1 Belcher, D. (Ed.) (2009). English for Specific Purposes in Theory and Practice.

Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. This volume explores ESP from different academic (secondary and tertiary), occupational (business, medical, and legal), and socio-cultural perspectives. Throughout the volume, issues like the effects of globalization, the special status of English as a lingua franca, and the increasing influence of migrant populations are discussed. The authors further address the question how ESP instructors can succeed in gaining sufficient language and content knowledge to tailor their instruction to their students needs.

Belcher, D., Johns, A. M., Paltridge, B. (Eds.) (2011). New Directions in English for Specific Purposes Research. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Throughout the volume, the need for reflective practice is emphasized: ESP instructors constantly need to assess the needs and issues of their students, the quality of their practice, and current developments in their fields. As the discipline progresses, researchers must find better ways to coalesce research, teaching, and learning.

Bremner, S. (2010). Collaborative writing: Bridging the gap between the textbook and the workplace. English for Specific Purposes, 29(2), 121-132. Pedagogical gap between textbook tasks and collaboration in the real world. Author proposes more project-based activities that capitalize on real workplace experience (e.g. information gaps, difference, etc.)

Chou, Mu-hsuan (2011). The influence of leaner strategies on oral presentations: A comparison between group and individual performance. English for Specific Purposes, 30, 272-285. The study looked at oral group presentation of 52 French major college students taking the Professional English course in their third year of study. There was a significant increase of mean scores in strategy use from the group to the individual performance. It looks like individual presentations provide more opportunities for EFL learners to cultivate metacognitive strategies. While there was no statistical significance in cognitive strategy use, there was in the frequency of using communication strategies (where the percentage if gestures and synonyms, new words and unfinished messages was reduced). Learners generally had an easier time remembering everything they wanted to say in group presentations. Yet, it was harder for them to apply rehearsal strategies. They spoke more fluently in groups than in individual performances, but they seemed to like the latter better. Individual work helps compensate for important learner strategies and processes that cooperative group presentation may downplay.

Crosby, Cate (2011). Review: Connecting speaking and writing in second language writing instruction, Robert Weissberg. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor (2006). English for Specific Purposes, 30, 75-78. Weissberg proposes a dialogic approach to L2 writing instruction which entails the mining of spoken resources in the writing classroom to enhance written output. Weisberg introduces different types of learners: The ear learner (reads and writes basic genres in L1, but has no experiences doing so in English), the eye learner (has lots of experience in L1 writing, enthusiastic reader in both L1 and L2, struggles with speaking and listening), and learners whose skills developed symmetrically -> learners are characterized by variability.

Durrant, P. (2010). Investigating the viability of a collocation list for students of English for academic purposes. English for Specific Purposes, 28(3), 157-169. Discovered that many collocations were not listed in the AWL (academic word list), suggesting that the old list is old fashioned. Corpus search included function words, to see trends with, for instance, a construction like verb + that, where the verb could be anything ranging from assume, demonstrate, confirm, emphasize, etc.

Evans, S. & Morrison, B. (2011). Meeting the challenges of English-medium higher education: The first-year experience in Hong Kong. English for Specific Purposes, 30, 198-208. Students experience four particular problems during the crucial first year at university: Understanding technical vocabulary, comprehending lectures, achieving an appropriate academic style, meeting institutional and disciplinary requirements. The secondary school teaching medium influenced the adaptation most significantly. Therefore, students experiences prior to admission need to be monitored more closely.

Hsu, Wenhua (2011). The vocabulary thresholds of business textbooks and business research articles for EFL learners. English for Specific Purposes, 30, 247-257. After compiling two corpora, one for English-medium textbooks for business core courses and the other for business research articles, and drawing upon the notion of lexical coverage and the ranked BNC high-frequency word lists, Wenhua argues that the most frequent 5000 word families should be a learning goal for EFL business majors planning to pursue further studies. Further, it is suggested that knowledge of the most frequent 5000 word families should be the prerequisite vocabulary size for further studies in business.

Kankaanranta, A. & Louhiala-Salminen L. (2010). English? Oh, its just work!: A study of BELF users perceptions. English for Specific Purposes, 29, 204-209.

3 The authors give a overview of current trends in ESP research. First of all, there has been a discursive turn, i.e. a shift from the analysis of isolated business texts to the analysis of contextualized communication. Second of all, the focus has shifted from language skills to language strategies, i.e. identification of strategies that make a communicative event successful regardless of the L1 of the learner. The survey completed by international business professionals suggests that the use of English in todays globalized business world is still simply work. Therefore, business competence together with knowledge of business communication and genre rules are more important than grammatical and idiomatic correctness. As a consequence, a lot of business knowledge and awareness of business context should be incorporated into the curriculum.

Kassim, H. & Ali, F. (2010). English communicative events and skills needed at the workplace: Feedback from the industry. English for Specific Purposes, 29, 168-182. The needs analysis of this study suggests that engineers require a very specific set of skills to find a job in todays globalized world [people-related skills, effective presentations, oral communication (body language, conflict, etc.)]. The authors underline that the industry puts most emphasis on the productive skills (speaking and writing). Therefore, these skills need to be focused on in the ESP classroom.

Wu, H. D. & Badger, R. G. (2009). In a strange and uncharted land: ESP teachers strategies for dealing with unpredicted problems in subject knowledge during class. English for Specific Purposes, 28, 19-32.

The study examined the decision-making processes of ESP teachers faced with subject in-class knowledge dilemma (ICKD). Three factors influence whether teachers avoid questions or take a risk by giving answers based on insufficient knowledge: First of all, the language in the materials created a greater risk of loss of face than the language the teacher used. Secondly, questions asked by students are more-threatening than ICKD identified by teachers. The authors conclude that most (and probably all) teachers face ICKD situations. The occurrence of an ICKD situation does not necessarily reflect poorly on the teacher. There are many ways of dealing with ICKD. ESP teachers, subject specialist teachers and students are all potential sources of information about the subject specialism and its language.