Esp Syllabus Design A Theoretical Framework A Theoretical Framework

English language has been adopted as a means of communication between partners whose native languages are different from each other’s. It seems to be the language adopted for international communication, since more and more people are required to learn English. The fact that the English language has gained great importance in today’s world has resulted in its teaching at all educational levels from elementary to tertiary level. Hence governments are introducing mass education programmes to encourage the teaching of English as a first or second foreign language. The aim of such an implementation is to satisfy the increasing needs of a variety of learners hoping to find a place in different economic and educational institutions. The urgent need for a specific proficiency in English has given birth to new approaches, methods and techniques. As a matter of fact, the teaching of English has witnessed the development of ESP to cater for specific needs of the learners .These needs are then translated into linguistic and pedagogic terms for the production of an effective course. Moreover ESP can but is not necessarily concerned with a specific discipline, nor does it have to be aimed at a certain age group or ability range Dudley-Evans (1997). ESP should be seen as an approach to teaching whose content and method are based on the learner’s reason for learning (Hutchinson and Waters 1987).These learners have to reach the intended language level in a shorter time and in a better way through the practice of content-based English language teaching namely ESP. It becomes evident to say that an ESP initiative involves three spheres of knowledge: the core of the language, pedagogy and the content of the students’ specialities; the major difficulty would be then to compare them to ‘General English’ and to draw the attention to the differences between the two, which arise at all the levels of language