ESP and Writing

Ken Hyland by: Jennefer Edrozo

Jane CamingaoMichelle Piquero

Discussion Overview

• Short Review• The Challenge of ESP Writing• ESP Conceptions of Writing• ESP Approaches to Writing

Research• Research in ESP Writing• Legal English

Macro skills

1. Listening2. Speaking3. Reading4. Writing5. Viewing

Babies develop language skills by first listening and then speaking, followed by reading and writing

• Writing is a form of communication that allows students to put their feelings and ideas on paper, to organize their knowledge and beliefs into convincing arguments, and to convey meaning through well-constructed text.

• Writing is perhaps the most complex of the communication skills and takes the most time to master.

The Challenge/s of ESP Writing

ESP Writing: Modern Academic & Corporate Life

• Writing is perhaps the central activity of institutions. Complex social activities like educating students, keeping records, engaging with customers, selling products, demonstrating learning and disseminating ideas largely depend on it.

• Essays• Commercial letters• Emails• Medical reports• Minutes of meetings

ESP Writing: Modern Academic & Corporate Life

• But writing is also a key feature to every student’s life..

• Because while multimedia and electronic technologies are beginning to influence learning and how we assess it, in many domains conventional writing remains the way in which students both consolidate their learning and demonstrate their understanding of their subjects.

WHY?

• Written texts, in fact, dominate the lives of all students, even those in emergent, practice-based courses not previously thought as involving heavy literacy demands (Baynham 2000:17)

• These kinds of experiences are extremely challenging to students and can be especially daunting to those who are writing in a second language.

WHY?

ESP Conceptions of Writing

• ESP conceptions of writing focus on assisting students towards competence in particular target genres.

• Teachers do not simply “teach writing” but teach particular kinds of writing which are valued and expected in some academic or professional contexts.

• In recent years the field of ESP has become increasingly sensitive to the ways in which texts are written and responded to by individuals acting as members of social groups.

• Ideas such as communicative competence in applied linguistics Canale and Swain 1980), situated learning in education (Lave and Wenger 1991), and social constructionism in the social sciences (Berger and Luckman 1966) have contributed to a view that places community at the heart of writing and speech.

Of relevance here is the notion of “academic literacies”, which rejects:

the ways language is treated as though it were a thing, distanced from both teacher and learner and imposing on them external rules and requirements as though they were but passive recipients -(Street 1995:114)

• One problem for students, however, is that while achievement is assessed by various institutionalized forms of writing, what it means to write in this way is rarely made explicit to students.

• The academic literacies position, therefore, encourages us to see that writing must be understood as the crucial process by which students make sense not only of the subject knowledge they encounter through their studies, but also how they can make it mean something for themselves.

-(Lea and Street 1999)

Gee (1966:155)

“Someone cannot engage in a discourse in a less than fluent manner. You are either in it or you’re not. Discourses are connected with displays of identity-failing to display an identity fully is tantamount to announcing you do not have that identity- at best you are a pretender or a beginner.”

An important implication of these observations has been a commitment to contextual relevance in ESP.1. Finding ways to help students gain control

over texts2. Involving them in their studies and

encouraging them to take active responsibility for their learning

3. Helping learners see the assumptions and values which are implicit in those genres

ESP Approaches to Writing Research

1. Textual Studies

• A genre approach to writing looks beyond the struggles of individual writers to make meanings and delves beneath the surface structures of texts as products to understand how writing actually works as communication.

• This is an approach that assumes that texts are always a response to a particular communicative setting and which attempts to reveal the purposes and functions which linguistic forms serves in texts.

• Genres in ESP are usually regarded as staged, structured events, designed to perform various communicative purposes by specific discourse communities (Swales 2004).

• ESP research into texts thus seeks to show how language forms work as resources for accomplishing goals by describing the stages which help writers to set out their thoughts in ways readers can easily follow, and identifying salient features of texts which allow them to engage effectively with their readers.

• Genre approaches in ESP therefore attempt to explicate the lexico-grammatical and discursive patterns of particular genres to identify their recognizable structural identity.

2. Contextual Studies

• ESP research has not been entirely focused on the printed page, however. Treating texts as purely textual artifacts can mean that while students are often able to handle the forms of professional genres when they go out to work, they are often unprepared “for the discursive realities of the professional world”

- (Bhatia 2008:161)

• Such approach infuses text analyses with greater validity and offer richer understandings about the production and use of genres in different contexts.

