This overview of the current state of English for specific purposes (ESP) begins by surveying ongoing debates on key topics: needs assessment and its goals, specificity in instructional methods, and the role of subject knowledge in instructor expertise. Two strands of current theory and research are next surveyed, namely, genre theory and corpus-enhanced genre studies, and critical pedagogy and ethnographies, followed by examples of research and theory-informed pedagogical strategies for literacy and spoken discourse. Topics in need of further inquiry are suggested.
This review of trends in the teaching of English for specific purposes (ESP) presents recent developments in ESP praxis from three different but not mutually exclusive points of reference: the sociodiscoursal, sociocultural, and sociopolitical. In addition to a selection of exemplar practices, theoretical analogues are considered for each of these three socially oriented perspectives on ESP. For the sociodiscoursal approach to ESP, genre theory and genre-informed pedagogy are highlighted; for the sociocultural, theories of situated learning and their practical corollaries are focused on; for the sociopolitical, theories and applications of critical pedagogy are emphasized. Possible research directions for all three social turns of ESP are also suggested.
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