Innovation of English for specific purposes (ESP) curricula in Taiwanese universities

As part of the Taiwanese government’s push for greater English language proficiency, significant funding has been directed to enhancing English for Specific Purposes (ESP) education in Taiwan (Ministry of Education, 2014c). In order to enhance graduate preparedness for the workplace, the Ministry of Education (2014c) has increased the number and diversity of ESP courses and directed attention to improving teaching quality and learner motivation within these courses. Yet, despite the concerted attention and government funding directed toward enhancing Taiwanese ESP learner outcomes, proficiency levels remain disappointing. This research focuses on two specific forms of ESP education – business English and engineering English – the most popular ESP specializations in Taiwan. Existing studies into these ESP areas have neither included the stakeholders from both pedagogical and industrial settings in a same project, nor compared the language needs of users at a range of stages. To address this gap in existing research, my study interviewed ESP students in their first and fourth year of university in order to document their English language learning experiences. Further, business and engineering employees were interviewed in order to produce a detailed taxonomy of English language use in the business and engineering workplaces. This allows for the identification of gaps in current ESP practice and an evaluation of the degree to which student participants feel prepared for the specificities of the workplace language environment. Recommendations for enhancing current ESP learner outcomes were extrapolated from the data.