The British Juggernaut

International audience; English language education is traditionally seen in many contemporary contexts from three main perspectives: as a gateway to cultural enrichment (English studies), for access to international science or commerce (English for specific purposes), or as a basic skill (general English certification). Members of the English language teaching community are generally involved in the second and third domains: either English for Specific Purposes (ESP) or what Abbott termed TENOR (Teaching English for No Obvious Reason). The present paper examines the debate between general and specific purpose English language teaching from the early days of the British ESP ‘juggernaut’, taking as its starting point a debate conducted in the pages of the British Council publication ELT Documents in the late 1970s between two experienced teachers. This debate highlights tensions between the official or ‘intended’ curriculum as dictated by the newly emerging academic discipline of applied linguistics and the ‘taught layer’ developed by language teachers working overseas and in UK university at the time. Drawing on contemporary sources including academic journal articles and book chapters, ESP textbooks, and memoirs and biographical notes, this chapter traces the influence of four key academics and four EST lecturers who together influenced the development of the field of ESP in the UK in the 1970s. Their work, I argue, is an example of a useful cross-fertilisation of academic research and teaching practice and benefited from both unusually propitious circumstances and some quite remarkable individuals.