Letter from the Chair
Gerlinde Koppitsch, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Villach, Austria
Greetings to our global ESP community! Thank you to all our loyal members and readers for returning to our newsletter, and a warm welcome to all new members!
Our ongoing goal of connecting with ESP professionals worldwide has fostered a strong and long-standing partnership with our European colleagues in the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL). I am proud that TESOL ESP-IS has again been invited to nominate a representative to the IATEFL Online Open Forum Event in December 2025: Our long-term ESP-IS representative and newsletter editor Kevin Knight spoke on "Sixty-five ESP Project Leader Profiles: Accounts of Creating and Achieving Visions". He shared valuable insights into effective leadership in ESP and the power of communication.
Another exciting result of the TESOL-IATEFL collaboration was the January webinar “From Frustration to Facilitation: Turning AI’s Shortcomings into Learning” organized and hosted by ESP-IS. I was pleased to welcome Ioana Crețu, an ESP specialist focusing on healthcare, who spoke about how to transform AI flaws into meaningful teaching materials that strengthen the linguistic and cognitive abilities of ESP learners. If you missed the webinar, you can access the recording here: https://my.tesol.org/topics/23252/media_center/folder/af12e9c1-aa26-465f-8385-f32dbc8ac519.
We are now looking forward to the quickly approaching TESOL convention in Salt Lake City, Utah, this March. Please mark your calendars for the following ESP-related events:
1. Advancing ESP & EAP in Higher Education: Challenges, Changes, and Creative Responses (intersection session with Higher Education IS)
Developments such as Covid, Industry 4.0/5.0, generative AI and LLMs, and decreasing student numbers have severely affected universities and teaching. Teachers need to include new technologies in their practice and offer more individualized learning paths in order to respond to the rapid pace of change and innovation, and to meet students’ needs.
Marvin D. Hoffland (Carinthia Univ. of Applied Sciences/ Austria) will focus on the challenge of motivating students to read and analyze scientific papers in EAP/ESP for Engineering courses. Sharon Lyman (Southern Utah University/U.S.) will tell us how Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) can facilitate intercollegiate cooperation. Xiaolin Wen (Guangzhou College of Technology and Business/ China) will present her findings on genAI implementation in EAP classrooms. Veronica P. Atin (Vanderbilt University, Tennessee/U.S.) will talk about the pedagogical redesign of an English for Employment course at the Universiti Malaysia Sabah/ Malaysia which included the shift from traditional classroom assessments to industry-oriented project-based assessment.
2. Identifying Key Language Patterns Across Industry Sectors with AI Assistance (academic session)
Please read all about this session in Anne Lomperis’ (Chair Elect) letter below.
3. IS Mini Expo
The ESP-IS will be represented in the Expo hall on Wednesday, 25 March, 12-1 pm and Friday, 27 March, 12-1 pm. Please drop by for a chat!
4. Open meeting
The ESP-IS Open meeting will take place on Thursday, 26 March, 6:30-7:15 pm.
I look forward to seeing many of you in Salt Lake City, where Anne Lomperis will officially resume the role of Chair.
Gerlinde Koppitsch (Chair ESP-IS)
Gerlinde Koppitsch is a Lecturer in English for Engineering & IT and Senior Researcher at the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Austria. Her areas of research include student engagement, virtual exchanges and the inverted classroom in ESP.