The changing role and importance of ESP in Asia

Abstract

In recent years, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has attracted great interest within industry and academia in Asia as a result of increased pressure to deliver successful English education stemming from the globalization of both the economy and tertiary education. Teachers of both traditional and ESPbased English courses can now expect their performance to be evaluated and any changes in their students' learning to be measured quantitatively. Within this context, teachers have begun to explore and question the meaning, application, validity, and practicality of the ESP approach. In this paper, I will first explain the recent globalization of industry and academia, and offer some examples of how this has impacted on ESP teaching in Asia. Next, I will explore several new directions for ESP teaching in Asia that may address the challenges presented by globalization. These include the introduction of a coordinated, integrated ESP curriculum and the re-defining of ESP teacher roles. I will also discuss the growing need for ESP teachers to support the teaching of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and English-Mediated Instruction (EMI) courses, which can present challenges to both the content teachers and the students taking the courses. Next, I will discuss the growing trend for utilizing corpus data and tools in the design of ESP courses, and show how these might also be used by students in the classroom. Finally, I will offer some thoughts on the possible future of ESP if these new directions are not considered.