The logic of testing Languages for Specific Purposes

Abstract

The Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) project is not new. It may have dramatically extended its scope in the last 30 years through the expansion in numbers of students and trainees seeking admission to English medium courses, encouraging the diversification of ESP/EAP and EOP provision (Douglas, 2000), but the project has a longer history. This includes earlier programmes - such as, for example, German for chemists, phrase books for travellers and Latin for the religious - but also, of course, the pidginization of contact languages, representing an informal LSP. What formal LSP represents is a contract issued by group A for a designated share of group B’s language resource. This article discusses how far this practical activity, in particular the testing of LSP, is theoretically sound. Two types of theoretical justification have been appealed to, the linguistic principle of ‘-lect’ (thus dialect, sociolect, variety, register, genre), itself appealing to sociological views of role and status; and the educational (here primarily psychometric) principle of distinct language abilities. The article argues that the principle of lect operates at an ideal, abstract level - variety has theoretical status but varieties do not - and that the principle of distinct language abilities has more to do with content than with language. Furthermore, content areas are neither discrete nor homogeneous. From this point of view, LSP reduces to institutional definition of content instruction (Fulcher, 1999). While LSP testing can be justified in terms of practical need, and given a pragmatic justification on the grounds of what William James termed critical common sense, the evidence we have of operational tests such as ELTS and IELTS raises serious questions, both theoretical and practical.