Teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) and World Englishes (WE) have both established themselves as important areas of inquiry within applied linguistics, with their own professional organizations (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages and International Association for World Englishes [IAWE]), annual conferences, and affiliated journals fully dedicated to the scholarship in their disciplines (TESOL Quarterly and World Englishes, respectively). The articulation between the two fields, however, began only in the last decade or so, except for the work of a few individuals who spanned the two areas (e.g., Kachru, 1976, 1984; Sridhar, 1994). This entry traces the history of the (inter)disciplinary relationship between the two fields as shown primarily in the scholarly publications that attempted to bring them together.

TESOL in World Englishes: Early Years

It is interesting to note that, in a way, the field of World Englishes became institutionalized and flourished the way it did because an early attempt to collaborate with TESOL had failed.

The conceptualization of the notion of World Englishes dates back to as early as the 1960s, but 1978 is when an organized scholarly effort to explore the global spread of English and its linguistic and functional implications was initiated (Kachru, 1997). This was the year when two independently organized conferences—one at the East–West Center in Hawaii and the other at the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign—were held to explore respectively the international and intranational functions of English across the world. These two conferences shared similarities in their goals and ideas, and the publications resulting from these conferences served as the foundation for World Englishes studies.

Language pedagogy was one of the well‐explored foci of World Englishes studies until mid‐1980s. World Englishes scholars actively organized sessions at such language pedagogy conferences as TESOL, International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language, and Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics, introducing the discussion of World Englishes to the field of English‐language teaching (ELT). Some publications by these scholars during this period challenged the status quo and assumptions in ELT that were based on a monolithic view of English (e.g., Kachru, 1976, 1984), while others contributed perspectives that broadened and enriched the understanding of ELT in general (e.g., Sridhar & Sridhar, 1992; Sridhar, 1994).

In 1984, however, the fate of the relationship between two disciplines took a turn. At the TESOL convention, the board of directors rejected the proposal to create an interest section devoted to English varieties around the world, and this rejection encouraged early World Englishes scholars to create their own space to explore these issues (L. E. Smith, personal communication, April 16, 2010; B. B. Kachru, personal communication, August 8, 2010). While these scholars continued to participate in the above‐mentioned conferences, they also created an international committee for the study of World Englishes at the 1988 TESOL convention. In 1992, the committee cosponsored a conference on “World Englishes Today” where the International Association for World Englishes was formally launched (Kachru, 1997).

From the mid‐1980s through the 1990s, the primary focus of the newly established organization and the field it represented was the linguistic and functional description of English in different parts of the world. While language teaching remained a legitimate research focus, it seemed to have taken a back seat while an effort to establish the pluralistic nature of English drove the discipline. Among nine research areas of World Englishes identified at the conference “Language and Power: Cross‐Cultural Dimensions of English in Media and Literature” in 1986, only one explicitly dealt with the issue of language teaching: “Comparison of contexts and methods of language teaching in diverse cultural and educational settings” (Kachru, 1997, p. 211). This positioning of language pedagogy topics was also evident in publication trends in World Englishes. When Braj B. Kachru and Larry E. Smith took over the editorship of the journal World Language English in 1985, they also changed the title to World Englishes, which signified the change in the focus of the journal. World Language English, with the title that recognized the use and status of English as a world language, focused on English‐language teaching and learning in parts of the world and published relatively short and accessible articles. The new title, World Englishes, suggested that the linguistic and functional variation and diversity of the language was going to be the focus and foundation of this journal. It was now a scholarly, vigorous journal, featuring more full‐length articles on sociolinguistics of Englishes in general. After this change, the number of pedagogy‐related articles went down to one or two per volume, although many of them were now full‐length articles.

In addition, among 20 topics identified in the survey of World Englishes research published in 1997, none specifically addressed English‐language teaching (Kachru, 1997), although there was one category on teaching World Englishes and many others did mention their pedagogical implications in discussion. It seems fair to say that the last decade of the 20th century in World Englishes was devoted to the establishment of itself as a discipline, in which language pedagogy was considered a legitimate but not necessarily dominant focus of inquiry.

World Englishes in TESOL: Early Years

As described above, the notion of World Englishes was already present in TESOL before the 1980s. Furthermore, there were TESOL members, including James Alatis, the first executive director, who acknowledged the importance of the World Englishes perspective in ELT from the early days. However, the story of the failed attempt to create a World Englishes interest section illustrates that the global spread of English and the resulting diversity in forms and functions of English were not perceived as a critical issue in the field of TESOL as a whole at that time. The publication trend in TESOL Quarterly, established in 1967, indicates that it was probably the case until the end of the decade.

