Disseminating good practice and promoting models of excellence in ESP
Welcome to the IATEFL ESPSIG’s homepage! We are delighted that you are here.
The English for Specific Purposes Special Interest Group (ESPSIG) is one of IATEFL’s 16 SIGs. We are a niche body representing professionals and practitioners in English for Specific Purposes (ESP), English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Occupational / Professional Purposes (EOP/EPP). We have over 250 members working in the field of ESP who join us from all over the world and regularly attend our workshops, seminars, conferences and webinars. We also publish a bi-annual peer-reviewed journal, Professional and Academic English, and our members also contribute to leading ELT journals and periodicals.
The mission of our SIG is to disseminate good practice in ESP (as well as EAP and EOP/EPP) through our membership, and to promote models of excellence in ESP to ELT professionals in the UK and abroad. Our coverage of ESP includes not only the teaching of this area of ELT, but also teacher training and materials design. Our main objectives, therefore, are to:
- promote globalisation in ESP and EAP
- organise a system of support for fellow ESP/EAP practitioners
- support individual or organisational ESP projects which may not prove feasible without our recommendation
- link and unite ESP/EAP professionals in different educational sectors
- give sufficient prominence to distinct sub-areas of ESP and EAP
- collaborate with other Special Interest Groups (SIGs) in IATEFL for better synergies
- organise joint events with organisations of a similar interest or profile.
We invite you to visit and ‘like’ our Facebook page which we use as a platform for announcing events, encouraging ESP/EAP-related discussion and to promote collaboration between ourselves and the other IATEFL SIGs.