Applying ESP Research to Practice
In this symposium, we explore how research can be effectively translated into ESP teaching practice across diverse academic and professional contexts. Featuring invited speakers from different areas of ESP, including EAP, Medical English, Business English, and professional/workplace communication, the sessions will highlight evidence-based approaches to course design, materials development, assessment, technology integration, and learner-centred pedagogy. Each presentation will be followed by a Q&A session, providing opportunities for discussion and exchange among ESP practitioners.
Date: Saturday, September 12, 2026
Programme
| Time | Activity |
| 1:00 pm – 1:10 pm | Opening Remarks |
| 1:10 pm – 1:40 pm | Speaker 1 – Medical English: Ros Wright |
| 1:40 pm – 2:10 pm | Speaker 2 – Medical English: Alan Simpson |
| 2:10 pm – 2:20 pm | Break |
| 2:20 pm – 2:50 pm | Speaker 3- EAP: Melissa Corlett |
| 2:50 pm – 3:20 pm | Speaker 4- EAP: Kallia Kampoztaki Hodgetts |
| 3:20 pm – 3:50 pm | Speaker 5- EAP: Laetitia Monbec |
| 3:50 pm – 4:05 pm | Break |
| 4:05 pm – 4:35 pm | Speaker 6 – BE: Melanie van den Hoven |
| 4:35 pm – 5:05 pm | Speaker 7 – BE: Lisa Leopold |
| 5:05 pm – 5:20 pm | Closing Remarks |
Speakers
Ros Wright (Medical English)
Developing Evidence-Based Clinical Communication Programmes
Abstract
Professor Mike Clarke of the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine argues that “Without reliable research generating high quality evidence we’re not going to be able to answer some of the most important questions facing health and social care today.” If evidence underpins clinical practice, then it should also inform the teaching of the communication skills required by healthcare professionals. An approach that is evidence-based, rather than intuition-led, can strengthen clinical communication training, ultimately ensuring patients, their experiences, and their needs are maintained at the centre of programme development.
This presentation will explore how research evidence has informed the presenter’s teaching of overseas healthcare professionals and OET candidates preparing to work in English-speaking clinical contexts. It will consider how evidence has shaped decisions about content and course design as well as delivery. The presenter will then reflect on the impact of this approach on learners’ communication development and their subsequent integration into roles within the UK National Health Service. Finally, the session will consider implications for developing a specialised teacher training programme in the teaching of clinical communication skills.
Bio
Ros Wright specialises in English for healthcare. She is co-author of the award-winning Good Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and more recently Step Up to OET (Express Publishing, 2025) and, today runs a specialised teacher training course, How to Teach English to Healthcare Professionals. Ros is a former General Secretary of EALTHY and IATEFL Trustee (2017-2023).
Alan Simpson (Medical English)
Designing English for Nursing Purposes in Japan: Simulated Patients and Assessment
Abstract
Japan’s increasingly diverse patient population has exposed a gap between nursing students’ English education and the communicative demands of clinical practice. Although national nursing policy emphasises communication to accommodate diversity, English for Nursing Purposes (ENP) curricula in Japan have often remained classroom-based, early-year focused, and disconnected from authentic nursing tasks. This project addressed this gap by investigating how Simulated Patients (SPs) and Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) are used in Japanese nursing education, alongside educators’ views on English-speaking Simulated Patients (ESSPs) and English in nursing curricula. Drawing on survey findings and identified nursing communication needs, the project developed a practical framework for undergraduate nursing.
Supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (KAKENHI Grant Number 24K13695), this project developed a research-informed, open-access ENP model for authentic simulated patient communication. The framework comprises: (1) ESSP recruitment and training; (2) scaffolded simulation tasks based on Japanese nursing care pathways; (3) OSCE checklists integrating nursing and communication needs; and (4) reflective e-portfolios to support learner development. This presentation shows how research informed these pedagogical developments and offers an adaptable model for clinically relevant and culturally responsive communication training in undergraduate nursing.
Bio
Alan Simpson is an Associate Professor at the University of Miyazaki, where he develops and teaches English for Medical Purposes (EMP) and English for Nursing Purposes (ENP). His background includes engineering, TESOL, corporate language training, and university English education. His current work focuses on simulation-based communication training, English for Nursing Purposes, and intercultural communication in Japanese nursing education.