TESOL as an organization was established in 1966 out of the need for a professional group dedicated to teaching English to speakers of other languages. The organization was meant to be international from its inception. The founding leaders were explicit about the need for a global focus and deliberately chose not to include such terms as American or National as part of the name (Alatis, 1987). However, its focus in reality was the USA. Non‐US contexts were positioned as foreign lands where US Americans would go and teach, rather than where a unique variety of English might be taught, learned, and used in a locally appropriate way. Accordingly, articles from abroad published in TESOL Quarterly in the early days tended to be “state of the art” articles, introducing issues to be kept in mind when US Americans went to teach there.

Topics covered in early issues of the journal mostly addressed classroom matters and teaching of “X,” where X could be something very specific (e.g., pronunciation of the “th” sound) or something broad (e.g., academic skills), reflecting the trend of the field. There were also many articles about surveys of other disciplines and their implications for TESOL. TESOL then was “at a stage in its development when it must actively solicit contributions from a variety of disciplines” (Wardbaugh, 1972, p. 291), and publication trends reflected such needs.

Issues related to the global spread of English and “new” varieties of English appeared in the literature as early as 1969 but only sporadically for the first two decades of the journal. Quirk (1969), in the first such article, acknowledged the existence of new Englishes but considered them as something that was in conflict with “the English of orthodox law‐enacting, culture‐bearing, education‐disseminating” (p. 24) and thus a problem. Kachru (1976) introduced the idea of new Englishes as legitimate varieties of English and argued for a pluralistic view of English in ELT. It should be noted, however, that there was a rich discussion on teaching standard English to speakers of “nonstandard” dialects (e.g., African American Vernacular English) in the United States, and many sociolinguistic concepts that serve as the foundation of WE studies were introduced to the TESOL community during this period.

The absence of an entry on World Englishes in the 25th anniversary issue of TESOL Quarterly in 1991 is probably an indication that the topic was not acknowledged as critical or possibly even legitimate in the field of ELT throughout 1980s. However, Brown (1991) did point out that “English is increasingly not learned as a tool for interaction with just native speakers of the language” and it “is not always learned as a tool for understanding and teaching US or British cultural values” (p. 250). He also acknowledged the major role that non‐native English speakers were playing in the field of TESOL. The linguistic and functional diversity of English that resulted from the global spread of English, as well as its implications for teaching, was also mentioned.

From the end of the 1980s throughout the 1990s, there was a sudden increase in the number of articles that addressed questions related to World Englishes. There were some special issues devoted to topics that were very relevant to WE studies (e.g., language planning and policy in 1996; identity in 1997), and articles from non‐US contexts often went beyond the description of an exotic land where native English speakers would go and teach and presented local perspectives that sometimes challenged Western assumptions (e.g., Burnaby & Sun, 1989). At the 1994 TESOL Convention, Braj Kachru gave the annual James E. Alatis plenary titled “The Paradigms of Marginality,” which critiqued the practices of linguists and language specialists that marginalized multilingualism and multilingual users, and argued for new views of and attitudes to World Englishes.

The increased awareness of the power politics in ELT, questions about the ownership of English, and the spread of English and its implications for variations and standards appeared not just in the TESOL organization but in ELT communities in both the United States and United Kingdom (Bowers, 1986). It seems not only that awareness and interest in globalization and World Englishes increased during this period but also that the focus shifted in the discipline. The emergence of new topics and theoretical approaches (e.g., critical theory, language planning and policy) created a space for international perspectives and explorations of World Englishes to flourish within the discourse of ELT.

World Englishes and TESOL in the 21st Century

In the past decade or so, we have witnessed growing interest in bringing World Englishes and TESOL together, in terms of both scholarship and teaching practices.

In World Englishes, the number of articles with a pedagogical focus increased, especially in the early 2000s, including a symposium (a special theme section) devoted to the exploration of World Englishes and teaching English as a foreign language. In the second edition of The Handbook of World Englishes (Nelson, Proshina, & Davis, in press), there are three chapters specifically dedicated to different intersections of World Englishes and ELT: communicative competence, pedagogy, and language testing. Recent IAWE conference programs included numerous invited and peer‐reviewed presentations related to pedagogy.

