English for Specific Purposes: Teaching to Perceived Needs and Imagined Futures in Worlds of Work, Study, and Everyday Life

Abstract

This overview of the current state of English for specific purposes (ESP) begins by surveying ongoing debates on key topics: needs assessment and its goals, specificity in instructional methods, and the role of subject knowledge in instructor expertise. Two strands of current theory and research are next surveyed, namely, genre theory and corpus-enhanced genre studies, and critical pedagogy and ethnographies, followed by examples of research and theory-informed pedagogical strategies for literacy and spoken discourse. Topics in need of further inquiry are suggested.