The Handbook of English for Specific Purposes

Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics

by Brian Paltridge (Editor)

Featuring a collection of newly commissioned essays, edited by two leading scholars, this Handbook surveys the key research findings in the field of English for Specific Purposes (ESP).

• Provides a state-of-the-art overview of the origins and evolution, current research, and future directions in ESP

• Features newly-commissioned contributions from a global team of leading scholars

• Explores the history of ESP and current areas of research, including speaking, reading, writing, technology, and business, legal, and medical English

• Considers perspectives on ESP research such  as genre, intercultural rhetoric, multimodality, English as a lingua franca and ethnography

592 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Brian Paltridge is Professor of TESOL at the University of Sydney. His most recent books are Ethnographic Perspectives on Academic Writing (with Sue Starfield and Christine Tardy, Oxford University Press, 2016), Getting Published in Academic Journals (with Sue Starfield, University of Michigan Press, 2016), and The Discourse of Peer Review (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). He is a former editor of TESOL Quarterly, and an editor emeritus for the journal English for Specific Purposes.

Reviews

[Laura Pérez Del Cid · Rating 5 out of 5]

This handbook for specific purposes has been very useful as one of the great references that my university professors have used, it has been explained from several studies and research all about English for specific purposes, not only that but also its subtopics such as English for Medical Purposes or English for Occupational Purposes. In addition, it has been explained from a historical and global context the expansion of the teaching of English in this case as a second language (except for certain countries that use it as a Lingua Franca) to its use in educational spaces either in a classroom with specific students. It has also been mentioned the different uses in the teaching of English the four powerful skills that are: reading, writing, speaking, grammar but all encompassed with English for specific purposes when these are used. Research on ESP as a methodology and its perspectives has also expanded, using ethnographic studies to distinguish students with a different cultural context when studying ESP in another country. As well as, ESP practitioners who take into account previous research to elaborate corpora, corpus within what ESP frames. This handbook has been interesting with many citations and authors mentioned to better exemplify the terms, experiences and contexts when publishing, using, teaching and researching English for Specific Purposes.

[Amber + Casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are interested in ESP then this is a great foundation on what is out there and how ESP works.