The presence of the World Englishes perspective in TESOL has also become significantly more visible since the turn of the century. The TESOL Board of Directors approved the position statement on English as a Global Language in March 2008, which recognizes and appreciates world Englishes (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, 2008). TESOL Quarterly started publishing articles that explore the intersection of World Englishes and TESOL more regularly (e.g., Matsuda, 2003; Setter, 2006; Matsuda & Matsuda, 2010; Nuske, 2018). The 40th anniversary issue of TESOL Quarterly included a chapter dedicated to World Englishes, which Suresh Canagarajah, the editor of the journal then, described as “risen to prominence after the [25th anniversary] issue, affecting almost all the other domains of language teaching” (Canagarajah, 2006b, p. 5). In 2014, TESOL Journal, another official, practitioner‐oriented journal of TESOL, published a special issue on “Critical Perspectives on World Englishes,” suggesting that WE studies is not only on ELT professionals' radar but is also recognized as something essential in their professional knowledge.

In addition to the number of articles and book chapters published in both fields, there have been book‐length explorations that bring these two fields together, mostly focusing on the globalization and teaching of English for international communication (e.g., McKay, 2002; Alsagoff, McKay, Hu, & Renandya, 2012; Matsuda, 2012; Marlina & Giri, 2014; Galloway & Rose, 2015).

One characteristic of recent work that draws from World Englishes and TESOL is that it goes beyond merely adding new knowledge within an existing framework for understanding these fields. While earlier contributions of World Englishes to ELT were mostly limited to the question of how (mostly linguistic) variations complicate (and enrich) ELT, recent studies call for a paradigm change to better reflect how English is used in today's global world (Matsuda & Matsuda, 2018). From the pedagogical perspective, such a shift calls for a reexamination of assumptions and the status quo in language teaching practices. In scholarship, the new positioning of World Englishes as the foundation, rather than supplemental information, of ELT opened up new ways of thinking about various aspects of language pedagogy, including assessment (e.g., Lowenberg, 2002; Canagarajah, 2006a; Liontou, 2014), non‐native English‐speaking teachers and teacher identity (e.g., Dogancay‐Aktuna & Hardman, 2008; Selvi, 2014; Matsuda, 2018), and teacher education (Bayyurt & Sifakis, 2015; Matsuda, 2017).

Conclusion

It is clear that the fields of TESOL and World Englishes have something to contribute to each other, and cross‐fertilization is needed to understand and situate the practice of ELT in the global context.

In TESOL, insights from WE studies serve as the foundation and context for all ELT practices to be situated. Although issues such as the global spread of English and its linguistic and social implications may be more directly relevant to teaching in some contexts than others, they are in fact part of the reality that all ELT addresses. For example, in English‐language learner (ELL) programs in US schools, the curricular focus is on US language and culture because the mission of such programs is to prepare students for “mainstream” US classrooms. However, it is important for teachers in such programs to be aware of different varieties of English that exist in the world today because those are the Englishes that ELL students may have been exposed to in the past or will be in the future. Similarly, unaware teachers may uncritically present one variety of English as the only correct variety of English—rather than one variety of English that is preferred in that particular context—and unintentionally degrade other varieties of English and speakers of such varieties of English. In that sense, our understanding of today's English language should seep into every aspect of ELT, regardless of the geographic context, informing and influencing every aspect of TESOL research and practices.

In World Englishes, ELT continues to be one example of space where the notion of World Englishes is examined vis‐à‐vis the reality of English. Research that directly investigates the implications of World Englishes to ELT obviously addresses this interdisciplinary area of inquiry. But even in WE research projects that seem distanced from teaching—such as the linguistic analysis of Englishes or investigation of English use in advertisements and entertainment—information regarding the place of English in educational systems provides great insights into the (socio)linguistic reality of English where the investigation takes place and vice versa.

SEE ALSO: Intelligibility in World Englishes; Language and Globalization; Lingua Franca and Language of Wider Communication; Varieties of English in Asia

While writing occurs in most, if not all, language for specific purposes (LSP) settings, it is most prominent in business, academic, and professional domains, where it is often used to carry out tasks of relatively high importance. Both research and pedagogy in LSP writing are characterized by an increasing recognition of the social contexts which give rise to specialized writing forms. This entry examines writing in three key areas of LSP: specific domains of language use, approaches to research, and approaches to teaching.

