Can ESP be tested by EGP?

Abstract

Background: There are two main methods employed for the evaluation of the reading comprehension ability of students of ESP; one using specialized English texts, and the other with general English texts.Purpose: To determine whether or not there is a correlation between the two methods. Methods: In the regular 1998 examinations for admission to PhD courses for 18 different medical disciplines, in which 30 subject-specific English test items were given to the applicants of each discipline, all of them were alsoevaluated using a set of 30 general English test items (n=201 0).Results: There was a positive correlation of71% between the scores of the examinees in the two tests, the highest and the lowest correlation being respectively in the scores of the applicants of Epidemiology (84%; n=118), and environmental health (56%; n=70).Conclusion: Our finding seems to warrant the use of EGP test as an adequate measure of English language competency for academic purposes.