Welcome to English for Specific Purposes SIG Website
The ESP Special Interest Group is one of the fourteen SIGs at IATEFL, and it is main focus is on English for Specific Purposes, English for Academic Purposes and English for Occupational/professional Purposes. The main objective of the ESP SIG in EAP is to disseminate good practice in ESP (as well as EAP and EO/PP) through its membership and to promote models of excellence in ESP to ELT professionals in UK and abroad through workshops, seminars and conferences and through publishing the output in our newsletter / journal and leading ELT journals and periodicals.
2008 has been a busy year for us to date.
The most significant moment for the ESP members was certainly the IATEFL Conference in Exeter (7-11 April 2008) which featured, inter alia:
- The ESP Pre-Conference Event on 7th April (Theme: Advances of ESP in the 21st Century')
- The official release of the ESP SIG book ‘Current Developments in English for Academic, Specific and Occupational Purposes’ (published by Garnet Education; the publication is FREE for the ESP SIG members)
[pdf guide to the ESP SIG book... ]
- The official release of the ESP SIG e-book ‘English for Academic Purposes in Developing, Emerging and Developing Countries’(published initially by our SIG, and available in its deluxe DVD edition)
[pdf guide to the ESP SIG e-book... ]
- Promotion of Issue 31 and Issue 30 of the ESP SIG Journal (which has replaced our traditional newsletter; Issue 31 is an exemplar of state-of-the-art editorial developments, and is offered on high-quality paper in full colour. The publication is sponsored by Garnet Education, and is FREE for the ESP SIG members).
[pdf guide to the ESP SIG Journal... ]
- An ESP Conference dinner co-organised with Garnet Education which proved a networking opportunity for ESP fellow practitioners.
Our ESP SIG is actively involved in collaborations with similar SIGs or organisations. Perhaps the best example of this can be the English for Work Symposium which was organised jointly by the British Council (Southern Africa), SAATEIL (the South African Association of Teachers of English as an International Language), and the IATEFL ESP SIG. The Symposium, sponsored by the British Council, took place on 30th June and 1st July in Johannesburg, and was attended by around 80 participants.
We have approximately 280 international members, and we constantly seek to find ways of increasing and enlarging our membership body.
We would like to thank Garnet Education (http://www.garneteducation.com)
and CambridgeESOL (http://www.cambridgeesol.org) for their ongoing assistance.
I hope that this introduction is a sufficient description of our brief, and that the website serves as a representative snapshot of what we do, and what we can offer to our current and prospective members.
We are now preparing for the IATEFL Annual Conference in Cardiff (April 2009). As usual, we are hoping to hold a Pre-Conference Event the subject of which will be ‘English for Work / English for the Workplace’ (*the budget for the event is subject for approval, and once we have permission to proceed, we shall provide more relevant information on this website).
Thank you for the support of our activity. We look forward to interacting with you online, and in person at future events.
Mark Krzanowski
IATEFL ESP SIG Co-ordinator
e-mail: ESPsig@iatefl.org
September 2008
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