ESP Project Leader Profile: Andy Mattingly

Kevin Knight, Kanda University of International Studies, Chiba, Japan

Hello, ESPers worldwide!

The 66th ESP Project Leader Profile features Andy Mattingly, Embry-Riddle Language Institute Instructor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida in the U.S. Andy is on the Steering Board of the TESOL ESPIS as English in Academic Settings Representative. Personally, I was very impressed when I saw her presentation in the ESPIS Academic Session at TESOL 2025 about using AI to improve the teaching of Aviation English. Please see Andy’s bio below.

Andy Mattingly is an instructor at Embry-Riddle Language Institute, where they teach academic and aviation English. Their work focuses on integrating traditional teaching methods with AI-driven language learning strategies that enhance linguistic development while upholding academic integrity. Andy also leads professional development initiatives to support educators in using AI effectively for materials development and instruction while promoting AI literacy among students.

In her responses to the interview prompts, Andy focuses on using AI to empower learners of Aviation English to understand “automatic terminal information service” (2026) broadcasts.

Automatic terminal information service, or ATIS, is a continuous broadcast of recorded aeronautical information in busier terminal areas. ATIS broadcasts contain essential information, such as current weather information, active runways, available approaches, and any other information required by the pilots, such as important NOTAMs. Pilots usually listen to an available ATIS broadcast before contacting the local control unit, which reduces the controllers' workload and relieves frequency congestion. (Wikipedia)

She defines leadership in terms of cultivating curiosity, facilitation, and service.

 
Andy Mattingly 
Embry-Riddle Language Institute Instructor,
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Define leadership in your own words.

I define leadership as the act of cultivating curiosity to expand people’s capacity to pursue their goals. As a teacher and a naturally curious person, I strive to lead by encouraging others to discover and sustain their own motivation for learning and doing. From this perspective, I see myself less as an authority figure (or traditional leader) and more as a facilitator. While my role as a teacher (or AI workshop leader) requires me to give instructions and request specific outcomes, meaningful learning happens through the act of doing itself. My primary goal as a leader is to create contexts in which that doing is pragmatic, engaging, motivating, and perceived as worthwhile by those involved. In this sense, leadership is a form of service; I work for those I am leading in order to help them move closer to their own goals.

Tell me an ESP project success story. Focus on your communication as a leader in the project. How did you communicate with stakeholders to make that project successful?

When I began teaching Aviation English, I quickly realized that few tasks were as daunting to students as trying to decode an ATIS broadcast. Even setting aside aviation-specific terminology, the speed of speech combined with background noise and static consistently overwhelmed learners. Nearly every student groaned, gasped, or looked genuinely horrified the first time they encountered one.

The best practical advice I initially received came from a colleague, Rachel Lee, who had previously taught the course successfully: use the clearest audio recordings available and scaffold listening activities from clearer to less clear examples. I structured my lessons accordingly and might have continued doing so without question until a normally calm, mild-mannered student had an emotional outburst in class after failing to understand an ATIS broadcast yet again.

That moment forced me to reconsider the nature of the problem and how it was being communicated to students. ATIS listening was not simply a difficult classroom activity; it was a high-stakes communicative task tied directly to students’ professional identities. Repeated failure was leading some students to question not only their language ability, but also their desire to become pilots at all.

From the students’ perspective, ATIS listening had become less a learning challenge and more a source of discouragement. Some began to disengage strategically. They were accepting the possibility of failing the unit in the hope that they would “learn it later.” This made it clear that a different kind of leadership was required. While I was offering opportunities for practice, I was not communicating the purpose of the task in a way that supported or encouraged students. As I previously stated, I view leadership as a form of service, but I recognized that my instructional approach was not serving them well.

At the same time, the course structure imposed clear constraints. ATIS instruction had to be balanced against other essential objectives, including radiotelephony practice, leaving little room to simply extend or repeat activities indefinitely. Traditional solutions offered few viable alternatives: improving audio clarity was not possible, and producing custom recordings through voice acting or re-recording would have required time and resources beyond what the course allowed.

