A COMPARISON OF ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES AND ENGLISH FOR BUSINESS PURPOSES FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

Abstract

The English for Specific Purposes (ESP) community has grown at a near exponential rate over the past two decades. This is due in part to the parallel growth of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) that support rapid and global transmission of the messages and data in multiple formats. Altbach (2007) has argued that the creation of the internet, and its multiple international networking platforms has led to a form of English hegemony in global communications in academic settings. Following a similar path, English now dominates the discourse of business on an international level. Therefore, we have observed the emergence of myriad on-line references for ESP program offerings and ICT-based courses. The authors were prompted to ask how does ESP compare in business and academic communities. Problem-based learning (PBL) and ICT contexts were applied as lenses to view manifesting similarities and differences in the ESP arena.