Writing Needs Across LSP Domains

Needs analyses in business settings have often focused on oral tasks, such as meetings, phone calls, or negotiation, but scholarship on business writing gives some indication of the common written genres. Professional e‐mails, for example, have been the focus of much research, including e‐mails written for general external communication, negotiation, or replies to inquiry. One study of engineers in a high‐tech business context found that e‐mails, memos, and reports were the most common writing tasks; other writing included meeting minutes, presentation slides, business letters, and project proposals (Spence & Liu, 2013). Research has also studied a range of business letter types, including letters of negotiation, client letters, sales promotion letters, and job application letters.

Research into the writing carried out by business students indicates that the genres encountered in educational settings differ somewhat from those in the workplace. In a study of an English‐medium business school in Lebanon, undergraduate students and faculty identified in‐class note taking and research papers as frequent writing tasks while the workplace genres of letters were uncommon (Bacha & Bahous, 2008). Similarly, a study among undergraduate and graduate students in a US business school identified the most common writing tasks to be case analyses, article or book reports, and business reports, with letters being relatively infrequent (Zhu, 2004).

LSP in medical and legal professions has also identified key written forms of communication. Research indicates that medical research articles—and the written communication associated with the peer review system—are an important genre for medical professionals, with other common genres being case histories/reports, experimental research reports, editorials, consensus statements, and medical review articles (Mungra, 2007; Ferguson, 2013). In the legal profession, Bhatia (1993) has identified legal provisions or statements and legal cases as key written genres. Like business students, law students interact with slightly different genres than legal professionals, and it is within the context of law school that LSP is generally more relevant. In a needs analysis at an Israeli law school, Deutch (2003) identified the most important genres to be articles, books, court decisions, legislation, and legal documents; in contrast, legal documents were identified as the most important genre for professionals. In both settings, reading was considered nearly twice as important as writing. Additionally, both students and professionals may write for law reviews—student‐run journals which publish scholarly articles, book reviews, and student‐produced “notes” (Feak, Reinhart, & Sinsheimer, 2000).

Writing plays an especially prominent role in academic settings, and LSP research has centered on some of the most common and important genres of written academic communication. The academic research article is a central genre for advanced academic writers, representing an important means of disseminating scholarship. Numerous other genres contribute to the network of texts that coordinate to plan, carry out, and disseminate research—for example, grant proposals, book reviews, submission correspondences, abstracts, conference papers, and scientific “short texts” that accompany research articles (Swales, 2004). Writing is also central to academics' roles as journal editors and reviewers and to their institutional processes of evaluation and review. For novices, an introduction to these genres often begins through the preparation of a graduate thesis or dissertation—a genre that is unique yet echoes many of the discourse strategies found in other scholarly genres. Recent work has also examined the academic genres common to undergraduate education. Here, classification is more challenging, as the genre labels are often vague (e.g., essay, research paper). In their research of undergraduate writing at British universities, Gardner and Nesi (2013) address this issue by grouping texts into “genre families.” They identify 13 prominent genre families, the most common of which were essay, methodology recounts, critique, explanation, case study, and exercise.

Research in Writing and LSP

Research in LSP writing can be divided into four general categories: descriptions of texts; descriptions of contexts of production; descriptions of learning; and critical analyses of text production and use.

Descriptions of target genres has been central to LSP since its early inception, given the goal of understanding the key features of the prominent genres in the setting. Such research provides insights into needs analysis and development of LSP materials, and it contributes to the field's growing understanding of how language forms relate to purpose and social context. Early studies of written text in LSP often examined single grammatical features in a target register (e.g., passive voice or personal pronouns), but current research tends to draw on corpus‐based methodologies that allow for more sophisticated analysis.

Corpus linguistics works with a methodology for storing and analyzing digital collections of text. Large‐scale corpora, such as the British National Corpus, include tens of millions of words taken from a range of spoken and written text across registers (e.g., news, fiction, conversation, academic, business). Corpora are primarily analyzed in terms of frequency counts of target items, such as grammatical structures, lexicogrammatical features, single lexical items, or lexical bundles. Frequency counts are most often compared across registers, such as conversation versus academic writing, but can also be used to study language use diachronically.

