ESP

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is an approach to English language teaching in which every decision about content and method is driven by the learner's reason for learning. Unlike general English, where aims are broad and learner populations heterogeneous, ESP assumes that a well-defined target context, such as a profession, a discipline, or an occupational task, should dictate what gets taught, in what order, using what kinds of texts and tasks. In Hutchinson and Waters's (1987) often-quoted formulation, "ESP is an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based on the learner's reason for learning."

ESP is not a single method but a family of needs-based practices: Business English, Medical English, Aviation English, Legal English, and its largest single branch, English for Academic Purposes.

Origins

The conventional narrative (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987) traces ESP to three converging pressures after the Second World War:

• The "Brave New World": the internationalisation of science, technology, and commerce, with English as the default medium
• A revolution in linguistics: a shift from describing the formal system of English to describing language as it is actually used in specific contexts (register analysis, discourse analysis, genre studies)
• A focus on the learner: psychology of learning and learner-centred pedagogy making it untenable to deliver the same course to everyone

The Oil Crisis of the early 1970s accelerated demand, as Western expertise and English-medium documentation flowed into oil-producing countries.

Developmental Phases

Hutchinson and Waters sketch a rough sequence of ESP's intellectual phases; most accounts add a fifth.

Phase	Focus	Representative figures
1. Register analysis	Grammar and vocabulary typical of scientific/technical English	Peter Strevens, Jack Ewer, Ewer & Latorre
2. Rhetorical / discourse analysis	How texts are organised above the sentence	John Swales, Larry Selinker, Louis Trimble, Henry Widdowson
3. Target-situation analysis	Systematic Needs Analysis of end-use contexts	Chambers, Munby
4. Skills and strategies	Underlying reading and thinking skills rather than surface forms	Tim Johns, Florence Davies, Tony Dudley-Evans
5. Learning-centred approach	What learners do to acquire the language, not only what they need	Tom Hutchinson & Alan Waters

Key Ideas

• Needs Analysis: systematic investigation of the language and tasks the learner actually faces. The foundation of any ESP course.
• Authenticity: texts and tasks drawn from the target domain rather than invented for the classroom. Tim Johns's three authenticities (script, purpose, activity) are a compact formulation.
• Genre and discourse: attention to how disciplinary and professional communities structure texts (e.g., Swales's CARS model for research article introductions).
• Subject-specialist collaboration: the Birmingham team-teaching model (Tim Johns and Tony Dudley-Evans) pioneered sharing the classroom with content-area staff.

ESP vs General English

Dimension	General English	ESP
Aim	Broad communicative competence	Performance in a defined context
Syllabus	Graded structures / functions	Driven by needs analysis
Texts	Pedagogically graded	Authentic from the target domain
Learners	Heterogeneous	Homogeneous by profession/discipline
Teacher role	Language expert	Language expert + domain collaborator

ESP's Branches

ESP divides along two main axes: occupational (EOP) and academic (EAP).

• English for Academic Purposes: for study in English-medium higher education; the largest branch, with its own professional body (BALEAP) and journal
• EOP / EPP (Occupational / Professional): English for the workplace: Business English, English for Nursing, Aviation English, English for Hospitality, and so on

Each of these may further split into general and specific strands: EGAP/ESAP inside EAP, General Business English vs English for Banking inside Business English, and so on.

Birmingham heritage

• The TAVI / TALO distinction (Johns & Davies 1983) emerged from the Birmingham ESP reading tradition
• Concordance-based corpus work and Data-Driven Learning were cultivated on ESP courses at Birmingham before diffusing into general ELT
• The Birmingham School of discourse analysis (Sinclair, Coulthard) and Henry Widdowson's work on language use vs usage both shape the intellectual backdrop

References

• Hutchinson, T. & Waters, A. (1987). English for Specific Purposes: A Learning-Centred Approach. Cambridge University Press.
• Dudley-Evans, T. & St John, M. J. (1998). Developments in English for Specific Purposes. Cambridge University Press.
• Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge University Press.
• Johns, T. & Davies, F. (1983). Text as a vehicle for information. Reading in a Foreign Language, 1(1), 1–19.