Faced with these limitations, I began to reframe the challenge differently to myself and to my students. Rather than changing the task itself, I asked how I could change the conditions under which students encountered it while remaining faithful to the course objectives and respecting time constraints.

A possible answer emerged after I attended an AI-focused presentation by Thiago Silva at a conference hosted by the International Civil Aviation English Association. Although I was already familiar with ElevenLabs, his demonstration helped me see how text-to-speech generative AI could be used intentionally as a pedagogical tool rather than a technological novelty. Using this technology alongside audio-editing software, I created ATIS broadcasts that were significantly slower and clearer than authentic recordings while still preserving the structure and language of the task.

Just as important as the materials themselves was how I communicated the change to students. I explained that we would work carefully through a clearer sequence, beginning with controlled input and gradually increasing difficulty. In addition, vocabulary learning became more manageable because I could intentionally control which terminology was introduced and when, so students could focus on understanding meaning rather than decoding under pressure. This reframing helped students understand that this process was designed to support comprehension rather than lower expectations and that the goal was not immediate mastery, but meaningful progress.

Students responded positively to this shift. While ATIS listening remained challenging, it became a manageable challenge rather than a discouraging one. Students were more willing to engage, discuss what they heard, and analyze what the information might mean for a pilot in practice. Their increased participation and persistence signaled a shift from disengagement to motivation; students were no longer mentally checking out during class.

In subsequent semesters, I continued to communicate this approach flexibly, adjusting the number and sequencing of generated ATIS broadcasts based on the needs of each group. Some cohorts required little additional scaffolding and benefited from Rachel’s previously established methods, while others needed more gradual exposure. Importantly, this adaptability did not require additional instructional time, allowing the approach to remain sustainable within the program.

Ultimately, this project succeeded because it was grounded in an ESP approach from the outset. This approach requires pragmatism. As Dr. Nacereddine Benabdallah (2019) says, “English has to be integrated in the student’s main subject matter area and can never, in any case, be separated from the learner’s real world.” Students faced an immediate, real world communicative task tied to their professional aspirations. Passive instruction was not sufficient. Leadership, in this context, required clearly communicating purpose, managing constraints transparently, and creating conditions in which students could actively engage with the task and experience meaningful progress. Because learning English for a specific purpose is fundamentally about doing, I had a responsibility to let students do the work in a way that genuinely served their needs, one that demanded a different approach than might have been required in a more general English course.

Andy shares a wonderful example of ESP training. I was inspired by the creative approach she took to make the English language in the ATIS broadcasts accessible to her learners. Her success story reminds me that we all need to continue to learn actively ourselves to meet the needs of our students. We should especially pay attention to how she connected expertise in different areas to design learning solutions. I took a class on “connected strategy in business contexts (i.e., strategic management),” which I now see in a new light from the recent ESP Project Leader Profiles.

Do you have any questions or comments for Andy? Please feel free to contact her directly.

All the best,

Kevin

PS – The profiles (1 to 55) have been published together in a book English for Specific Purposes Project Leader Profiles: The Leadership Communication of 55 ESP Project Leaders (which can be downloaded for free in the PDF version). The profiles 51 to 65 are accessible in past issues of ESP News. For insights into what inspired me to write the profiles in a certain way, see also Creating Leadership “Ways of Being” in L2 Learners for International Business Careers and Social Good.

References

Automatic terminal information service. (2026, February 2). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_terminal_information_service

Benabdallah, N. (2019). Rethinking ESP in Algerian universities: Towards an adaptable materials-design framework. American International Journal of Social Science, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.30845/aijss.v8n1p5 ​

Knight, K. (2022). English for specific purposes project leader profiles: The leadership communication of 55 ESP project leaders. Hong Kong: Candlin & Mynard.

Knight, K. (2024). Creating leadership “ways of being” in L2 learners for international business careers and social good. Hong Kong: Candlin & Mynard.

Kevin Knight (PhD in linguistics, MBA, MPIA) is Professor in the Department of International Communication of Kanda University of International Studies in Chiba, Japan. His research interests include leadership conceptualization and development, ESP, and professional communication. He is series editor of Leadership in Language Education. (See https://www.candlinandmynard.com/leadership.html.)