Valorizing practice: grounded histories of language learning and teaching

1. ESP and why it’s not: learner motivation, teacher
competence, and indigenous assessment criteria
Shona Whyte
BCL, CNRS, Université Côte d’Azur (Nice, France)
Valorizing practice: grounded histories of language learning and teaching Bremen 15 November 20191

2. Language learning and teaching for what?
• modern foreign language studies
as a gateway to cultural enrichment
• languages (English) for specific purposes
for access to international science or commerce
• general language (English) certification
as a basic skill
2http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr

3. ESP and TENOR (Abbott 1980)
• modern language studies
as a gateway to cultural enrichment
• English for Specific Purposes: ESP
for academic or occupational purposes
• Teaching English for No Obvious Reason
as a compulsory subject
3http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr
@neil_mcm

4. outline
i ESP and TENOR
ii learner motivation
iii teacher competence
iv assessment criteria
4http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr

5. outline
i ESP and TENOR
ii learner motivation
iii teacher competence
iv assessment criteria
5http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr

6. an English controversy
6http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr
http://bit.ly/ESP_SW

7. a little light mud-slinging
7http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr
ESP practitioners
tend to become
partisan and
dogmatic about
particular issues in
ESP
I know of at least three
applied linguists of
high repute who have
also been known to
exhibit naïve notions
based on inadequate
teaching experience
Kennedy (1980)
Abbott (1980)

8. Fundamental
problems in ESP
Chris Kennedy
8http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.frhttp://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr
ESP and TENOR
Gerry Abbott

9. Gerry Abbott
• 1935-2019
• University of Manchester
(1965-1992) and British Council in
Amman, Uganda, Thailand,
Malaysia, Myanmar (Beaumont
2019)
• The Teaching of English as an
International Language (Abbott &
Wingard 1981)
• articles in ELT Journal, English
Today, System; PhD by publication
• a socialist and a humanist, wrote
poetry and autobiography
• outsider, contrarian stance in ELT
My own view of good
teaching is that it is a
subversive activity, in that
it actually fosters the
questioning and
challenging of authority
Abbott (2003)
http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr 9

10. Chris Kennedy
• taught overseas with the British
Council
• combined lecturing in ELT and
applied linguistics in the UK with
international secondments
• directed the Centre for English
Language Studies at the University
of Birmingham, full professor
• president of IATEFL (1991-93) and
chair of the British Council's English
Teaching Advisory Committee.
• publications in ESP, and ELT, often
in terms of change management or
innovation.
10
ESP has already made a
valuable contribution to
ELT theory and practice.
It is a creative force which
has effected a rewarding
amount of research and
innovation in syllabus and
materials design, and
which will continue to
play an important role in
second language learning
and teaching.
Kennedy 1980
http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr

11. 11
ESP is not so scientifically
rigorous as its proponents
claim, and it is ethically
questionable to reduce
teaching goals to meeting the
perceived needs of the market
or workplace
some of ESP's champions in
applied linguistics lack the
pedagogical credentials to
command respect among
teachers, while the return on
ongoing teacher investment
in materials development is
not guaranteed
the actual needs and
motivation of ESP learners
may not be reducible to
practical short-term goals and
many learners around the
world fall outside its rather
narrow confines
Gerry Abbott

12. a grounded history of ESP
• debate over learner needs
and motivation
• language teacher concerns in
materials development, and
content expertise
• tensions between theorists
(applied linguists) and
practitioners
• conflict between language
policies and educational
values
• issues of ESP assessment
12http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr

13. outline
i ESP and TENOR
ii learner motivation
iii teacher competence
iv assessment criteria
13http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr

14. Learner motivation, communicative competence and LSP
• “What people want to do through language is more important than
mastery of language as an unapplied system” (Wilkins 1972)
• ESP “should focus on the learner and the purposes for which he
requires the target language, and the whole language programme
follows from that” (Munby 1978: 2)
• “Perhaps the current interest in teaching language for ‘special
purposes’ may eventually reveal the challenge to curriculum
designers: that all learners regard themselves as learning a
language for some special purpose” (Breen & Candlin 1980)
• "if there is a need, it should be satisfied" (Kennedy 1980)
14

