The development of English for specific purposes (ESP) Essay

The development of English for specific purposes (ESP) - Essay Example in fact, Swales (1985) uses the development of EST to illustrate the development of ESP in general: ‘With one or two exceptions†¦English for Science and Technology has always set and continues to set the trend in theoretical discussion, in ways of analyzing language, and in the variety of actual teaching materials.’ The phase took place between 1960’s and 1970’s. The major proponents of this phase included Peter Strevens (Halliday, McIntosh and Strevens, 1964), Jack Ewer (Ewer and Latorre, 1969) and John Swales (1971). Operating on the basic principle that the English of, say, Electrical Engineering constituted a specific register different from that of, say, Biology or of General English, it is important to distinguish the grammatical and lexical features of these registers. Teaching materials have adopted these linguistic features in their syllabus, a good example being A Course in Basic Scientific English by Ewer and Latorre (1969) (see below p. 26). In fact, as Ewer and Latorre’s syllabus shows, register analysis revealed that there was little distinction in the sentence grammar of scientific English beyond the tendency to favor particular forms such as the present simple tense, the passive voice and nominal compounds. However, the syllabus did not reveal any forms found in General English. But we must be wary of making unfair criticism. Although there was an academic interest in the nature of English registers per se, the main motive behind register analyses, such as, Ewer and Latorre’s was the pedagogic one of making the ESP course more relevant to learners’ needs. The main purpose was to create a syllabus that would give priority to forms of language that students would use in their Science studies. Ewer and Hughes-Davies (1971), for example, compared the language of the texts their Science students had to read with the language of some widely used school

Social Sciencee Term paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Social Sciencee Term paper - Essay Example If you want to even talk about firms setting prices you have to talk about firms that have some ability to do so, and those are firms that have some market power: they are imperfectly competitive. Is there any other method which can help us to resolve more effectively and efficiently the many problems which are menacing the foundations of Western society What is wrong with the alternative of Marxian economics as applied in the Socialist countries, which also harbor a plethora of unresolved problems Is the thinking of our time upside down, or are we using the wrong approach - both in the West and the East - and therefore cannot resolve the pending problems These are some of the leading questions to be answered during the rest of the twentieth century. First, he broke the prevailing conventional wisdom of the past, i.e. the classical economics and method of reasoning, and brought for debate a new economic vision where government intervention becomes a part of and a major rule in the economic system. This was a new economic philosophy in contrast to the classical view where government intervention in a free society was conceived as an exception to the rule or not needed at all, according to the formula of laissez-faire or "hands-off policy". Second, he wSecond, he was able to develop new tools of analysis like the multiplier theorem, the consumption function or the paradox of thrift - all devised to prove that his new economic philosophy based on the concept of active and permanent government intervention was necessary and workable. Third, he was able to induce a large number of his peers in the economic profession to accept and follow his method of approach and the overall conceptualization, even though this was a sort of inverted type of analysis when compared with classical economics, as will be shown later. The fact of the matter remains that his influence upon the thinking of his time was tremendous and unprecedented. Indeed, no other economist since Adam Smith enjoyed the opportunity to see that during his lifetime his ideas have conquered the world. This was a performance which raised Keynes to the status of the most influential economist of the twentieth century. A new composite method of approach: equilibrium vs. disequilibrium Classical economists were deficient in two major areas, one theoretical and the other practical. Their great performance was the study of stable equilibrium in theory where they found natural laws. This direction culminated with the formulation of the Walrasian theorem of general equilibrium. However, they were deficient in not having studied with the same diligence and attention problems of disequilibrium which were closer to the existing economic and financial conditions of their time. In other words, they were not aware of the existence of a gap between the harsh and unstable realities staring them in the face and the conceptual construction of an economics of stable equilib