Margaret van Naerssen is Ph.D., Coordinator of the Cultural & Linguist Diversity Program  in College of Graduate Studies at Immaculata University (Pennsylvania, USA). Her areas of interest include English for Specific Purposes, Second Language Acquisition, Language Assessment, and Forensic Linguistics.

FASP provides both a way of accessing the languages of learners' specializations, and certain basic « nutrition » for language acquisition. The « nutritional » needs of learners in a general academic language course differ from those in Language for Specific Purposes courses.  While certain underlying « nutritional » needs are similar, special diets might be required for more narrowly defined needs.  Thus, the types of reading will differ.

To select and develop the most appropriate "meals" for our learners, we need to:

• understand how certain underlying characteristics of such readings can promote language acquisition;
• identify the general or specific needs of learners.

 Learners can also "cook up" additional readings. T

Two examples of readings are used: short stories of medical detection written by a single author and excerpts from a journal of satire to support reading, e.g., moves within certain genres in science and technology.