1 Introduction

We discussed the increasing demand for international talents and the acceleration of higher education reform in Chinese universities under the background of national economic development and comprehensive national strength enhancement. The "Guidelines for College English Teaching (2020)" emphasizes the importance of combining subject content with language teaching objectives, highlighting the position of ESP in college English teaching. The article reviews the differences between ESP and EGP, points out the debates about ESP and EGP in the reform of college English teaching, and the different views of scholars on the positioning of ESP. The article also outlines the origin, definition, development, and positioning of ESP, and explores the changes in its research content and teaching methods, aiming to promote the application and development of ESP in language teaching.

Definition, Research, and Teaching Methods of Traditional ESP

ESP originated in the late 1960s to meet the specific needs of non-native English speaking students studying and working in English speaking countries. It is considered a branch of second language teaching that focuses on teaching, needs analysis, text analysis, and effective communication among students in specific tasks. The definition of ESP emphasizes its role as an English course aimed at addressing students' English learning and work-related needs. Traditional ESP teaching methods and materials are different from general English teaching. ESP teachers usually need to develop internal materials to meet the needs of specific student groups. ESP teaching emphasizes the concept of "learning centered" and places high demands on teachers, who need to participate in the development of courses and textbooks. Traditional ESP research focuses on the needs of teaching and learning, and researchers typically use the language of interest in teaching and learning as a research motivation. However, there is still no close connection between ESP research and teaching, partly due to teachers' limited familiarity with professional content and insufficient research on the application of related teaching methods.

3. Modern ESP positioning, research content, and teaching methods

The development of modern ESP (English for Specific Purposes) has surpassed the traditional scope of teaching and become a field that combines theory and practice. It not only focuses on teaching, but also involves research paradigms, corpus construction, and the expansion of language theory. Basturkmen (2021) defines modern ESP as a research field based on theory and experience, aimed at determining the language features and pedagogical nature of professional English variants, and understanding how language research can be conducted in both teaching and natural contexts. ESP has played an important role in linguistic research, providing the latest language descriptions, and its unique learning perspective emphasizes that students should acquire language features in academic or workplace discourse.

4 Conclusion

The development of contemporary ESP has gone beyond traditional teaching and material categories, becoming a specialized field based on linguistic theory. The study of its language features has promoted the development of linguistics, such as emerging fields such as ecological linguistics and economic linguistics. The understanding of ESP should be broader and more inclusive, and should not be limited to debates on disciplinary content.