English for Specific Purposes 33 (2014) 1–3
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English for Specific Purposes journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/esp
Guest editorial
ESP research in Asia English is rapidly spreading across Asia as it is in many other parts of the world. For example, some scholars estimate that the number of English learners in China is now around 400 million, approximately one third of China’s population (Bolton & Graddol, 2012; see also Wei & Su, 2012). The status of English in Asian societies is also changing, with some businesses in Japan, for example, requiring all their meetings, telephone calls, and e-mail communication to be carried out solely in English (Botting, 2010). Another striking example of the changing status of English in Asia is that of English medium lectures (EMLs) in Korea. As of 2010, all classes at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and 93 per cent of classes at the Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) are reported to be conducted in English only (see Cho, 2012; Kang, 2012). These trends and changes have raised interesting questions about the impact of English as a ‘lingua franca’ in professional and academic communication in Asia. They have also attracted ESP researchers and teachers in Asia to look at the educational, economic, and social issues important to ESP research and practice. As a result, new publication outlets have emerged. One example is the Asian ESP Journal, which was created in 2005 and has now published eight volumes listing nearly 150 articles. Another example is the Taiwan International ESP Journal, which was established in 2008 as the official journal of the newly created Taiwan ESP Association (TESPA). More recently, in 2010, the journal China ESP Research was launched with a mission to publish academic papers on different aspects of ESP in the Chinese context. With the creation of new Asian ESP groups and societies, there are also a growing number of ESP-related conferences and workshops being organized. One of the largest is the International Conference on ESP in Asia which has been held each year since 2010 in the cities of Chongqing, Ningbo, Xi’an, and Hong Kong, with the next to be held jointly with the 2nd International Conference of the Chinese Association for ESP in Shanghai in 2013. Taiwan has also held annual ESP conferences since the early 2000s. The ESP-sig groups of the Japan Association for College English Teachers (JACET) are some of the most active in organizing seminars and workshops dating back to the late 1990s. These are, of course, just some of the activities we notice as evidence of the enthusiasm ESP creates among researchers and practitioners in Asia. Research devoted to addressing ESP issues in Asia has also been reflected in this journal. For example, recent volumes of this journal have featured articles about novice and expert lawyers’ writing of the barrister’s opinion genre in Hong Kong (Hafner, 2013), the macro-and micro-textual distinctiveness of Korean participants’ use of English during earnings calls (Cho & Yoon, 2013), graph-writing strategies of English learners in health science and medicine in Taiwan (Yang, 2012), Japanese-Hong Kongese on-site interactions in English in the construction industry (Handford & Matous, 2011), and ESP teachers’ strategies for dealing with unpredicted problems in subject knowledge in English classes (Wu & Badger, 2009), among many other similar examples. Consistent with the research energies devoted to ESP research in Asia, this special issue presents original ESP research carried out in Asia. The four articles featured here provide snapshots of the diversity of current research into the learning, teaching, and application of English for specific purposes in Asia. The articles deal with a range of English for specific purposes: English for business purposes, English for legal purposes, and English for academic purposes. The authors adopt different research methods, including questionnaires and surveys, interviews, class observations, and corpus-driven analyses. The papers also reflect different theoretical perspectives—cognitive sociolinguistics and conceptual metaphor theory, systemic functional linguistics, reading research, teacher cognition research, and program evaluation research. Furthermore, the articles show the perspectives of multiple Asian countries and regions, i.e., China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Iran. In the first paper, Sun and Jiang use the Wmatrix corpus tool to compare how metaphors function as discursive and cognitive strategies in the mission statements of Chinese and US companies. Adopting a cognitive sociolinguistic perspective, they focus on three conventional conceptual metaphors in business discourse: BRANDS ARE PEOPLE, BUSINESS IS COOPERATION, and BUSINESS IS COMPETITION. They argue that the source domains of these conceptual metaphors differ significantly in the mission statements of the Chinese and US companies. As a result, the underlying corporate identities and ideologies may have been constructed differently, at least as seen through the mission statements. Chinese corporations,
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Guest editorial / English for Specific Purposes 33 (2014) 1–3
