Језик - струка - наука 2021 Keywords: English for specific purposes, EMI, integrated curriculum, preschool and primary school teachers, young learners. All rights reserved application/pdf 84147 bytes Друштво за стране језике и књижевности Србије ESP – The Essential Stepping Stone to a Teaching Career Foreign languages for general and specific purposes make an essential part of one’s academic education and are indispensable to young professionals today. Unlike second-language contexts, foreign-language settings do not necessarily imply the use of a foreign language as the medium of instruction. This paper presents ESP as a springboard course in the academic education of the future preschool and primary school teachers who aspire to teach English to young learners. Since the primary area of study of these gifted students is not linguistics or philology, the fact that a significant part of their university education is conducted in English as a medium of instruction adds relevance to ESP as an essential stepping stone in their professional training. Drawing on the students’ general EL knowledge, and introducing them to the basic pedagogical, psychological and didactic principles of teaching, their ESP course further evolves into a comprehensive programme of study and professional training, permiating all their other courses conducted in English and complementing their core curriculum subjects taught in the native language. Besides the integrated knowledge and skills, these students are provided with bilingual academic experience they will be able to transfer to young learners once they become in-service English language teachers. info:eu-repo/semantics/conferenceProceedings https://phaidrabg.bg.ac.rs/o:26118 Јанковић, Наташа eng