Several years ago, when the IATEFL; ESP SIG Journal carried out a survey of members, one person said they would like: “Less from Anglo-Saxon based perspective – more on global Englishes – I guess Garnet Publ. was Anglo-Saxon from the sound of it. How about finding an Asian sponsor?”
Is EMI ESP? Does EMI belong to ESP? No, but some people think it should and that does not make sense to me.
ESP is about teaching English. EMI is about teaching other non-language subjects.
As Macaro (2018) defines it, EMI is
The use of English language to teach academic subjects (other than English itself) in countries or jurisdictions: where the first language of the majority of the population is not English.
I’m preparing a presentation in commemoration of the 50th Issue of the IATEFL ESP SIG publication for the IATEFL conference IN Brighton in April Here are a few more images that I plan to use, plus some figures and charts drawn from an analysis of article titles from 50 issues of the publication:
The journal of the IATEFL ESP SIG – Professional and Academic English – which I have edited for a while is coming up to its 50th issue. I thought it would be interesting to look back over the 50 issues to see how ESP – including EAP – has developed.
After 10 years of support, Garnet Education are no longer be in a position to sponsor the IATEFL SIG Journal after issue 47. Garnet Education has provided unmatched professional support of the highest quality which stretches from issue 30 (Summer-Autumn 2007) until now (issue 47). They have also sponsored the publication of four ESP SIG books, and for this we are indebted too. With Garnet’s sponsorship we have been able to develop a solid set of EAP and ESP publications which we will now have to maintain in our own right.
It is now necessary to make plans for the future of the journal. The opinion of the ESP SIG committee and the journal editors is that they should take this opportunity to switch to an electronic version of the journal in the immediate future in order to keep up with the times. The committee wanted to know what members thought of this proposal. A short questionnaire was sent out. The committee hoped that IATEFL would publish the findings, but, as they didn’t, here they are:
I’ve just returned from the IATEFL English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Special Interest Group (SIG) Pre-Conference Event (PCE) in Birmingham, UK.
The theme of the PCE was tensions and debates in ESP and EAP.
As usual it was a very interesting day with teachers from many parts of the world discussing how they go about trying to meet the academic and professional linguistic needs of their students, sometimes with limited resources.
I recently took part in a TESOL – IATEFL online discussion about how ESP projects can create positive social change.
Kevin Knight – the organiser – gave us the following task:
You are all members of a task force team to provide language training for employees of multinational corporation. The HR department of the company is interested in your ideas about providing not only in-house training but also involving local universities in the training of its employees. In addition, the HR department is wondering how such training could be connected to its annual report on Corporate Social Responsibility. Share your ideas in connection with the big picture: How ESP projects can create positive social change.
The theme of the Pre-Conference Event was employability and transferability in EAP and ESP. It was a joint event with BALEAP – the global forum for EAP practitioners. Thinking about this topic from a needs analysis point of view, I tried to investigate from different angles how institutions of higher education are dealing with this issue. My conclusion was that they they are trying to deal with it, but there is a large amount of confusion, especially with regard to professional and academic genres. One example I mentioned – and so did others – was when students are asked to write a report for their manager – a professional genre – but are required to give references – typical of academic genres.
I’ve just returned from the IATEFL English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Special Interest Group (SIG) Pre-Conference Event (PCE) in Manchester, UK.
This was a joint pre-conference event between the IATEFL English for Specific Purposes Special Interest Group (ESPSIG) & BALEAP, the global forum for EAP professionals.
The theme of the PCE was employability and transferability in EAP and ESP.
As usual it was a very interesting day with teachers from many parts of the world discussing how they go about trying to meet the academic and professional linguistic needs of their students, sometimes with limited resources.
Continue reading
I’ve just returned from the IATEFL English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Special Interest Group (SIG) Pre-Conference Event (PCE). I cannot handle – or afford – the whole conference!
IATEFL ESP SIG PCE Participants
The theme of the PCE was ESP and Learning Technologies: What can we learn?
As usual it was a very interesting day with teachers from many parts of the world discussing how they go about trying to meet the academic and professional linguistic needs of their students, sometimes with limited resources.
Continue reading