war stories and romances: whyte & sarré, esse 2016

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


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


“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


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’

12ESSE 2016 Whyte & Sarré wp.me/p28EmH-vA

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.’


Presentation outline

1. Academic disciplines relevant to ESP teaching

2. Key terms in ESP didactics3. A research agenda for ESP

teaching


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


Literary/cultural studies

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HUMANITIES

philosophy

history

classics

modern languages

Spanish

FrenchEnglish

ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

English

ESP


“discourse community”

Linguistics

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COGNITIVE SCIENCE

neuroscience

anthropology

psychology

linguistics

phonology

syntaxEnglish

second language acquisition

acquisition

LSP


ESP and linguistics

Second language research

● SLA generally viewed as applied linguistics

● BUT sometimes excludes applied research


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


L2 syntaxinstructed SLA

LSP

pragmatics

L2 pedagogy & assessment

Instructed SLA

ESP

Language for specific purposes


http://wp.me/p28EmH-vA

Applied linguistics

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APPLIED LINGUISTICS

conversation analysis


translationinstructed SLA

bilingualism

language pedagogy

discourse analysis

ESP

language for specific purposes


negative connotations of “applied”

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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


“CLIL”

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PHYSICS

particle physics

astrophysics English for Science

English for

biologyEnglish for

Physics

ESP

Legal English

Business English


“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?


“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)


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




teaching


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


Didactics vs pedagogy


ESP as a widely accepted concept?

→ ESP as an evolving concept + national specificities (eg, French ASP)


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


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)




teaching


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


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


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


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


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


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


Seminar 14: Teaching practices in ESP today 25 August 2016

wp.me/p28EmH-vA

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