can esp be tested by egp?

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 also evaluated 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.