IN recent years, an increasing number of Japanese universities have been focusing on an area of teaching called “English for specific purposes” (ESP), The Daily Yomiuri has reported.
Mukogawa Women’s University, for example, offers a course focusing on English used in the pharmaceutical area, which is mandatory for juniors majoring in the field. Osaka Institute of Technology has developed ESP programs for sophomores and seniors in engineering or intellectual property rights.
Moreover, some postgraduate programs use ESP courses as a means of training future researchers. Osaka University, for example, first introduced an ESP program in 2006 for undergraduates in the engineering department. Last year, the institution expanded the method to its graduate students, teaching them useful terms and guidelines for writing academic papers. “There are few researchers in Japan that can promote their own academic findings in English,” professor Kiichi Fukui, at Osaka University, said. “We can’t get ahead of the international competition if we just conduct experiments without communicating with the outside world.”
