ESP curriculum design for Engineering: A decade of innovation and challenges at HKU

Abstract

<p>In higher education, the advantages of integrating English teaching and disciplinary content have been emphasized under the names of English Across the Curriculum (EAC) (Bazerman et al., 2005; Morrison et al., 2021), disciplinary literacy (Hyland, 2012; Nesi & Gardner, 2012) and Learning-to-Write/Writing-to-Learn (Manchón, 2011). Since the launch of the four-year university curriculum in Hong Kong in 2012, Hong Kong University (HKU) has been offering various English-in-the-Discipline (ED) courses to six engineering departments/programmes and 500+ engineering undergraduates annually. Through an ethnographic lens, I will discuss the innovations and challenges in designing and deploying the ED engineering curriculum in the past 10 years. This emic perspective is based on liaising with teachers and students in engineering, analysis of spoken and textual assignments, working with ESP teachers, review of literature in engineering pedagogy and my reflection as an engineer (former), ESP teacher and a programme coordinator. Specifically, I will discuss how to take advantage of the ‘loosely-coupled’ model and ‘closely-coupled’ model in faculty engagement, integrate genre-based and process-based approaches in curriculum design, and leverage technical presentation to facilitate the teaching of technical writing.<br></p>