Lisa Leopold (BE)
Lisa Leopold
Developing Business English Learners’ Pragmatic Competence in Apologies and Refusals
Abstract
In business contexts, pragmatic competence is critical for maintaining professional credibility and collegiality. Learners of business English require sophisticated pragmatic competence to perform face-threatening speech acts, making these forms challenging even for advanced non-native speakers. Negative pragmatic transfer is likely because of cross-cultural differences in the formulation of apologies and declinations to business invitations, but research has shown that explicit instruction supports learners’ pragmatic development. This presentation highlights how authentic apologies and declinations to invitations, as well as research in pragmatics and corpus-attested findings, were used to help business English learners develop awareness of appropriate strategies and expressions for apologizing and declining business invitations. Following an explicit-inductive approach, learners identified research-based strategies from authentic apologies and refusals, analyzed the language used to apologize or decline an invitation, and revised authentic examples for different pragmatic intents, thereby improving their pragmatic awareness. Attendees will deepen their understanding of how to incorporate authentic materials and research-based insights to help learners improve pragmatic competence of common face-threatening speech acts.
Bio
Lisa Leopold has dedicated much of her career to teaching English for Academic and Specific Purposes to international graduate students in the United States. Passionate about applying research-informed insights to her teaching, she has shared her work through publications in journals such as English for Specific Purposes, the TESL Canada Journal, and more than 50 conference presentations.
Melanie van den Hoven (Professional English)
Proposal for Applying ESP Research to Practice
From Research to Practice: Communication in High-Risk, Multicultural Workplaces for ESP Teaching
What insights from research on workplace communication in high-risk, multicultural industries can inform teachers of English for Specific Purposes (ESP)? This interactive webinar presents findings from three co-authored studies conducted in a multilingual nuclear energy context, where English functions as the primary working language alongside Arabic, Korean, and other languages. Designed for ESP practitioners and teacher educators, the session adopts a workshop format with three practical activities that move beyond general language proficiency to focus on safety communication and the precise exchange of technical information. The first activity features a dynamic case study in which a central problem is introduced, and key details are progressively added, simulating the flow of information in troubleshooting meetings. The second introduces the Phonetic Alphabet, a Human Performance Tool used for clarity in high-stakes environments where noise and interference are expected. The third explores Three-Way Communication, another Human Performance Tool that requires speakers to confirm and verify instructions through structured, sequenced interaction. Through participation, attendees will gain insight into communication practices in high-risk industries and consider how these techniques can be adapted to support clear, precise, and reliable communication in ESP teaching within STEM programs.
Biodata
Melanie van den Hoven is Co-Chair of the TESOL Intercultural Communication Interest Section and an affiliate researcher and Visiting Professor at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi, specializing in workplace communication in high-risk, multicultural contexts. She led a Cross-Cultural Communication division for five years at a nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates, where she also held a leadership role in Plant Team Safety. She holds a PhD in Intercultural Education from Durham University and an MA TESOL from the School for International Training. She brings over 20 years of experience in higher education in Korea and the UAE. Her research interests include English-medium education, multilingualism, intercultural communication, and ethnographic approaches to workplace communication.
Melanie van den Hoven is Co-Chair of the TESOL Intercultural Communication Interest Section and an affiliate researcher and Visiting Professor at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi. She specializes in workplace communication in high-risk multicultural contexts, drawing on leadership experience at a UAE nuclear power plant. Her research focuses on English-medium education, intercultural communication, multilingualism, and ethnographic approaches to workplace communication.
ORCID: 0000-0002-9846-6188 – ORCID
Melissa Corlett (EAP)
Co-constructing Disciplinary Writing Knowledge on a Pre-sessional English Course
Abstract
Genres, disciplinary writing, and academic literacy practices are fundamentally social in nature (Hyland, 2002; Lea and Street, 1998). Yet as EAP practitioners, we find ourselves on the margins of the academic communities that we prepare our students to join. This session explores our response to this tension on the UCL pre-sessional programme, a multidisciplinary EAP course of over 1,000 students.
I will first discuss the development of the Research Portfolio, an individual portfolio writing project on a question connected to students’ future disciplines. In our course materials, we designed tasks drawing explicitly on disciplinary differences research to scaffold students in exploring language, genre and argumentation using texts from their own fields, positioning them as investigators rather than recipients of disciplinary writing knowledge. Our idea was that, on a course like ours, this knowledge cannot simply be delivered: it must be co-constructed with students.
This session offers an honest account of what worked and what did not, and how student perspectives shaped our materials design. Drawing on a two-stage interview study in which students from 13 disciplines reflected on their writing, both on the pre-sessional and on their future degrees, I will argue that co-construction of knowledge is not only pedagogically valuable but practically necessary on courses of this type.
