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From ‘war stories and romances’ to research agenda: towards a model of ESP didactics
Shona WhyteUniversité Nice Sophia Antipolis, UMR 7320 BCL
Cédric SarréUniversité Paris Sorbonne, CeLiSo
Seminar 14: Teaching practices in ESP today 25 August 2016 1
From ‘war stories and romances’ to research agenda: towards a model of ESP didactics
Shona WhyteCédric Sarré
ESSE 2016 Whyte & Sarré wp.me/p28EmH-vA 5
● Co-convenors of ESSE seminar on teaching ESP (with Danica Milosevic, Nis; Alessandra Molino, Turin)
● Co-chairs of ESP didactics SIG in GERAS (French learned society for study of English in specialised contexts)
● Teaching and research interests in language teacher education and technology-mediated language teaching
Not “war stories and romances”
Bowers, 1980; Johns & Dudley-Evans, 1991; Master, 2005
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It is undoubtedly true that not only editors but also readers of journals
can find it exercising and on occasion fruitless to wade through a series of
anecdotes about English teaching through different approaches with different resources in unrelated and possibly esoteric contexts: war stories and romances, tales of experience and the unexpected, echoes in the background of 'I did it my way.'
ESSE 2016 Whyte & Sarré wp.me/p28EmH-vA
Project reports (from practitioners)Bowers, 1980
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I firmly believe that a batch of authentic educational studies in which the heterogeneity of the natural
learning context has been preserved and the actualities of teaching and learning reported is likely, in the long
run, to be of greater value than a batch of experimental studies where the variables have been
controlled but reliability and focus attained at the cost of immediate relevance to authentic contexts
ESSE 2016 Whyte & Sarré wp.me/p28EmH-vA
“Thick description” and a “methodological metalanguage”Bowers, 1980
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Anecdotes, then, as reports of comparable experiences in teaching and learning - the successful and the unsuccessful - are a valuable and necessary part of the literature of the profession. But they are valuable only in so far as they are comparable within the field of language teaching as a whole, relatable to the particular learning contexts which are the
concern of the individual reader, and capable of being evaluated as accurate and comprehensive statements of pedagogic activities and the pedagogic results of those activities
Ryde, 1971; Geertz, 1973
ESSE 2016 Whyte & Sarré wp.me/p28EmH-vA
Some preliminaries: Teaching ESPEnglish
● not other languages● as a foreign/second language, not first or native language
specific purposes
● not general English● not literary varieties, or for cultural enrichment
teaching
● not describing, characterising, analysing a language variety● not learning, not using a variety, not acquiring it ‘in the wild’
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Evaluation of teaching efficacy
Dudley-Evans, 2001
While not in any way rejecting the need for theory and analysis in ESP, I do feel that we are reaching a stage where we need to consider how effective the courses that are developed from this research are. Are we really delivering in the ESP classroom?
Master, 2005
Despite 30 years of calls for empirical research demonstrating the efficacy of ESP, not a single published study has appeared to this end. All we really have [... are] ‘war stories and romances.’
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Presentation outline
1. Academic disciplines relevant to ESP teaching
2. Key terms in ESP didactics3. A research agenda for ESP
teaching
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Where should we look for expertise in testing ESP teaching efficacy?
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Experts?
Literary/cultural scholars
Linguists (language scientists)
Second language researchers
Applied linguists
Language educators
Content/disciplinary specialists
Institutional stakeholders
ESSE 2016 Whyte & Sarré wp.me/p28EmH-vA
Literary/cultural studies
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HUMANITIES
philosophy
history
classics
modern languages
Spanish
FrenchEnglish
ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
English
ESP
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“discourse community”
Linguistics
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COGNITIVE SCIENCE
neuroscience
anthropology
psychology
linguistics
phonology
syntaxEnglish
second language acquisition
acquisition
LSP
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ESP and linguistics
Second language research
● SLA generally viewed as applied linguistics
● BUT sometimes excludes applied research
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In addition to providing a forum for investigators in the field of non-native language learning, it seeks to promote interdisciplinary research which links
acquisition studies to related non-applied fields such as neurolinguistics,
psycholinguistics, theoretical linguistics, bilingualism, and first language
developmental psycholinguistics. Note that studies of foreign language teaching and learning are outside the scope of Second Language Research, unless they make a substantial contribution to understanding the process and nature of second
language acquisition.
Second language studies
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SECOND LANGUAGE STUDIES
L2 phonology
second language acquisition
L2 syntaxinstructed SLA
LSP
pragmatics
L2 pedagogy & assessment
Instructed SLA
ESP
Language for specific purposes
ESSE 2016 Whyte & Sarré wp.me/p28EmH-vA
Applied linguistics
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APPLIED LINGUISTICS
conversation analysis
second language acquisition
translationinstructed SLA
bilingualism
language pedagogy
discourse analysis
ESP
language for specific purposes
ESSE 2016 Whyte & Sarré wp.me/p28EmH-vA
negative connotations of “applied”
Education
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EDUCATION
education policy
learning sciences
educational psychology
language education
materials development
syllabus design
EnglishEnglish language teaching
ESP
bilingual education
EFL
ESL
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“CLIL”
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PHYSICS
particle physics
astrophysics English for Science
English for
biologyEnglish for
Physics
ESP
Legal English
Business English
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“task-based language teaching”
Academic discipline
Institutional perspective
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UNIVERSITY
College of Business
College of Engineering
College of Arts and Social Sciences
College of Sciences
ESP?
