ESP in Spain: goals, achievements and prospects

This paper aims to describe the development of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) as specialised language study and research at tertiary level in Spain over the past twenty years. The year 1992 is chosen as a starting point because AELFE, the Association of Languages for Specific Purposes, was founded in Madrid at the time. As more members from other countries have joined in, this Association has served as an academic landmark for the development of ESP within the umbrella of applied linguistics. ESP has reflected the social changes, educational shifts, linguistic trends, and technological innovations involved in academic and professional contexts. The evolution of the specialised language practitioner’s scenarios and communicative situations has turned ESP into a lively and stimulating action, though not lacking in controversy, e.g., a general increase in the ESP teacher’s workload. Different lines of work and research have been followed from the inception of AELFE until the implementation of the Bologna agreement in our universities. The examination of such variables is conducted in the light of some quantitative and qualitative findings.

The impact of sustainable construction and knowledge management on sustainability goals. A review of the venezuelan renewable energy sector

The recognition of the relevance of energy, especially of the renewable energies generated by the sun, water, wind, tides, modern biomass or thermal is growing significantly in the global society based on the possibility it has to improve societies′ quality of life, to support poverty reduction and sustainable development. Renewable energy, and mainly the energy generated by large hydropower generation projects that supply most of the renewable energy consumed by developing countries, requires many technical, legal, financial and social complex processes sustained by innovations and valuable knowledge. Besides these efforts, renewable energy requires a solid infrastructure to generate and distribute the energy resources needed to solve the basic needs of society. This demands a proper construction performance to deliver the energy projects planned according to specifications and respecting environmental and social concerns, which implies the observance of sustainable construction guidelines. But construction projects are complex and demanding and frequently face time and cost overruns that may cause negative impacts on the initial planning and thus on society. The renewable energy issue and the large renewable energy power generation and distribution projects are particularly significant for developing countries and for Latin America in particular, as this region concentrates an important hydropower potential and installed capacity. Using as references the performance of Venezuelan large hydropower generation projects and the Guri dam construction, this research evaluates the tight relationship existing between sustainable construction and knowledge management and their impact to achieve sustainability goals. The knowledge management processes are proposed as a basic strategy to allow learning from successes and failures obtained in previous projects and transform the enhancement opportunites into actions to improve the performance of the renewable energy power generation and distribution projects.