특수목적영어연구:

The goal of the present study is to investigate research directions of ESP papers published in South Korea since 1990 to the present. A total of 153 research articles and dissertations related to English for business and occupational purposes (EOP) were reviewed with respect to research topics, disciplines and methodologies, to examine which features were focused on and to which directions research papers were oriented. The analysis showed that more than half of papers were published since 2011, implying less active academic discussions on EOP before then. The results indicated that the most frequently explored topic is business English for office work, followed by engineering/IT English. Regarding research disciplines, EOP research was conducted on needs analysis and curriculum development mostly, using quantitative rather than qualitative research methods. Finally, the keyword analysis was carried out using WordSmith Tools(6.0), with the texts extracted from English abstracts of 153 papers. Through the keyword analysis, a total 535 keywords were identified and the most 50 prominent words (keyword) were shown to be strongly related to the words such as, job, business, vocation and workplace. Also the analysis showed that most of words in the keyword list were directly relevant to research topics, disciplines, and methodologies. Based on the findings, suggestions such as 1) necessity for expansion in EOP research topics and disciplines, and 2) need for development of EOP curriculum through collaboration between specialists in workplace and EOP practitioners, are discussed for better implementing ESP/EOP teaching into a classroom. (246 words)