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Post-World War II
Increased global commerce and technological advancements. English became the lingua franca for international communication. -
Emergence of ESP
Changes in the world's markes resulted in the rising of ESP as a discipline. ESP emerged de to the development of the world's economy and technology. -
Register Analysis
The first boost of ESP came from the register analysis of scientific and technical writing, it focuses on specialized vocabulary and sentence structures for specific fields. -
Development of Need Analysis
At the end of the 70's intended to address the learners' specific foreign language needs. This shift emphasized the importance of teaching language use and learning processes. -
Period: to
Controversy in ESP
Controversies arose in ESP, leading to two main views: the "wide-angle approach," aiming to teach English through topics beyond students' specialist areas, and the "narrow approach," focusing on students' specific areas of development. -
Introduction of rhetorical moves
Swales introduced the concept, analyzing the structure and function of academic texts. The moves contribute to constituting a genre and serve a communicative purpose sub- ordinate to the overall communicative purpose of the text. -
Key ESP terms
In the view of Johns, was the introduction of two key ESP terms: genre analysis and rhetorical moves, which continue to be subject of intense research work in ESP -
Study by Tarone et al
A study carried out by Tarone et al in 1981 introduced the concept of using the area specialist as a content- expert consultant. These experts, called “subject-specialist informants,” provided content knowledge to improve ESP instruction. Debates at the time focused on how specific the content should be, how to design teaching materials, and whether teachers needed both language and subject expertise. -
Expansion on major ESP topics
A rapid increase in research and have continued the expansion on major ESP topics. According to Johns (2013), the emergence of international journals as well as the marked rise in the amount of international submissions and publications have consolidated the importance and relevance of ESP today.