15. Dimensions of communicative competence (Hymes 1972)
15
COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE PERFORMANCE
Knowledge Ability for use Actual use & events
1 What is possible
Systemic possibility
“GrammaKcality” (in terms of syntax but also
culture, communicaKon)
•MoKvaKon
•AffecKve &
voliKve factors
•CapaciKes in
interacKon (e.g.,
composure,
presence of mind,
stage confidence)
•Behavioural
record
•Imperfect or
parKal realizaKon of
individual
competence
•InteracKon
between individual
competence,
competence of
others, and
properKes of events
2 What is feasible
PsycholinguisKc reality
Constraints on memory, percepKon
3 What is appropriate
SituaKonal judgement
Acceptability in context
4 What is performed
Actual occurrences

16. Communicative competence in LSP (Whyte 2019)
16
Knowledge Strategies for use
linguis1c comprehension grammar discourse organisaKon
expression vocabulary argumentaKon
intelligibility pronunciaKon delivery
fluency
pragma1c appropriateness interacKon management
accommodaKon engagement
empathy
content scienKfic performance demeanor
occupaKonal non-verbal behaviour
professional overall impression

17. Fundamental problems (Abbott 1980)
• externally defined needs "may not be very strongly felt by
the learner"
• students may have a different motivation (oral
communication or 'Social English'), or indeed no
immediate instrumental motivation
• learners may show little enthusiasm for their own
subjects, meaning a related ESP course will share in this
aversion: "if the subject is for any reason 'unwanted,' the
language tends to be 'unwanted' too"
17

18. Abbott’s Paradox (Abbott 1981)
• Proponents of communicative methods often say or imply that it is
not very respectable to get your class to do oral drills, which are
condemned as ‘meaningless,’ ‘boring,’ or uncommunicative
• In a monolingual group, the greater the wish to communicate
orally, the greater the urge to abandon English and use the mother
tongue
• in a multilingual group, the greater the wish to communicate, the
greater the use of ‘stem-form’ English [or] ‘interlanguage pidgin’
• Are drills really so useless? Granted that they are not sufficient, are
they not necessary as a preparation for acts of communication?
18

19. outline
i ESP and TENOR
ii learner motivation
iii teacher competence
iv assessment criteria
19http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr

20. Teacher competence
• “since we are inviting the learner, directly or indirectly, to
recognize the linguistic components of the language
behavior he is acquiring, we are in effect basing our
approach on the learner’s analytic capabilities” (Wilkins
1976)
• EFL teachers have traditionally relied on intuition and eclectic
approaches and should continue to do so (Kennedy 1980)
• ESP teachers include "retrained" scientists and others who
"willingly re-educate" and/or collaborate with subject-
specialist teachers (Kennedy 1980)
20

21. ESP problems (Abbott 1978,1980)
• “the preparation of tailor-made "ESP materials for 'one-off'
purposes" is tiring for teachers, without necessarily
resulting in attractive activities for learners”
• problem of “level of knowledge of a specific subject (or
occupation)" and the heterogenous classes they are
expected to teach. Unreasonable "to demand that every
ESP teacher be a polymath"
• “I would just like everyone involved in the ESP industry to
be more ready to admit that its processes are full of
uncertainties, and to be less prone to constructing
pseudo-scientific justifications”
21

22. EFL as education (Abbott 1987)
• “efforts in Europe towards establishing systematic ways of providing
language instruction for specific purposes (LSP) have influenced our
ideas about syllabus specification quite profoundly - perhaps too
profoundly”
• “the new methods and materials currently advocated tend to assume
more favourable conditions (e.g. smallish classes) and facilities (e.g.
access to a photocopier) than actually obtain in most secondary
schools “
• “education must not be allowed to become a mere governmental
training-ground for the work-force it thinks it needs.”
• proposals to adapt fledgling CEFR (van Ek 1976) by focusing on
content and including monologue
22

