Student presentations as a means of teaching and learning English for Specific Purposes: an action research study

ABSTRACT

With China’s rising role in the global economic market, both local and international employers seek graduates with well-developed communication skills in at least one additional language to complement their specific knowledge and abilities. University graduates are taught English for Specific Purposes (ESP) within their particular disciplines. This article reflects on the first author’s action research, using student presentations as a pedagogical practice with first year postgraduate students not majoring in English in a Chinese university. The authors propose that ESP pedagogy needs to progress beyond the monological Chinese Confucian model of education to a dialogic, inclusive, and hospitable model of the classroom as an imagined third space where creative, critical thinking is encouraged. This research aims to contribute to Chinese ESP pedagogy, to inform international educators of developments in the education of graduates for internationalized business practice, and to contribute to the global discourse on ESP pedagogy.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese postgraduate students
• student presentations
• ESP pedagogy
• dialogic teaching
• action research

Acknowledgments

Our special thanks go to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this article. We also thank these students and my colleagues for their support for this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Bin Ai http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7952-8390

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Fund for Social Sciences under [grant number 16BYY178].