ESP Research Directions: Enduring and Emerging Lines of Inquiry

Abstract

This paper identifies major strands of research interest in the ESP literature. Specifically, the review aims to highlight mainstay topics that have characterised research in this area as well as topics that are emerging in this field, or that have received rather limited research interest to date. Linguistic inquiry has been a major thrust of research endeavor, and this has largely been driven by the needs of ESP teachers for linguistic descriptions of specialist language use to inform the development of pedagogical descriptions of academic, workplace or professional English for use in instruction. The ESP literature is also rich in case studies of teaching that report practices in one setting. The review identifies a number of topics, such as learning ESP, ESP teaching practices across settings and ESP teacher education needs, which have received scant research interest. It is suggested that these are emerging avenues for research.