ESP Unplugged: No Longer Business As Usual
In this episode, listen to award-winning ELT business strategist and mentor Rachael Roberts, who gave the closing plenary at the 2026 IATEFL conference in Brighton. Rachael talks to Ioana Cretu about reactions to the plenary, the value teachers add, their obvious discomfort with visibility and marketing, and how economic fragility is such a source of anxiety in the world of ELT. The conversation is also about directions forward that acknowledge the messiness and unpredictability of human interactions in the age of generative AI. Listen to it here.
ESPSIG Mark Krzanowski Scholarship winner 2027: Tatiana Beinikova
We are delighted to announce the Mark Krzanowski scholarship winner for Birmingham 2027 is Tatiana Beinikova, an ESL/EFL educator with over five years of experience teaching English across Russia and China. Tatiana will be presenting a workshop at the ESPSIG PCE in Birmingham drawing on her experience teaching Business English and Translation students at a Chinese university. She will focus on how the standard university curriculum exposes learners to only a narrow set of “standard” native accents, though her learners are actually preparing for a workplace where most of their English-speaking communication will be with other non-native speakers, in a wide range of accents. Find out more about Tatiana here.
Researching ESP: Approaches and Methods: 14 November 2026
Block your dates for the second joint event by ESPSIG in 2026. This time we are collaborating with the IATEFL Research Special Interest Group. The topic is ‘Researching ESP: Approaches and Methods’, where members will share a variety of research methods for inquiry into ESP practice. Check the following link for details. Watch this space for more information. For questions, please contact the organizing committee via [email protected].
Call for Contributions: ESPSIG journal
ESPSIG is inviting article submissions for its journal ‘Professional and Academic English’, in any area of academic, professional and occupational English, and English Medium Instruction. We also invite shorter reports and articles that give insights into teaching and classroom practice as well as book reviews on topics of relevance, to the readership of the journal.
Postgraduate students and researchers are also encouraged to submit their work for consideration in the Postgraduate Research section of the journal. Submissions should be sent in Word format by e-mail attachment to [email protected]. Submission guidelines can be found here.
Block the Date: ESPSIG Open Forum on 12 December 2026
The team is working hard on ESPSIG’s annual, online event where members and non-members do pop-up presentations, meet the Committee members, hear about ESPSIG’s plans for upcoming events and more. Rich learning exchanges happen from across the work. Watch this space for more information.