Corpus‐based research has been used in English for academic purposes (EAP) since the 1980s. Krishnamurthy and Kosem's (2007) list of academic corpora includes collections of written texts such as academic textbooks, university student writing, theses, and published research articles; while many corpora include texts from multiple academic disciplines, some are more focused. Corpora of academic texts may examine areas such as law, medicine, science and technology, natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. Two important corpora in written business English are the Corpus of International Business Writing (CIBW) and the Indianapolis Business Learner Corpus (IBLC) (Upton & Connor, 2001). Corpora that examine English as a lingua franca (ELF) usage in written academic writing have also been developed, such as the Written English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings (WrELFA) corpus, which includes unedited research articles, PhD examiner reports, and research blogs (Rowley‐Jolivet, 2017).

Although large‐scale corpora are often available for public use, compiling a corpus which suits the needs within a local LSP setting is often preferable (particularly for identifying local pedagogical needs). Smaller, specialized corpora of written texts, which can be compiled by individual researchers and practitioners with relative ease, have the advantage of producing a more focused and targeted analysis. Such corpora often target specific genres or contexts of use. For instance, studies have analyzed lexical features in written business English and comparisons of grammatical structures in published and student academic writing (e.g., Connor & Upton, 2004).

Another significant approach to LSP writing research uses genre. While corpus‐based research often analyzes texts across multiple genres—such as business letters, memos, e‐mails, and company reports—genre analysis examines the characteristics of a single genre or an interlinked genre set. Because genres are defined by their rhetorical purposes, genre analysis (in contrast to corpus‐based analysis) studies text forms from a rhetorical perspective rather than from a purely linguistic one. Of particular influence in this area has been John Swales's research on the academic research article through the identification of rhetorical moves (Swales, 1990). Move structure analysis identifies text parts that are distinguished by their rhetorical function; for instance, Swales has described research article introductions as often following a three‐part move structure, in which authors first identify a topic area (the “territory” of research), next establish a niche, and finally situate their present research within that niche. Due in part to its valuable pedagogical applications, move analysis has been an extremely popular descriptive method in LSP writing research.

Bridging corpus and genre approaches to analysis, Hyland's (2004) well‐known research compares patterns in lexicogrammatical and discourse structures across disciplines in written genres such as research articles, abstracts, textbooks, and book reviews. Augmenting text analysis with interviews with expert writers of the genre, Hyland goes beyond descriptions of what texts look like to also consider why disciplinary writers make the choices that they do. This work has been significant for bringing a sociorhetorical lens to a linguistic description of texts.

Research into intercultural rhetoric (IR), previously known as contrastive rhetoric, has also played an important role in LSP, investigating rhetorical distinctions across cultural‐linguistic groups of users. Such comparative studies draw on both corpus‐based and genre analysis methodologies. IR studies have included, for example, comparisons of rhetorical moves or rhetorical acts (such as criticism) across genres in two or more languages. Upton and Connor (2001) blend contrastive rhetoric, corpus analysis, and move analysis in their study of politeness strategies used in English‐language letters of application written by American, Finnish, and Belgian writers. The researchers identified common linguistic features of politeness strategies, then searched for those features within two of the rhetorical moves (indicating a desire for further communication and expressing pleasantries at the letter's conclusion). Their study offers one example of an approach that pairs hand‐tagged move analysis with computer‐driven linguistic features analysis, considering cultural‐rhetorical issues. With increased attention to the diversity of English—or Englishes—ESP (English for specific purposes) writing research has begun to take into account genre variations related to world Englishes (WE) and English as a lingua franca (ELF). One recent article examined “noncanonical” grammar in peer‐reviewed engineering articles that received “best paper” awards, finding numerous examples of language that did not conform to dominant norms (Rozycki & Johnson, 2013). McIntosh, Connor, and Gokpinar‐Shelton (2017) make a case for future work that brings together an IR approach with the frameworks of ELF and translingualism, for understanding the negotiation and flexibility of writing in a globalized world.

While most LSP writing research has studied texts, a growing strand of inquiry has explored the contexts of writing production (e.g., Flowerdew & Wan, 2010). Such research can offer insights for needs analysis and can build more complex understandings of the factors that shape writing and learning in LSP settings. Surveys are often used to learn more about the types of writing carried out in a local setting; this approach is commonly used in needs analysis and curriculum development research. Interviews with people in target settings help researchers to gain a more nuanced understanding of how the writing is shaped by contextual factors, such as community values, material resources, and various stakeholders. Recent work has also looked beyond textual descriptions by considering how readers respond to writing (e.g., Zhang, 2013).

