Fostering diversity of teaching practices and the role of language for specific purposes – report

Abstract

5th International ESP/LSP Workshop and Conference “Actual ESP/LSP Classroom Practice – sharing the what and how and why of our teaching” was held at the University of Niš, Faculty of Electronic Engineering, Serbia on 22-23 September, 2022 in the offline/hybrid mode. It was the jubilee workshop and conference held offline at the premises of the faculty, enhancing virtual participation and also accepting personal attendance. The 5th hybrid conference encompassed 38 presentations from 17 countries thus hosting colleagues from USA, Slovenia, Romania, Georgia, Serbia, Slovakia, Montenegro, South Africa, North Macedonia, France, Russia, India, Cyprus, Germany, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Hercegovina. Many esteemed colleagues joined us in considerations of conceptualizing the teaching and learning content, methods, approaches, materials, and sharing demonstrations of their own exemplary classroom practices. The keynote speaker, Dr. Mary Risner with the University of Florida, USA, delivered a workshop each day of the event providing hands on knowledge directly usable in our own classrooms (Making Real-World Connections in the ESP/LSP Curriculum through Technology and Experiential Learning). The scope of the conference topics included to name just a few: Financial Issues in Fiction, Symmetric and Asymmetric Communication in Teaching English for Medical Purposes, Testing Corpus Linguistics Methods in ESP Vocabulary Teaching, CLIL as the Vehicle of Transition from Mono- to Bilingual Instruction, Facilitating Legal English Teaching and Learning through SIOP Model, Implementing Emotional Intelligence Activities in the ESP Classroom, Cleared for Take-off: from Authentic Aviation Tasks to Communicative Classroom Activities, ELP/LE for the Judiciary: Instructional Design for Authentic Learning, Educational Videos as an Invaluable Teaching Material in ESP for Sports, Cross Cultural Communicative Challenges in an East-Indian Class, etc.