This stage operates on the basic principle that the English, of, say, Electrical Enginering constituted a register different from other registers such Biology or of General English. The aim was to identify the grammatical and lexical features of the registers.
The main motive behind register analyses such as Ewer and latorre??s was the pedagogic one of making thdies and in turn would give low priority to forms they would not meet.
2. Beyond the sentence : rhetorical or discourse analysis
On the second phase of development, ESP became closely involved with the emerging field of disctences were combined in discourse to produce meaning.
The basic hypothesis of this stage, expressed by Allen and Widdowson (1974): ??The difficulties which the stud be met by a course which simply provides further practice in the composition of sentences, but only by one which develops a knowlede of how sentences are used in the performance of different communicative acts.??
Register analysis had focussed on sentence grammar, but in rhetorical or discourse analysis, the attention and focus is to understanding how sentences were combined in discourse to produce meaning.
The concern of reseac means by which these patterns are signalled. These patterns would then form the syllabus of the ESP course.
The typical teaching materials based on the discourse approach taught students to recognise textual patterns and discourse markers.
3. Target situation analysis
On the third phase development of ESP, it aimed was to take the existing knowledge and set it on a more scientific basis, by establibus of the ESP course.
This stage process is usually known as ??needs analysis??, but according to Chambers?? (1980) term of ??target situation analysis??, it is more accurate description of the process concerned.
4. Skills and strategies
The fourth stage has seen an attempt to look below the surface and to consider not the languange itself but the thinking processes that underlie languange use.
The principal idea bning and interpreting processes, which, regardless of the surface forms, enable the students to extract meaning from discourse.
The focus should be on underlying interpretive strategies, which enable the learner to cope with the surface forher tongue and the target languange).
A focus on spesific subject registers is unnecessary in this approach, because the underlying processes ae not specific to any subject register.
As has been noted, in terms of materials this approach generally puts the emphasis on reading or listening strategies. The characteristic exercises get the learners to reflect on analyse how meaning is produced in and retrieved from written or spoken discourse.
5. A learning-centred approach
All of the stages outlined so far have been fundamentally flawed, in that they are all based on descriptions of languange use. Whether this description is of surface forms, as in the case of registerh to ESP must be based on an understanding of the processes of languange learning.
Conclusion
All of the stages described so far are the stages of the development of ESP from it is started in the early beginnings on thevolved with the emerging field of discourse or rhetorical analysis.
On third stages, what stablishing procedures for relating laguange analysis more closely to learners?? reasons for learning. On the fourth stages the focus is in underlying strategies.