Two ESP projects under the test of time: The case of Brazil and Tunisia

Towards Improving ESP Teaching/Learning in Vietnam’s Higher Education Institutions: Integrating Project-Based Learning into ESP Courses

“…This task becomes more challenging given a lack of funding on library resources. Also, Labassi [15] agrees with Utsumi and Doan [16] upon considering poor professional development opportunities for ESP teachers as a barrier for ESP practitioners. This, in its turn, is a consequence of the non-disciplinary status of ESP.…”

“…This problem is more serious for novice teachers who have no first-hand experience with ESP pedagogy and struggle to find the path in such a "thorny way of professionalization" [14]. Authors such as Labassi [15], Ghanbari and Rasekh [14] identify the lack of independent disciplinary status of ESP as a cause of excessive workload for ESP teachers. Despite its increasingly recognized importance in Vietnam, ESP has been treated merely as a composition of English language curriculum; hence, ESP teachers are also in charge of other General English courses (in case of EFL teachers teaching ESP) and subject courses (in case of subject teachers teaching ESP) which require time and effort to conduct.…”

Language Teaching in Turbulent Times: Curriculum-Savvy Teachers for Curriculum Success and Sustainability

“…As far as ELT is concerned, practitioners have always had to do with ad hoc, ill-informed language-in-education policy and planning decisions (Daoud 1996(Daoud , 2007(Daoud , 2011Salhi 2000). Several general English and ESP programmes have failed for a variety of reasons, including poor coordination, insufficient or discontinued funding, suspended reform initiatives and, most of all, ignorance and inertia, whereby progress is blocked or even reversed (Daoud 2000;Labassi 2010). Two particular examples, one about ELT in primary school and the other about ESP in higher education, would help illustrate this inertia and, thus, reveal the mindset prevailing among decision makers, who do not seem to consider language teaching a profession requiring advanced knowledge and high qualifications, such as accounting, engineering or medicine.…”

“…English degree and CAPES holders have been appointed to teach the language in all specialty areas, but with no training in ESP course design, teaching and evaluation. There were initiatives, mainly funded by USAID and the British Council, to support ESP practice, but they were not sustainable, for reasons that are expounded in Daoud (2000) and Labassi (2010). Now there are well over 1,000 ESP teachers in the university and vocational training systems, but they are practically left to their own devices.…”