the authors note, tend to describe themselves as competition-oriented energetic leaders, while US corporations seem to be projecting themselves more frequently as collaboration-oriented, ethical, and responsible community members. Sun and Jiang’s paper is in the tradition of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) research (Jenkins, 2000). The concept of ELF is today commonly accepted around the world, and it is often associated with the communicative situations in Kachru’s, (1985) expanding circle, of which China is a part. Indeed, ELF was the underlying theme in the special issue on ESP research in Europe published in this journal in 2010. We are pleased to see the discussion continued in this issue, albeit in a different geographical setting. The main concern of Jenkins (2007) and others regarding ELF is the lack of accurate descriptions of ELF varieties, and we are glad to note that Sun and Jiang’s research on corporate mission statements has added to this line of research. Their description of the metaphorical domains in mission statements—a genre of ‘writing to do business’—can provide ESP teachers and students with a better understanding of the discursive and sociolinguistic strategies that one can use in ELF settings to not only communicate one’s messages, but also to create identities. For example, ESP teachers and learners can benefit from a better awareness of the overused metaphorical domains in the mission statements and the consequences of these metaphorical domains in creating certain unexpected, and even undesirable, corporate identities. In the second paper, Cheng and Cheng also use corpus linguistics techniques to study language use, but they adopt a different approach from that of Sun and Jiang. In their study, Cheng and Cheng use N-gram analysis and Key-Word-In-Context (KWIC) concordance line observations to investigate the way in which epistemic modality is employed in civil judgments to construct legal facts and to indicate legal probability. They compare how different types of epistemic modality are used in Hong Kong, which is a common law jurisdiction, and in Scotland, which is a mixed jurisdiction. They examine how the orientation of epistemic modality (implicit/explicit and subjective/objective) and the value of epistemic modality (high, median, or low) may differ in these two settings. Their findings suggest that both subjective epistemic modality and objective epistemic modality are employed in adjudications, and the value distribution of epistemic modality indicates that the balance of probability is adopted in Hong Kong and in Scotland. Perhaps surprisingly, the authors reveal few differences in the uses of epistemic modality in the two jurisdictions, despite the fact that one is largely composed of non-native speakers. The legal system in Hong Kong has strong roots in the UK legal system, and it appears as though the (non-native) judges in Hong Kong show an understanding of the subtleties of epistemic modality at a similar level to their Scottish counterparts which is perhaps above and beyond many native speakers of English outside of the legal profession. These findings raise some interesting questions about the English training received by practicing judges in Hong Kong. The authors also discuss other pedagogical implications. They suggest, for example, that ESP practitioners, especially teachers and students of legal English, can pay special attention to the formal, semantic, and pragmatic dimensions of different types of modality and to how these dimensions interact with the orientation and value of various types of modality if they would like to use English in legal settings effectively. Compared with the first two papers in this special issue, the third and fourth papers focus distinctly on ESP pedagogical practices and concerns. In the third paper, Atai and Fatahi-Majd describe a situation in Iran, where EAP reading comprehension courses are taught by two groups of teachers with different specializations—ELT instructors and subject teachers. In this context, the authors set out to explore the actual classroom practices and cognitions within and across these two groups of teachers. The authors observed three ELT instructors and three subject teachers teaching discipline-based EAP reading courses at a university of medical sciences in Iran for eight sessions. In addition to completing observation checklists and field notes, they conducted semi-structured interviews with the teachers to explore the underpinning conceptualization of EAP reading and EAP reading instruction by these teachers. The findings from their study point to considerable inconsistencies among the subject teachers. One subject teacher mainly asked detailed comprehension check questions, another was primarily concerned about checking and discussing the meaning of technical terms in texts, and the third teacher focused on accurate Farsi translation of texts. The authors also noticed some discrepancies across these two groups of teachers with respect to their EAP reading instruction practices and the beliefs behind these practices. The situation described in Atai and Fatahi-Majd’s study will be familiar to many ESP practitioners and English language program administrators working in an Asian context. In recent years, specialist departments in some Asian institutions have begun rejecting traditional English programs in favor of narrowly focused ESP courses taught by their own subject teachers. This practice is in part due to limitations in the number of foundation English courses that can be offered, but there is also a common view among subject teachers that English teachers are unqualified to teach narrowly scoped classes due to their lack of subject specialist knowledge. Atai and Fatahi-Majd’s results show that, while the concerns of subject teachers may be partially justified, simply replacing an ELT teacher with a subject teacher may not be the answer. Rather, the authors suggest that both groups can benefit greatly from a carefully planned EAP teacher training program. They also point out the benefits of greater communication between the two groups. These suggestions will resonate with ESP researchers and practitioners in Asia and elsewhere. In the final paper of the issue, Tsou and Chen look beyond a single course and delve into the evaluation of an entire ESP program. In their paper, they first describe an ESP program evaluation framework that combines the Hutchinson and Waters (1987) framework of ESP program evaluation and the FL evaluation framework proposed by Watanabe, Norris, & GonzalezLloret, 2009. They also update this combined framework by incorporating recent findings on ESP learning and teaching. Next, they use this updated ESP framework to evaluate an ESP program in Taiwan. Specifically, the authors investigate how their framework can help administrators understand course evaluation, learner assessment, stakeholders’ concerns, and teacher participation and empowerment. They also study the extent to which the framework can help uncover details of how key ESP considerations, such as authenticity, learner autonomy, and learner transfer, play out in ESP teaching and learning in
