Professor Wenli Tsou
Full Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages & Literature, and currently Director of the Foreign Language Center at National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. She received her PhD in Foreign and Second Language Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo, U.S
About
Professor Wenli Tsou is a Full Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages & Literature, and currently Director of the Foreign Language Center at National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. She received her PhD in Foreign and Second Language Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo, U.S. She is a key promoter in Taiwan for bilingual education, ESP and EMI. Commissioned by the Taiwan MOE, she has set up in-service professional development programs for bilingual teachers from K-12 as well as ESP and EMI in higher education. Her most current research has focused on the links between disciplinary literacy and translanguaging of bilingual education and EMI. She is particularly interested in how these emerging theories and practices can be glocalized in Taiwan.
ESP Professional Development Design: A Disciplinary Literacy Approach through ESP-EMI Collaboration
This presentation reports on Taiwan’s experience as we develop a collaborative model aligning English medium instruction (EMI) professional development (PD) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) PD through a disciplinary literacy (DL) approach. The design recognizes that ESP-EMI collaboration is crucial because the nature of disciplinary literacy training transcends the limits of traditional subject matter boundaries. We propose that instruction in DL should be a shared responsibility as university students develop DL skills for their specialized disciplines. Taiwan’s ESP PD design is a response to the EMI efforts. Since the Ministry of Education in Taiwan announced the bilingual education policy in 2018, many universities have introduced EMI programs. To support the implementation, the Ministry has commissioned National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) to develop and conduct EMI PD for content specialists since 2022. Since its launch, the EMI PD has trained more than 600 lecturers. In 2024, to support EMI, an ESP PD was launched to prepare language specialists to collaborate with EMI lecturers. The ESP PD focuses on developing discipline-specific language awareness of ESP instructors so they can identify language demands to help students achieve EMI intended learning outcomes (ILOs). For this purpose, we developed an DL-ESAP approach to highlight the role of disciplinary literacy development in university language education. The aim is that students acquire the specialized forms of language required to participate successfully in the various disciplines. Unlike the traditional ESP approach, where learning needs are determined through surveys, interviews, and observations of academic and career contexts, the DL-ESAP model highlights the vital role of ESP-EMI collaboration in preparing students for academic success.