New to the LSP classroom? A selection of monographs on successful practices

As Languages for Specific Purposes have always been defined as student-oriented, the rationale behind this volume is to use the rather neglected niche of the other necessary agent of language instruction and thus focus on the LSP practitioner. This turn towards the instructor has been motivated by the fact that a great number of LSP practitioners enter their jobs without previous expertise. They lack LSP education, or they may not even have a background in applied linguistics. This motivation has proven valid as many of the volume’s contributors have faced this particular situation in their professional lives. For insights into the LSP field and guidelines on the best practices, they must rely on their colleagues who offer to share their experience through workshops, conferences, or papers, which is what this volume provides.

The primary goal of this volume is to present considerations of what challenges LSP practitioners face and should be prepared for in their jobs and to provide practice-tested methodological guidelines on such demanding teaching techniques as blended and flipped learning or tandem learning. All papers have been written by LSP practitioners and researchers in higher education. Thus, this volume provides both guidance and self-reflection. In other words, it is written by experienced LSP practitioners for aspiring LSP practitioners about how they see themselves and what effort they make to meet the challenges of their jobs.

As proof that LSP practice is a global challenge, papers have been collected from many European countries, the USA, Uruguay. Even though most papers are naturally concerned with English, being the lingua franca of today, the collection also features guidelines for teaching Spanish, French and Dutch for specific purposes. Moreover, the target disciplines these languages are taught for encompass business, engineering, sociology or medicine, thus supporting the assumption of the universal character of problems LSP practitioners deal with.

List of figures
List of tables
List of appendices
List of abbreviations and acronyms

INTRODUCTION: New to the LSP classroom?
Martina Vránová
Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic
Dita Gálová
Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic

CHAPTER 1
ESP Teacher Education: Examining the needs of ESP practitioners
Elis Kakoulli Constantinou
Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus
Salomi Papadima-Sophocleous
Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus

CHAPTER 2
Investigating the teacher’s role in ESP classrooms and its connection to professional identity based on a survey of higher-education institutions in Hungary
Klára Bereczky
Budapest Business School, University of Applied Sciences, Hungary

CHAPTER 3
Being a legal alien: Inspecting the (in)accessibility of specific professional communities to LSP teachers
Martina Vránová
Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic

CHAPTER 4
The role of LSP in demotivation and remotivation: The instructors’ perspective
Viktória Lázár
Budapest Business School, University of Applied Sciences, Hungary

CHAPTER 5
Developing a language curriculum in a business institution
Christian Rubio
Bentley University, MA, USA

CHAPTER 6
Tailoring an LSP course: Threading the needle with sociolinguistic tenets
Yliana V. Rodríguez
Universidad de la República, Uruguay
Lucía López Risso
Universidad de la República, Uruguay

CHAPTER 7
Harnessing learners’ domain expertise for ESP curriculum development: Experience-based best practices and strategies
Katherine Guertler
Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule Regensburg, Germany
Eric Koenig
Technische Hochschule Nuremberg, Germany
Jolana Tluková
Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic

CHAPTER 8
Lexical approach and social reading in CLIL settings: Two strategies to support LSP students with functional vocabulary and discipline-specific communication skills
Emma Abbate
Cambridge International IGCSE® High School Armando Diaz, Italy

CHAPTER 9
The influence of the Romanian academic style on student writing in English
Loredana Bercuci
West University of Timișoara, Romania
Mădălina Chitez
West University of Timișoara, Romania

CHAPTER 10
Developing writing competence for the future multilingual work environment of Belgian economists and sociologists
An Slootmaekers
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

CHAPTER 11
Twenty-first-century methods for twenty-first-century skills: Developing students’ ESP competencies through virtual exchange projects
Rita Kóris
Budapest Business School, University of Applied Sciences, Hungary

Contributors’ biographical information

Index

Martina Vránová was a recipient of the Hlavinka Fellowship from the Czech Educational Foundation of Texas at Texas A&M University, where she earned her M.A. in English. In 2010, she received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. She is currently Assistant Professor of English at the Institute of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology. She has taught ESP at various levels and areas for almost fifteen years. Her other research interests include academic writing, rhetoric, and contemporary fiction. She has co-edited conference proceedings, ‘Languages for Specific Purposes in Higher Education’ (2017), and a volume of literary and cultural studies papers, ‘Crime and Detection in Contemporary Culture’ (2018), as well as published two novels in Czech.

Languages for specific purposes, English for specific purposes, LSP teacher training, ESP education, LSP practitioner’s roles, LSP course design, materials selection, flipped learning, blended learning, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), Computer Aided Language Learning (CALL), specific communication skills, exchange projects