Book excerpt: Introducing English for Specific Purposes presents the key concepts and practices of ESP in a modern, balanced, and comprehensive way. This book defines ESP and shows how the approach plays a crucial role in the world of English language teaching. Explaining how needs analysis, language and learning objectives, materials and methods, and evaluation combine to form the four main pillars of ESP, the book includes: practical examples that illustrate how the core theories and practices of ESP can be applied in real-world academic and occupational settings; discussion of some of the most hotly debated issues in ESP; insights on how ESP courses can be organized and integrated to form a complete program; reflection boxes, practical tasks, extension research questions, and resources for further reading in each chapter. Introducing English for Specific Purposes serves as an ideal textbook for graduate and advanced undergraduate students studying courses on English for Specific Purposes or English for Academic Purposes, as part of degrees in English for Specific Purposes, Education, ELT, Applied Linguistics, TESOL or TEFL. This comprehensive publication is also an invaluable reference resource for pre-service and in-service teachers of ESP, and for English program managers and administrators.