EGAP and ESAP

A foundational distinction within EAP. English for General Academic Purposes (EGAP) teaches the language and skills shared across academic disciplines: cohesion, hedging, citation conventions, lecture listening, essay structure, library skills. English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) teaches the genres, lexis, and rhetorical conventions of particular disciplines: lab reports for engineers, case notes for law students, literature reviews for social scientists.

Origin

Blue (1988, "Individualising academic writing tuition," in P. C. Robinson, ed., Academic Writing: Process and Product, Modern English Publications) introduced the EGAP/ESAP distinction as a way to frame curriculum decisions in pre-sessional and in-sessional university EAP. Dudley-Evans and St John (1998, Developments in English for Specific Purposes: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach, Cambridge University Press) developed the distinction as a defining axis of EAP provision.

The Choice

EGAP appeals where learners come from many disciplines, where teaching staff lack subject expertise, where economies of scale favour mixed-discipline classes, and where the target competence is broadly transferable. ESAP appeals where corpus and genre research has revealed sharp disciplinary differences in how meaning is made, where students need to function in their actual disciplinary discourse community, and where sufficient cohort size justifies discipline-tailored provision. Most institutions run a mix: EGAP at lower levels and pre-sessional, ESAP at in-sessional and postgraduate.

Hyland's Specificity Argument

Hyland (2002, "Specificity revisited: how far should we go now?" English for Specific Purposes 21(4): 385-395) argues that the success of EAP rests on identifying specific language features, discourse practices, and communicative skills of target groups. Generic transferable-skills models, in his view, mask the disciplinary variation that corpus research has documented and risk teaching a watered-down academic English that no community actually uses. He concedes that ESAP is harder to staff and resource but maintains it produces stronger outcomes.

Counter-Position

Defenders of EGAP, including parts of the Hutchinson and Waters tradition, argue that disciplinary variation can be acquired in the discipline itself once students have a robust general academic foundation. They point to logistical realities: most pre-sessional cohorts mix disciplines, and most teachers cannot credibly teach the genres of fields outside their training. Hybrid models use EGAP scaffolding with ESAP exemplars and tasks pulled from learners' own departments.

Curriculum Implications

The choice shapes Needs Analysis (target-situation analysis is heavier for ESAP), text selection (corpus-driven for ESAP, broad academic for EGAP), assessment (discipline-anchored tasks vs. general academic genres), and teacher development (subject-area liaison for ESAP). Course Design often layers the two: EGAP foundation, ESAP top-up tied to faculty placements.

References

• Blue, G. M. (1988). Individualising academic writing tuition. In P. C. Robinson (Ed.), Academic Writing: Process and Product (pp. 95-99). Modern English Publications / British Council.
• Dudley-Evans, T., & St John, M. J. (1998). Developments in English for Specific Purposes: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach. Cambridge University Press.
• Hyland, K. (2002). Specificity revisited: how far should we go now? English for Specific Purposes, 21(4), 385-395.