Integrating Technology in ESP: Pedagogical Principles and Practice

Abstract

Integrating technology into education has been an important agenda for educational reform all over the world, and English language teaching has been heavily influenced by this move. Despite the benefits of technology in language learning and teachers’ positive attitudes towards technology, ESP teachers have demonstrated slow adoption in using new technologies for various reasons, including lack of awareness and deficient computer literacy and ICT pedagogy, despite the benefits technology can offer to languages for specific purposes (LSP). In this chapter, I review the literature in both computer-assisted language learning and ESP to draw principles for integrating technology and to offer some exemplary practice in both English for academic purposes (EAP) and English for occupational purposes (EOP) contexts, covering four types of technological tools: corpora, web-based materials, computer-mediated communication (CMC) and wikis. These principles can be used as guidelines to assist teachers to integrate technology into teaching and as directions for teacher education in integrating technology.