ESP Teaching and Research in the Age of Globalization
2011/10/25
ESP Teaching and Research in the Age of Globalization
Oct. 21, 2011 The 3rd ESPA held in XJTU
The "3rd International Conference on English for Specific Purposes in Asia" was held from October 21 to 23, 2011 in Xi'an Jiaotong University, following the 1st and 2nd ESP in Asia conferences held in Chongqing University in 2009 and Nottingham University, Ningbo China in 2010.
The conference aims to promote interaction and discussion among researchers and teachers interested in ESP teaching and research, which have become more and more important in China as globalization makes academic and professional communication in English essential for many people. The theme of the conference is “ESP Teaching and Research in the Age of Globalization”.
Enlightening keynote speeches
Under the theme, Bhatia, Vijay K. gave a keynote speech first on researching ESP and teaching practice. Bhatia pointed out the difficulties ESP practitioners face on accessing research data from practice and further identified some of the methodological issues and discussed the strategies used in dealing with the non-availability of data from professional practice.
Bhatia, Vijay K. delivers keynote speech
John Swale from the University of Michigan talked about the aligning corpus investigations with EAP texts, tasks and contexts. Professor Swales selected many typical examples to discuss with participants and concluded with a discussion of the intersections among EAP tasks, texts and contexts and how these intersections relate to direct and indirect approaches to using corpora in LSP settings.
John Swales talked about the aligning corpus investigations with EAP texts, tasks and contexts
Domestic ESP researchers also delivered keynote speeches. Professor Cai Jigang shared ESP teaching practice in Chinese universities and teased out some factors contributing to the difficulty in implementing ESP in Chinese Universities. Professor Cai argued for the integration of ESP into the mainstream of College English instead of replacing it. Foundation English, academic English and occupational English will coexist.
Other ESP experts and researchers, such as John Flowerdew, Laurence Anthony and Brian Paltridge, also gave keynote speeches on various aspects related with ESP teaching and research.
Workshops
With ESP teaching becoming one of the hot topics in college English teaching, it embraces an everlasting concern not only from scholars and teachers, but also publishers all over the world. As an academic and educational publisher, FLTRP (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press) pays great attention to the development of ESP in China, supports research in ESP, organizes conferences, and works closely with ESP experts and scholars to constructs ESP curriculum system, conducts ESP teacher training programs and develop ESP teaching materials. In the first day’s workshop, Jiang Linlin, editor from FLTRP, gave an overview of what FLTRP can contribute to the development of ESP teaching. Prof. Ji Peiying then shared her views on the impact ESP has on College English curriculum design, and their practice in Fudan University.
Prof. Ji Peiying from Fudan University shares her views on ESP teaching
Combining with the keynote speeches, speakers also organized workshops to further talk about ESP teaching and research from theory to practices. Participants said that they learned more through group discussions in workshop.
Parallel sessions
Teachers and postgraduate students presented their papers and shared their experiences and views on ESP teaching and research during this session.
Han Ye, teacher from Shantou University, presents her paper
The conference lasted for three days. Experts, researchers and practitioners in ESP teaching and research from all over the world communicated and discussed extensively through keynote speeches, workshops and paper presentations. With the conference coming to a complete ending in Oct. 23rd, ESP experts, researchers and practitioners from all over the world look forward to the next year’s academic banquet.
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