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 language-teaching professionals and practitioners in English for Specific Purposes (ESP), English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Occupational / Professional Purposes (EOP/EPP) as well as and other professionals in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI). We have over 300 members working in the field of ESP who join us from all over the world and regularly attend our seminars, conferences and webinars. We also publish a bi-annual peer-reviewed journal, Professional and Academic English, and our members are active contributors to leading ELT journals and periodicals.
The mission of our SIG is to disseminate good practice in ESP (as well as EAP, EOP/EPP, EMI and CLIL) 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 applied research, teacher training and materials design. Our main objectives, therefore, are to:
- promote globalisation in ESP and EAP
- provide networking opportunities to 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
- 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. You can also find us on LinkedIn and X, formerly known as Twitter.