English (Linguistics)

1. ESP AND LANGUAGE SKILLS
Afshan Khalid
Roll no: 01
M.Phil English
The Women University Multan,
Pakistan

2. OUTLINE
In ‘ESP and Reading skill’, Alan Hirvela sees ‘reading’ in ESP-related contexts in
terms of teaching and research point of view. This includes:
(1)Foundations of Reading in ESP:
(a)Foundational aspects
(b)From register analysis to discourse analysis
(c)Genre analysis
(2)Emerging perspectives and research on reading:
(a) Reading as a ‘Stand—Alone’ skill:
*Teaching reading skills
*Textbooks
*Vocabulary
(b)Reading in integrated skills context:
*Genre-based approaches
*Portfolios
(3)Conclusion.

3. READING SKILL
Reading skill is the ability to read well.
Reading involves:
Types of
reading
Extensive
reading
Intensive
reading
Skimming Scanning

4. (1)FOUNDATIONS OF READING IN ESP:
This topic deals with historical roots of reading in ESP.
(a)Foundational aspects:
Interest in reading began to develop in 1970s.
McDonough (1984) pointed out that :
“English is the language of textbooks and journals.
English is a library language especially in
EFL contexts.”

5. (b)From register analysis to discourse analysis
‘Reading’ in ESP faces important shifts.
 Hutchinson & Waters (1987) identified an initial stage called ’Register
analysis, which consists of ‘the study of use of language, at a sentence
level, in different communicative settings, such as language used by
nurses, pilots etc.’
 The 2nd phase of development shifted attention to the level above
sentence. Allen & Widdowson (1974) in their book ‘English and Focus’
looked at longer stretches of texts, not individual sentences, and the
ways in which author structured these texts for readers to read
thoroughly.’ (discourse analysis)

6. According to Johns (1983):
ESP positioned ‘reading’ as a situated activity. There is focus on
TAVI (Text as vehicle of information) in ESP reading.
(c)Genre analysis
Miller (1984) saw it as a ‘social action’ and Rose (2003) defined it as a
‘staged goal-oriented social process.
 ‘According to Swale (1990):‘A genre comprises a class of
communicative events.’
 With the use of ‘genre analysis’ techniques, ESP students are taught
how to recognize(as readers) the ‘schematic structure’ of texts.

7. (2)EMERGING PERSPECTIVES AND RESEARCH ON
READING:
1st perspective:
According to Bruce (2011):
Reading is sometimes taught on its own as a separate skill, sometimes
in conjunction with writing, and sometimes as a component of study
skills programme. The main focus is on development of sub-skills to
extract information from texts, such as skimming for gist and scanning
for specific details.
2nd perspective:
According to Jordan (1997):
“When students read, it is for a purpose.”

8. READING AS A ‘STAND—ALONE’ SKILL:
Reading is often taught as a skill in its own right. It is taken as a ‘stand-
alone’ skill in the courses designed to teach students how to read. It
includes:
Teaching reading skills
 Focus on rhetorical features of target community texts.
 Use carefully selected pre-reading material
 Focus on core-reading skills (e.g., skimming, scanning etc)
 Hall et al. (1986) created a ‘course approach’, which focused on:
(a)macro-cohesion
(b)micro cohesion

9. Blanton (1984) proposed a ‘hierarchical model’ to understand ‘the
hierarchical nature of academic discourse.’
Wexler (2001) advocated an approach, which includes four parts:
(a) a focus on linguistics forms
(b) teaching of reading strategies
(c)introduction to academic genre
(d)criterion tasks (tasks associated with performance at each stage of
their reading syllabus)

10. TEXTBOOKS
Two key issues in ESP reading are:
How students should read. What they have to read.
Love (1991) focuses on the benefits of introductory textbooks. He says:
“The introductory textbooks within a particular academic discipline exhibit
schematic structure and a set of lexico -grammatical patterns, which reflect and
construct the epistemology of the discipline.” It is the duty of ESP teacher to help
students “explore these characteristics of texts.”
Myers(1992) paid attention to limitations of textbooks.
“Textbooks don’t represent sort of interaction, in which modifications
(pronouns/hedges) are necessary. Textbooks provide limited rhetorical guidance
to students seeking information from research sources or learning forms of
written argument.”

11. VOCABULARY
Vocabulary occupies an important place in both native and 2nd/foreign
language , since the words on the page are the starting points for
reading.
William (1985) discussed five vocabulary learning strategies suitable for
ESP reading:
(a)Inferring from context (b) Identifying lexical familiarization
(c) Unchaining nominal compounds (d) Synonym search
(e) Word analysis
ESP teachers should not simply teach ‘lists of scientific and technical
words’ but should also teach the ‘contexts and structural relations within
which the words have meanings.’

12. READING IN INTEGRATED SKILLS CONTEXT
Reading is seen as a stepping stone to other skills or as complementing
them.
According to Jordan (1997), ‘Reading as a skill is normally linked with
writing.’
Reading in integrated skills context involves:
(a)Genre-based approaches (b)Portfolios
Genre-based approaches
According to Johns (1997):
Through genre-based approaches, students develop ‘socio-literate
competence.’

13. Through ‘genre-based’ reading, students acquire knowledge
of what Paltridge (1997) calls ‘Frames.’ in this way, genre-
based reading instructions provide a kind of scaffolding or
schema building that improves genre based reading and is
eventually transferred to writing.

14. PORTFOLIOS
Portfolios are useful in the development of ESP reading ability.
‘A selection of a student's work (as papers and tests) compiled over a
period of time and used for assessing performance or progress.’
(Merriam Webster dictionary)
Johns (1995) proposed this approach to EAP and ESP instruction, which
includes two steps:
1st stage:
Ask students to compile ‘reading portfolio’, that provides the result of
their disciplinary reading.
2nd stage:
Move on to a ‘writing portfolio’, in which they provide samples of their
own writing. Through portfolios, students complete reading related tasks.

15. CONCLUSION
Reading is an important area of ESP that
continues to attract attention in the realms of
pedagogy and research.