For even richer insight into the sociocultural influences on textual production, ethnographic research is particularly valuable. Ethnographic research may incorporate surveys, interviews, and text analysis, but it generally also includes field observations and sustained study. In this way, researchers can trace a community's writing over time and can identify the roles and relationships that influence those practices. Ethnographic studies in LSP, such as Starfield's (2002) research of undergraduate writing, highlight the power dynamics that permeate writing contexts. Studies adopting this method of research have studied classrooms, workplaces, and professional contexts, and have contributed to building a more sophisticated theoretical understanding of LSP (Paltridge, Starfield, & Tardy, 2016).

A growing area of LSP writing research has investigated scholarly publication, incorporating the research methods already described: surveys, interviews, ethnographies, and case studies. Research into publishing practices has most often examined the challenges faced by the growing number of non‐native English writers publishing in English as a research lingua franca. Extensive research by Flowerdew (2000), Li (2006), Lillis and Curry (2010), and Curry and Lillis (2017), for example, has shed light on the advanced competencies and intricate social interactions involved in publication.

A third strand of LSP writing research investigates the learning of specialized writing. This work has important implications for pedagogy, revealing some of the strategies and processes involved in learning specific genres or discourses. Case studies of learners have traced their writing development over time; these studies have been particularly prominent in postsecondary academic contexts and have included undergraduate writers and graduate writers.

Studies of writing development in LSP have also explored learning within classroom environments to study the effects of pedagogical approaches and the transfer or adaptation of learning between LSP classrooms and actual practice. Henry and Roseberry's (1998) study, for example, used a quasi‐experimental design to compare writing in a single genre by students who received genre‐based instruction to that by those who did not. Drawing generalizations from such research, however, is difficult because the studies are usually limited to the duration of instruction, while writing development is a long‐term process. Some studies investigating learning transfer between LSP classrooms and “real world” contexts have used interview methods to study student perceptions of transfer (James, 2010) and textual analysis combined with interviews to examine changes in the learners' writing and beliefs about writing (Parks, 2001). Cheng's (2008) study of graduate student writing instruction has focused on specific learners in richly described contexts and tasks, exploring the connections between their histories and goals and their analysis and production of target genres. More recently, the notion of “transfer” has been problematized and reframed as “adaptation” of prior knowledge (DePalma & Ringer, 2011; Cheng, 2018).

The three strands of research already outlined—descriptions of writing, writing contexts and practices, and learning—share a predominantly descriptive aim (with the exception, in many cases, of research on publishing practices). Pennycook (1997), among others, has critiqued this pragmatic approach, arguing that it may simply reinforce the status quo, which nearly always privileges the dominance of English and the authority of the native speaker. Pennycook calls for LSP practitioners to take a more critical stance in both research and pedagogy, “think[ing] seriously about the broader implications of everything we do” (p. 266). Since the late 1990s, a growing strand of LSP research has adopted this kind of critical lens. Critical ethnographies interrogate issues such as language access and the dominance of particular languages or language varieties within a social setting (Paltridge et al., 2016). Critical discourse analysis studies how texts reflect and reinforce certain power structures; the majority of this work has examined texts that circulate in the public sphere (e.g., in newspapers or other public documents), though some studies have examined LSP contexts (Bhatia, 2017). Benesch's (2009) pioneering work on critical needs analysis has also been influential in LSP research, as has Canagarajah's work that challenges the privileged status of monolingualism and center‐English norms (e.g., Canagarajah, 2006, 2013).

Pedagogy in Writing and LSP

LSP writing instruction occurs in a broad range of academic and workplace settings. Academic writing classrooms are the most common and include general academic writing as well as writing for specific disciplines or in specific genres, such as theses or dissertations. LSP writing instruction draws on the same principles that guide LSP pedagogy in general: it is needs‐driven and learner‐centered, engaging students in task‐based uses and analysis of authentic target language.

