A genre‐based approach to ESP materials

A genre‐based approach to discourse analysis has great potential for the teaching of English for specific purposes (ESP), particularly for the teaching of business writing, where communicative intentions and strategies used to realize such intentions, in the context of complex interpersonal relations between the participants involved in the communication process, are considered very crucial. This paper takes the communicative intentions of the writer of a particular type of business letter as the basis for its analysis as a genre and claims that this perspective will allow ESP practitionersi to teach business writing more effectively and economically. This paper demonstrates the process by taking examples from the UNDP‐Government of Singapore Project in Meeting the Needs of Business and Technology , where an attempt has been made to analyse authentic business letters as a genre to derive pedagogically utilizable insights and use them in the design of self‐access English for business and technology materials for tertiary levels in Singapore.