Characteristics of Good ESP Proposals
Here are a few characteristics that appear to be common to winning proposals submitted
to the ESP Interest Section. Use this to guide you when you write
your ESP proposals for TESOL conventions.
Good ESP proposals...
- identify a genuine problem, concern, or interest in the field of ESP
- offer NEW and USEFUL information to ESP professionals to solve the
problem, address the concern, or respond to the interest
- demonstrate familiarity with previous ESP work in similar or related
areas via brief explanations and/or 1-3 pertinent citations
- state clearly what the speaker(s) will say and do
- identify the target audience
- are well-written, showing sophistication in their organization, sentence
construction, choice of vocabulary, and economy of language
- employ third-person future tense (e.g., The presenter will describe...)
- contain no grammatical or spelling errors
- are headed by an interesting and appropriate title (seven words or
less and contain no colons)
- carefully follow all the submission requirements listed in TESOL's
Call for Participation
In other words, good ESP proposals give referees sufficient evidence
that the presenters are experts on their topics and amply able to offer conference attendees genuinely useful
information in a professional manner. Most conference attendees pay a
great deal of money to attend TESOL conferences and, thus, want to hear
presentations worthy of the expense. Poorly prepared presentations
lacking significant content disappoint listeners and spoil good
conferences. ESP proposal readers try to identify superior
presentations that will benefit the TESOL conference as well as spot
problematic ones that are likely to ruin the program.
Sample Proposals from TESOL 2000: HERE
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