Since the mid‐1990s, genre‐based pedagogy has been a prominent approach to teaching writing in LSP. In genre‐based pedagogy, students analyze target genres in order to understand why “specific discourse‐genres [are] written and used by the specialist communities the way they are” (Bhatia, 1993, p. 11). Through consciousness‐raising tasks, students learn analytic techniques that they can bring to their writing outside of the classroom, and they can develop rich, dynamic theories of genres and written communication. Ann Johns has written extensively on genre‐based pedagogies in undergraduate‐level writing classrooms (e.g., Johns, 1997, 2008), illustrating how students can engage in ethnographic research in order to learn more about the sociorhetorical dimensions of the genres that they encounter. However, genre‐based pedagogy is most popular at the very advanced, discipline‐specific levels of academic writing as well as in business and legal English writing courses. Genre‐based teaching has been critiqued for reinforcing existing norms, and many have acknowledged the danger that genres may be presented as static, teachable forms if instructors are not themselves familiar with the theoretical underpinnings of a genre‐based approach. Nevertheless, the approach continues to be attractive to LSP practitioners who aid student writers in developing facility with socially situated forms of writing.

Like genre‐based pedagogy, corpus‐based approaches to teaching LSP writing are guided by the assumption that the process of discovery, through interaction with authentic language and genres, is valuable for learning. Corpus‐based pedagogy is an example of data‐driven learning (DDL); in some cases, it may be able to go even further than genre‐based pedagogy in identifying unintuitive language patterns. In LSP, corpora are often used to investigate and learn academic vocabulary, but they can also be used to help students develop a greater awareness of a specialized discourse. As Flowerdew (2015) notes, a bottom‐up teaching approach focused on text features can be productively paired with a top‐down approach focusing on genre move structures. In a 2007 special issue of Journal of English for Academic Purposes, several authors offer examples of corpus‐based pedagogy in EAP. One such example is Hafner and Candlin's (2007) study of law students in Hong Kong, who learned to use a corpus of legal texts as a resource for writing. The authors show that a minority of students made use of the resource on their own, but that those who did tended to use it to examine full‐length texts as models rather than analyzing the use patterns of specific lexical features.

Despite the potential benefits of corpus‐based teaching, the approach is not without drawbacks. Unlike genre‐based pedagogy, a corpus‐based approach requires an electronic collection of texts and access to hardware and software. Both teachers and students need to learn to use the software comfortably, which itself takes time. In some cases, teachers carry out the analyses themselves and then share findings with students. While such an approach saves time and potential frustration for students, the important element of learner‐driven discovery is lost. In some cases, corpus‐driven analysis may indeed be best suited for teachers, course developers, and textbook writers, rather than for students. One such example is Robinson and Stoller's (2008) textbook Write Like a Chemist, which draws on extensive corpus‐based analysis of chemistry writing to take students through a “read–analyze–write” sequence. Another approach is to present corpus data in simplified form to students for analysis rather than requiring them to learn concordancers or other tools (e.g., Poole, 2016).

As consciousness‐raising approaches, genre‐ and corpus‐based pedagogy are easily adaptable to different LSP settings. In contrast, content‐based pedagogy is primarily found in academic contexts. In content‐based instruction (CBI), students simultaneously learn content and language, simulating the kind of learning that takes place in academic classrooms. Rather than the content taking on a peripheral role as a means for practicing the target language, content is front and center in a CBI classroom; language instruction helps students access and process the content. Content‐based classrooms are characterized by integration of language skills through scaffolded, content‐driven tasks. As such, CBI courses can go far in simulating and practicing the kinds of tasks and demands students face in their academic courses. Key challenges relate to balancing language and content and the time demands placed on teachers in designing course materials (Frodeson, 2017).

As described previously, LSP research has shown an increasing acceptance of critical perspectives; this trend is echoed in LSP pedagogy, with a greater interest in critical LSP pedagogy visible in the early 21st century. An early, and still significant, source on critical LSP is found in Benesch's (2001) Critical English for Academic Purposes. Integrating theoretical underpinnings and practical applications, Benesch demonstrates how a critical approach can engage students in academic tasks while reflecting on and interrogating the social conditions that the tasks assume and reinforce. In the introduction to a 2009 special issue of Journal of English for Academic Purposes focusing on critical EAP, Benesch (2009) explains that “critical EAP considers hierarchical arrangements in the societies and institutions in which EAP takes place, examining power relations and their reciprocal relationship to the various players and materials involved” (p. 81). As issues such as learner identity, globalization, and the spread of English as a language of business, research, and education gain increased attention in language learning scholarship in general and in LSP in particular, critical pedagogy is likely to take on a growing presence in LSP writing.

SEE ALSO: English for Business; Genre and Discourse Analysis in Language for Specific Purposes