23. outline
i ESP and TENOR
ii learner motivation
iii teacher competence
iv assessment criteria
23http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr

24. LSP Testing
• high-stakes tests (gatekeeping -
Fulcher 2013): physicists, students
(EAP), veterinarians, medical
doctors, airline pilots
• performance tests: content,
method, assessment criteria
• inclusion of indigenous criteria (=
views of occupational experts, non-
language specialists, linguistic
laypersons)
• use of actual examples of test
performance and thematic coding
of commentary
• Elder, McNamara, Kim, Pill & Sato
2017, Douglas 2001
24http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr

25. physics conference presentation
problem
characterise academic talk involving L1
and L2 speakers
participants
academics, researchers, graduate
students at lab meetings
method
observation, conversation analysis,
grounded theory for categorisation
findings
➤ focus entirely on content: effective
presentation of scientific material
➤ no attention to L1 or L2 speech
Jacoby 1999, Jacoby &
McNamara, 1999
25http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr

26. problem
hypothesised mismatch between linguist and
lay interpretations of oral competence
participants
lay judges of Chinese College English Test-
Spoken English Test (monologue) and
Cambridge English (paired interaction)
method
thematic coding
findings
➤ discrepancies between lay and language
testers’ criteria
➤ overall impression + content (1/3 grade);
linguistic resources (1/10)
English for academic purposes
Sato 2014, Elder et al. 2017
26http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr

27. problem
evaluate special Rural and General Practice
option in veterinary programme via Individual
Process Assessment (role-play)
participants
veterinary professionals, veterinary students,
applied linguists
method
comparison of categories across three groups
findings
➤ veterinary experts used most explicit and
widest range of categories
➤ applied linguist and student views differed
Veterinary consultation
Douglas & Myers, 2000
27http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr

28. problem
Overseas English Test failed to identify
proficient International Medical Graduates
participants
medical professionals
method
comparison of indigenous criteria with
language testing specialists
findings
➤ discrepancies between doctor and
linguist criteria
➤ revision of test to include new categories
and delete irrelevant rubrics
medical consultation
Pill 2013, Elder et al. 2017
28http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr

29. problem
Korean English Proficiency Test for Aviation
perceived as poor indicator of professional
competence
participants
pilots and air traffic controllers
method
professionals’ feedback on recordings of
abnormal/emergency/distress situations
findings
➤ discrepancies between pilot and language
test criteria
➤ communication errors by both L1 and L2
speakers
PIlot-traffic controller exchange
Kim 2012, Kim & Billington 2016,
Clark 2017, Elder et al. 2017
29http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr

30. 30
Content specialists (including average speakers
who are not linguists) are generally able to agree
on what constitutes effective communication in a
specific domain and how to evaluate particular
speakers. They generally do so with little reference
to particular formal linguistic features, suggesting
that they may be intuitively working with a broader
model of communicative competence.
Whyte (2019)

31. Some conclusions
• learner motivation is often nebulous and fluctuating; ESP
often imposes external goals dictated by needs of
industry or commerce
• teacher competence in own contexts goes beyond
intended curricula in pedagogical technique but also
learner needs/benefits
• assessment criteria developed by ESP teachers and
testers don’t meet real-world requirements; content
specialists employ a broader understanding of
communicative competence
31

32. ESP and why it’s not: learner
motivation, teacher competence,
and indigenous assessment criteria
Shona Whyte
Université Côte d’Azur
(Nice, France)
Valorizing practice: grounded
histories of language learning and
teaching
AILA research network HoLLT
Bremen, Germany
November 2019
Photo by Filip
Zrnzević on Unsplash
32http://bit.ly/ESP_SW Valorizing practice Bremen 15 /11/2019 whyte@unice.fr