how they learn it by
encouraging learner investment and participation. This is
totally stated to be in relation with discourse domains and they
are no longer seen to be in a vacuum which means that any
community members might hold multiple race, class and
gender subject positions, hence personal data collection and
needs assessment ought to be seen as a matter of agreement
and judgment rather than being a discovery. (Pennycook, 1997,
Robinson, 1991, Lawson, 1979 ).

4. • The Problem of Authenticity and Interactional Roles
• In Belcher’s article, the “authenticity” issue has been discussed in detail. If we are
to mention about the key points, by citing from Widdowson (1979), authenticity
not only resides in texts but in interaction between texts and intended contexts so
from this perspective, texts that are taken out of context become inauthentic as
soon as they enter the classroom. There are also some named degrees of them
varying from clearly authentic materials found in the target discourse community
to semi-authentic materials that are produced by ESP practitioner and inauthentic
textbooks that are mass-produced by publishers. (Swales and Feak, 2000) There
is also another related issue discussed in the passage that most ESP instructors do
not feel secure in class due to their limited field-specific knowledge but in order
to compensate for this, the instructors might choose team teaching with a content
area specialist taking a content-based approach through by lower-grade level
materials and linking language and subject area classes. (Johns, 1997) Having
cited from Hyland (2002) and Hirvela (1998); two types of approaches are
claimed to be the issue of ESP practitioners one of which is a wide-gauge
approach that low-literacy level of adults and undergraduates without majors may
benefit from. There is another approach called out to be narrower approach from
which the other learners such as graduate students, pilots and nurses gain most.

5. • Promoting Learner Autonomy and the Studies of Genres and Corpus
• Undoubtedly, learners confront multitude of genres in all the avenues of life and deciding to
focus on a particular genre to focus on is a daunting task. Devitt (2004) suggests the idea
that instead of trying to teach some specific genres, the critical awareness of the students
about the way the genres operate and students’ attention should focus on “antecedent genres”
as familiar genres like personal letters or wedding announcements to equip them with a
learning strategy and meta-cognitive awareness.
• One final point emphasized in the article is the necessity to compile
electronic corpora which is highlighted by Lee and Swales claiming
that such learner-produced corpora effectively increases the language
standards and saves the learners from the authority of native speaker,
teacher, grammar and text and stylistic conventions

6. • As the most crucial item to mention about, there must be
strategies that are communicatively effective that are
independent from a learner’s being native or not. Keeping
newly identified learner needs as well as their own needs in
pedagogical contexts, ESP professionals must lead their role of
English language teaching in this new “glocalizing” world…