Trends in ESP Research and Types of ESP courses: 1980-2015

In this talk I examine the approaches that have been taken to researching and designing ESP courses over the past 35 years. I begin with a meta-analysis of articles in the English for Specific Purposes journal and show how we have moved from a focus on opinion pieces and quantitative research to an emphasis on more qualitative and mixed-method research in recent
years. The changes in research have also affected our approaches to course design which have moved from a focus on accuracy to fluency to socio-cultural agency. I illustrate these moves by referring to four case studies: a vocational training ESP course in Columbia, South America for low proficiency level teens, (Todd and Trimble, 1977); a Community College ESL nursing course in Long Beach, USA, for immigrants to America (Vivian 1984); an in-house training course for executive managers in Hong Kong (Baxter, Boswood and Peirson-Smith 2002); and an English for Science course at a university in Hong Kong (Miller, Ng and Hafner, 2014). I conclude by reviewing the different types of ESP courses available in the text book market these days and make a case for customizing the ESP courses we offer due to the contemporary demands of students in the 21st Century.