3. Critical Studies

• Although they take a number of different forms drawing on diverse theoretical concepts and methods, it is conventional to lump these together under the heading of critical discourse analysis (CDA).

• This views language as a form of social practice and attempts “to unpack the ideological underpinnings of discourse that have become so naturalized over time that we begin to treat them as common, acceptable and natural features of discourse

- ( Teo 2000:1)

• It attempts to show that discourses of the academy and the workplace are not transparent or impartial means for getting things done or describing the world, but work to construct, regulate and control knowledge, social relations and institutions.

• While CDA does not subscribe to any single method, Fairclough (2003) draws on Systematic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Halliday 1994) to analyze concrete instances of discourse. In this model, language is seen as systems of linguistic features offering choices to users, but these choices are circumscribed in situations of unequal power.

To examine actual instances of texts, CDA typically looks at features such

as:

1. Vocabulary2. Transitivity3. Nominalization and passivization4. Mood and modality5. Theme6. Text structure7. Intertextuality and interdiscursivity

• There are, however, several studies that show how language is used to influence readers or achieve control in written professional writing in different contexts.

• Harrison and Young’s (2004) analysis of the phrasal construction of a memo from a senior manager, for example, shows how he uses bureaucratic language to distance himself from unpopular decisions.

• In academic contexts, research has explored the ways that the conventions of disciplinary writing can create tensions for students.

• This critically-oriented research thus re-establishes the intrinsic relationship between knowledge, writing and identity and raises issues of relevance and legitimacy in relation to writing practices.

TEXTUAL STUDIESAn approach that

assumes that texts are ALWAYS a response to a

particular communicative setting and which attempts to

reveal the purposes and functions which linguistic

forms serve in texts. CRITICAL STUDIES attempts to show that the discourse of the academy and the workplace are not

transparent or impartial means for getting things done or describing the

world but work to construct, regulate and

control knowledge, social relations and institutuions

CONTEXTUAL STUDIES-not entirely focused on the

printed page-accompanied by more

qualitative investigations to fill out the context in which

particular genre is created and used

Research in ESP Writing

Table 5.2 Some written genres studied in ESP research

Academic Written GenresResearch articlesConference abstractsPhD dissertationsSubmission lettersUndergarduate essaysTeacher feedbackEditors’ lettersProfessional Written GenresBusiness lettersEnvironmental reportsBusiness emailsDirect email sales letters

Book reviewsTextbooksGrant proposalsPeer review reportsArticle biosAcknowledgmentsLab reports

Company annual reportsEnvironmental reportsMedical case notesArbitration judgments

• Research on professional written genres has tended to focus mainly on the business letter , and more recently on how this is recycled as part of other genres such as emails and annual reports (Gotti ang Gillaerts 2005).

• Research has also pointed to cultural specificity in rhetorical preferences (e.g Connor 2002). Although culture remains a controversial term, one influential version of culture regards it as historically transmitted and systematic network of meanings.

Five broad findings:

1. That texts are systematically structured to secure readers’ agreement or understanding;

2. That these community-specific ways of producing agreement represent rhetorical preferences that are specific to particular contexts

3. That language groups have different ways of expressing ideas and negotiating writer-reader relationships and that this represents

serious challenges to students understanding of themselves and their fields;4. That professional writing is distinguished by its expert character, its specialized goal orientation, and its conventionalized from;5. That there is frequently a disconnect between authentic written language and that in textbooks.

Looking to the Future

• Predictions are never easy, but one certainty is that ESP’s concern with mapping the discourses and communicative challenges of the modern workplace and classroom will continue.

Possible developments in the incoming years..

1. Expansion of studies into new specialist professional fields and written genre will continue.

2. Much remains to be learned and considerable research undertaken

3. ESP conceptions of literacy and writing instruction need to come to terms with challenges

4. Understanding the increasing role of multimodal and electronic texts in professional contexts.5. ESP writing instruction needs to pay greater attention to the contexts of professional writing

Conclusion

• ESP writing instruction is essentially a practically oriented activity committed to demystifying prestigious forms of discourse, unlocking students’ creative and expressive abilities, and facilitating their access to greater life chances.