As English communication is vital for academic communities and workplaces in globalized society, learners seek for opportunities to learn English with specific needs for their studies and work. In order to make these learners equip with the necessary English communicative competence in the desired contexts, English teaching professionals and researchers now need to pay close attention to learners' specific needs considering the context of discourse and the features of discourse community. The main purpose of the current study is to present an overview of ESP research in English Teaching for 50 years and to provide directions for the future research. In particular, this paper (a) discusses the features of ESP; (b） overviews ESP research articles published in English for Specific Purposes from 1986 to 2014; (c) presents current status of ESP research in English Teaching; and (d) suggests topics for ESP research in Korea for the future.

A continuing challenge for English educators and policy makers in Korea is how to provide the right amount of good English education in an effective and efficient way, to help achieve the needed level of English communication skills. No efforts would turn out successful if the amount and the quality of public English education did not meet people's expectations. In order to plan and implement successful English education policies, it is necessary to figure out what kind of English education and how much of it are needed for Korean people. The current study aims to investigate what levels of English speaking proficiency Korean people perceive they need. The study first reviews some widely-used international English oral proficiency standards, then, compares those with the level descriptions of the Korea’s national curriculum of English. To gather information on the current level of English speaking proficiency, and the expected level of English speaking proficiency, 356 teachers (123 elementary school, 114 middle school, 119 high school), 696 students (179 elementary school, 222 middle school, 295 high school), and 650 parents (164 elementary, 212 middle school, 274 high school) from all the 16 district education authorities, were surveyed and interviewed. The results are presented with the discussion of the future directions of English education in Korea.

The current study proposes the directions of oral communication education for adult learners. It reports the preliminary results of a survey into the workplace oral communication uses of business employees. A questionnaire was developed and administered to 121 employees working at 6 different companies. The questionnaire was constructed based on the oral communication forms, adapted and modified from the oral communication forms categorized by Crosling & Ward (2002). The oral communication forms within the organization were categorized into communication (1) with similar status staff, (2) with supervisors, (3) with lesser status staff, (4) in team works, and (5) in meetings. The most frequently occurring form of oral communication at work was 'communicating for networking' for similar status staff; 'following instructions and responding orally' for supervisors; 'informal conversation' for lesser status staff; 'participating in discussions' for teamwork'; and 'communicating for networking' for meetings. On the other hand, the most difficult form of oral communication at work was 'persuading' for similar status staff, for supervisors, for lesser status staff, and for meetings; and 'chairing and leading discussions' for teamwork. Implications for oral communication education are discussed in light of these findings.

Motivation is one of the main determinants in the success of attaining a foreign language. Accordingly, there has been a considerable amount of research on L2 motivation in the last three decades. These studies on L2 motivation, however, tend to depend heavily on quantitative approach rather than qualitative approach regardless of educational context. Although we have gained our knowledge on relationships among motivational factors, we do not have enough evidence to understand Korean learners’ L2 motivational ups and downs in a classroom foreign language learning. Suspending our current beliefs about L2 motivation, and investigating what facilitate, debilitate, and sustain learners’ motivation in a Korean classroom will provide us invaluable insights to understand the nature of L2 motivation. The purpose of this paper is to find out factors that is facilitating, debilitating, and maintaining learners’ motivation in an ESP classroom in a university. The participants were 115 university students enrolled in a business English class. The participants’ responses on the open-ended questionnaire were analyzed by the NUD*IST program (V.4.0). There seem to be some difference in facilitating, debilitating, sustaining motivations in learning English in classroom. Classroom implications are discussed in light of these findings.