The ESP SIG - About...

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 IATEFL's 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. Our aims, linked to the main objective, also include:

• Raising better awareness of ESP in the countries where membership to our SIG has traditionally been low
• Collaborating with other SIGs in IATEFL for better synergies
• Organising a system of support for fellow ESP practitioners
• Supporting individual or organisational ESP projects which may not prove feasible without our recommendation
• Linking and uniting ESP professionals in different educational sectors: e.g. university/tertiary, further, adult, private and free-lance
• Collaborating with leading ELT publishers to lobby for more focus on production of ESP materials
• Providing guidance to professionals new or relatively new to ESP
• Providing consultancy to individuals and organisations
• Cultivating mutually beneficial and enriching contacts with similar organisations (e.g. BALEAP or BAAL in UK or TESOL in US)
• Giving sufficient prominence to distinct sub-areas of ESP (e.g. EAP which often requires separate extensive treatment) and promoting 'newcomers' to ESP (e.g. Teaching Academic Literacy Skills to Home Students in UK )
• Promoting globalisation in ESP by supplementing - on an equal footing - traditional British, US, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and South African models by (a) those developed in other countries where English is a lingua franca (e.g. the Caribbean countries, Nigeria, Kenya, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India) and (b) those established in these countries where English has unparalleled impact on the life of its people (e.g. Poland, Brazil, Russia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan)
• Organising joint events with organisations of a similar interest or profile.

Message from the ESP SIG Co-ordinator

I believe that our aims and objectives are achievable, and I am also certain that together we can make things happen. Once again I wish to repeat how delighted I am to lead the ESP SIG of IATEFL and want to thank everyone for their support. Please remember that we always welcome contributions to our newsletter / journal, so if you want to have an article published or if you wish to review a book, please do so. The next edition of our journal is scheduled for late August 2005. We hope that this and next year we are able to gain new members of IATEFL, as well as those of our ESP SIG, and hope that our fellow colleagues help us in distributing this electronic update across different ELT institutions throughout the world.