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“English as a lingua franca”
Current debate on scope, history, future of different fields30
The place of ESP research among ...
Literary/cultural scholars
Linguists (language scientists)
Second language researchers
Applied linguists
Language educators
Content/disciplinary specialists
Institutional stakeholders
● Second language research and second/foreign language teaching (Spada, 2015; VanPatten, 2015)
● Applied linguistics and language teaching (CRELA, 2013; HoLLT, 2015)
● ESP research/teaching in France (Braud et al, 2015a, 2015b)
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Expertise for ESP practice and research34
Specialisations/ESP orientation RECOGNISEESP
CONTRIBUTE to ESP
“MATRIX DISCIPLINE”
Literary/cultural scholars probably not no no
Linguists (language scientists) maybe yes no
Second language researchers probably yes yes
Applied linguists yes yes yes
Language educators yes yes maybe
Content/disciplinary specialists yes maybe probably not
Institutional stakeholders yes increasingly not clear
Kramsch, 2000
ESSE 2016 Whyte & Sarré wp.me/p28EmH-vA
1. Academic disciplines relevant to ESP teaching
2. Key terms in ESP didactics3. A research agenda for ESP
teaching
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Terminological confusion is an obstacle to interdisciplinary
collaboration
Didactics as a widely accepted concept?
→ Different national realities, different concepts, different definitions of apparently similar concepts
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Didactics vs pedagogy
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ESP as a widely accepted concept?
→ ESP as an evolving concept + national specificities (eg, French ASP)
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Research in ESP teaching and learning
● A distancing and theorising process, as it seeks to analyse the way ESP teaching leads to learning
● Draws on several contributive sciences
● Takes a broader perspective than SLA, covering elements of both SLA and foreign language education
→ This strand of ESP research is not restricted to pedagogy, but didactic by nature
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Towards a revised definition of ESP
ESP is the branch of English language studies which concerns the language, discourse and culture of English-language professional communities and specialised social groups, as well as the learning and teaching of this object from a didactic perspective.
(Sarré & Whyte 2016 : 150, adapted from Petit 2002)
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1. Academic disciplines relevant to ESP teaching
2. Key terms in ESP didactics3. A research agenda for ESP
teaching
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ESP in French higher education
The DidASP Special Interest Group
Objectives:
● To promote a research-based approach to the study of ESP learning and teaching in France
● To examine the transversal nature of ESP learning and teaching situations and isolate both absolute and variable characteristics of these situations
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An overview of ESP teaching and research contexts:
● 16 talks, 15 speakers, 12 institutions
● 8 in science and engineering● 5 in arts and humanities● 3 on the ESP sector as a whole● Mostly mainstream university
ESP courses, 1 technical university (IUT)
DidASP: ESP learning/teaching situations
Absolute characteristics:
1. Interaction between language and content knowledge
2. Goal-directedness 3. Needs analysis4. Specific institutional
constraints
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Variable characteristics:
1. Primacy of task completion (over language accuracy)
2. Primacy of specific language skills development
3. Use of authentic materials4. Use of specific methods5. Use of language certification6. Limited teacher training in ESP
for non-research professionals
Sarré & Whyte 2016 asp.revues.org/4841DidASP: ESP didactics
Five key dimensions:
1. Analysis of learner needs2. Domain or content areas for
ESP 3. Professional contexts4. Language acquisition and
competences5. Language teaching and
institutional constraints
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Research in ESP teaching and learning in French higher education: developing the construct of ESP didactics
A research agenda for DidASP
Two main sources:
1. Issues in the development of ESP courses
2. Issues surrounding the efficacy of ESP methods/courses…
One principle:
inter-institutional collaborative research projects
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Two avenues currently explored:
1. Replication studies (eg, dictogloss)
2. ESP learner corpus building
Efficacy of ESP?
Are we really delivering in the ESP classroom?
Despite 30 years of calls for empirical research demonstrating the efficacy of ESP, not a single published study has appeared to this end
Dudley-Evans, 2001Master, 2005
Instructional effects studies?
ESP - first issue per year (5 articles)
15 years: 2001-2016
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Move away from L1 linguistic studies to L2 instructional effects
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ESP Journal Linguistic focus (L1)
Linguistic focus (L2)
Pedagogical focus (L2)
Instructional effects (L2)
2001(1) 3 1
2006(1) 1 1 1 2
2011(1) 2 1 1 1
2016(1) 1 2 2
Research in ESP teaching
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Applied linguistics (not “linguistics applied;” Widdowson, 2000)
Appliable linguistics (not “applicable;” Halliday, 2006)
the business of applied linguistics […] is to mediate between linguistics and other discourses and identify where they might relevantly interrelate.
treating a theory as a problem-solving enterprise and trying to develop a theoretical approach, and a theoretical model of language, which can be brought to bear on everyday activities and tasks. I call this an "appliable" linguistics
From ‘war stories and romances’ to research agenda: towards a model of ESP didactics
Seminar 14: Teaching practices in ESP today 25 August 2016
wp.me/p28EmH-vA
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