Enacting Critical Global Literacy through ESG in a Business Language Course

Presented During:

Saturday, November 21, 2026: 5:00 PM - 5:15 PM CST
Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center  
Room: Room 213A  

Proposal No:

3025 

Type:

Practice-Oriented Paper 

Applicable Language:

Korean 

Language of Presentation:

English 

Lead Presenter:

Haewon Cho  
University of Pennsylvania

Submitter:

Eunae Kim  
University of Miami

Additional Presenter:

Eunae Kim  
University of Miami

Content and Purpose:

In business-focused Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) courses, critical global literacies (Yoon et al., 2018), beyond traditional literacy skills and intercultural competence, are increasingly essential for students' career readiness. This presentation shows how critical global literacies were enacted in a Korean for business course at a university through an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) project, which explored how global economic practices, power relations, and ethical responsibilities relate to real-world business discourse. Students critically analyzed corporate ESG cases, identified focus areas and potential limitations, and developed business proposals addressing sustainability and social responsibility. By linking corporate actions to global issues and students' lives, the project fostered critical analysis, ethical awareness, and socially responsible decision-making, offering insights for incorporating critical global business literacy into language curricula.

Outcomes:

Participants, particularly those less familiar with business contexts, will gain experience working with corporate ESG reports as instructional materials and will be able to use them as entry points to concretely introduce and contextualize global business discourse in LSP courses.

Participants will be able to design ESG-based instructional tasks integrating language learning with critical analysis of corporate discourse, sustainability, and social responsibility, and to articulate the linguistic, analytical, and ethical learning outcomes these tasks support in business-related LSP contexts.

Participants will develop pedagogical expertise in critical global literacy and apply this framework in their courses to support globally situated meaning-making across diverse world language contexts.

Program Guide Description:

This presentation illustrates how critical global literacies are enacted in a Korean for Business course through an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) project. It offers practical insights for world language educators to support students' global awareness, global connections, critical text analysis, and social action.

Audience Level:

Post-Secondary

Keywords:

Curriculum and Instruction