Guest editorial / English for Specific Purposes 33 (2014) 1–3
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the real world. At the same time, they attempt to discover potential problems in the framework that might make it difficult to implement in a practical program evaluation process. For example, after applying the framework to a working ESP program, they notice that the framework might have contained too many items, making it difficult to measure all of them adequately. The authors also suggest that multiple data-collection methods be used to collect program evaluation data and that postprogram assessment data be collected with careful planning. Given the importance of ESP program evaluation, we believe that the comprehensive framework of ESP program evaluation synthesized by the authors and the insights they develop after using the framework to evaluate a real-world program will be useful to ESP researchers and practitioners in Asia and elsewhere. Their paper is rich with details about the ESP program and the courses in it, and we believe it can also be a valuable reference source for readers in Asia and elsewhere to understand how ESP teaching occurs from a programmatic perspective in a concrete Asian context. This special issue involves the hard work of many people. We would like to first thank Brian Paltridge, ESPj emeritus editor, and Sue Starfield, the current co-editor of ESPj, for initiating the project and for inviting the two of us to serve as co-guest editors. We are also grateful to the many anonymous reviewers and to Sue Starfield and Nigel Harwood, the co-editors of ESPj, who provided their valuable comments and extensive feedback on the short-listed papers as well as on the four papers that appear in this issue. We would also like to thank the many authors who submitted initial proposals and the authors of the four papers who worked tirelessly with us to bring this project to fruition. As we mentioned earlier, we recognize that ESP research is becoming an increasingly vibrant line of research in Asia, and we hope to add to the ESP research activities and energies in Asia through this special-topic issue on ESP research. References Cho, H., & Yoon, H. (2013). A corpus-assisted comparative genre analysis of corporate earnings calls between Korean and native-English speakers. English for Specific Purposes, 32, 170–185. Cho, J. (2012). Campus in English or campus in shock. English Today, 28(2), 18–25. Bolton, K., & Graddol, D. (2012). English in China today. English Today, 28(3), 3–9. Botting, G. (2010). Rakuten’s English-only policy endures close media scrutiny. The Japan Times Online. Retrieved from .. Hafner, C. A. (2013). The discursive construction of professional expertise: Appeals to authority in barrister’s opinions. English for Specific Purposes, 32, 131–143. Handford, M., & Matous, P. (2011). Lexicogrammar in the international construction industry: A corpus-based case study of Japanese-Hong Kongese onsite interactions in English. English for Specific Purposes, 30, 87–100. Hutchinson, T., & Waters, A. (1987). English for specific purposes: A learning-centered approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Jenkins, J. (2000). The phonology of English as an international language. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, J. (2007). English as a lingua franca: Attitude and identity. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Kachru, B. B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguistics realism: The English language in the outer circle. In R. Quirk, & H. G. Widdowson (Eds.), English in the world: Teaching and learning the language and literatures (pp. 11–30). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kang, H. (2012). English-only instruction at Korean universities: Help or hindrance to higher learning?. English Today, 28(1), 29–34. Yang, H. (2012). Modeling the relationships between test-taking strategies and test performance on a graph-writing task: Implications for EAP. English for Specific Purposes, 31, 174–187. Watanabe, Y., Norris, J. M., & Gonzalez-Lloret, M. (2009). Identifying and responding to evaluation needs in college foreign language programs. In J. M. Norris, J. Davis, C. Sinicrope, & Y. Watanabe (Eds.), Toward useful program evaluation in college foreign language education (pp. 5–56). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii, National Foreign Language Resource Center. Wei, R., & Su, J. (2012). Statistics of English in China. English Today, 28(3), 10–14. Wu, H., & Badger, R. G. (2009). In a strange and uncharted land: ESP teachers’ strategies for dealing with unpredicted problems in subject knowledge during class. English for Specific Purposes, 28, 19–32.
An Cheng Department of English, Oklahoma State University, 205 Morrill Hall, Stillwater, OK 74078, United States Tel.: +1 405 744 9474; fax: +1 405 744 6326. E-mail address:
[email protected] Laurence Anthony Center for English Language Education in Science and Engineering (CELESE), Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, 3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan E-mail address:
[email protected] Available online 13 August 2013