Bio
Melissa Corlett is an EAP and MA TESOL Associate Lecturer at UCL. She develops materials and assessments for the CLIE Pre-sessional English Course, as well as coordinating teaching activities as a Senior Tutor on the programme. She has interests in academic writing, disciplinary differences and corpus-informed research and pedagogy.
Kallia Kampoztaki Hodgetts (EAP)
From AI-Assisted Writing to Scientific Judgement: Translating ESP Research into a First-Year Chemistry Lab Report Assignment
Abstract
This presentation discusses how research on ESP genre pedagogy, feedback literacy, multiliteracies, and assessment-as-learning was translated into a first-year Chemistry assignment at the University of Crete. The research was used because product-only lab reports often conceal how students interpret data, use feedback, revise explanations, and exercise disciplinary judgement. The task therefore asked undergraduate students to transform an initial, in-class scientific interpretation into a full laboratory report with documented AI support. Before using AI, students produced an independent interpretation of experimental data, including purpose, hypothesis, results, anomalies, interpretation, and tentative conclusion. In the graded stage, students wrote a 1000-word scientific lab report and submitted four forms of evidence: initial prompts for AI feedback, full prompt–response records, critical evaluation of AI suggestions, and a reflective report on AI as writing partner, explainer, editor, and grammar assistant. Drawing on ten student submissions, the presentation shows how students used AI to clarify lab-report structure, refine scientific explanations, improve academic style, and recognise inaccurate or overgeneralised feedback. The findings suggest that AI-supported ESP writing can work when assessment foregrounds process visibility, prompt refinement, critical rejection, and authorial responsibility. The presentation concludes by presenting the RAIL framework (Katsampoxaki-Hodgetts, 2025) identifying future practitioner-oriented research on AI feedback, scientific judgement, and ESP assessment design.
References
Katsampoxaki-Hodgetts, K., Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (2026). The end of assessment as we know it. In Katsampoxaki-Hodgetts, K. (2026). Assessment in the age of AI. Disigma publications
Bio
Kallia Katsampoxaki-Hodgetts is a postdoctoral researcher in multiliteracies and multimodality at the University of Ioannina, Greece. She works as a lecturer in science communication, academic writing, and multiliteracies in science teacher education at the University of Crete. Her research focuses on Learning by Design, inclusive assessment, student voice, civic engagement, and the role of digital innovation in science communication. She has coordinated and contributed to faculty development initiatives on inclusive student-centred pedagogy, assessment literacy, and reflective curriculum design in higher education. She has authored papers and chapters on assessment, multiliteracies, and inclusive curricula, with recent work examining how teachers and students use AI tools, multimodal artefacts, and reflective practices to make learning, evaluative judgement, and participation more visible. Her scholarship connects theory, pedagogy, and practice across contexts from pre-school education to higher education.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1143-3050
Laetitia Monbec (EAP)
A social semiotics approach to ESP scholarship and practice.
Abstract
In this talk I will detail a social semiotics knowledge of language and multimodal resources for disciplinary discourse analysis which I have used in my own ESP-based scholarship in a range of disciplines, in CLIL modules and a 3-minute thesis workshop. This knowledge, drawn from social semiotics, a meaning-based language and multimodal theory, enables a teacher to analyse the range of multimodal communication students engage with and produce, whether written, spoken, professional or academic. Equipped with these analytical tools a teacher-scholar takes on a role of an educational linguist and can gain a deep understanding of discursive contexts and practices, and address questions such as ‘what does critical reflection entail in Nursing?’ or ‘what is valued as critical evaluation in Engineering?’. These insights have impact on syllabus and materials design and can serve as a shared language with subject experts, helping to forge impactful collaborations. I will give examples from collaborations with the School of Design in the University of Leeds, and the School of Nursing in the National University of Singapore before showing materials from a workshop on visual and verbal communication for 3-minute thesis candidates. I will also show the range of scholarship conducted by the Language Centre in UoL with colleagues across the Schools.
Bio
Dr Laetitia Monbec is an Associate Professor in the Language Centre in University of Leeds where she is the Director of Scholarship. She has designed a range of ESP (Insessional) modules in Nursing, Design, Biological Sciences, and Engineering and led scholarship projects in ESP contexts. Her co-authored book Recovering Language in Higher Education details a social semiotic knowledge base for practitioners in ESP contexts.