ESP is defined differently depending on the field of study and the perspective of the researcher. Abuklaish (2014) defines ESP as a branch of English Language Teaching (ELT), which aims to develop the ability of language learners with specific purposes to communicate successfully in contexts. The importance of ESP has increased since the 1980s due to the increasing demand for vocational education and training around the world, which has led to a widespread change in the perception of English as a language needed not only for academic purposes, but also for communication in various professions. Belcher (2006) categorized ESP according to the specific purposes of English in different fields, including English for Academic Purposes (EAP), English for General Purposes (EGP), and English for Occupational Purposes (EOP). According to Bloch (2013), the goals and content of the course, which are the main characteristics of ESP instruction, are determined by the learner’s needs. Since the learner’s needs determine the area of specialization, the analysis of the learner’s needs is the most important and necessary step in the design of an ESP instruction; therefore, the goals, content, materials, and activities are determined by the results of the needs analysis.

According to the characteristics of ESP learners, they are non-native speakers of English, learners of English as a foreign language, adult learners preparing for employment and careers, and have needs for intercultural communication, commercial transactions, and information exchange (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). Harding (2007) characterized the role of the teacher and the learner in an ESP classroom as follows: The ESP teacher must act as both instructor and language consultant, design lessons, provide instructional materials, maintain a collaborative relationship with subject teachers, and assess learner performance. ESP learners have additional goals in addition to language learning. In addition, ESP learners who have not been successful as language learners may have vocational or job-related goals rather than language-related goals. For those who actually have jobs, ESP classes may be seen as on-the-job training, so it is significant that the English proficiency of ESP learners may not be appropriate for leveled classes.

Since the objectives and materials of the course are prepared in accordance with the needs analysis of ESP learners, the instruction is designed with learner-centered and customized classroom activities. In addition, genre-based and corpus-based instructional designs are often used to help learners acquire language expressions that are relevant to the areas in which they need to use English effectively (Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998). Thus, ESP instruction should focus on the vocabulary, language skills, and genres of the field in which learners want to use English. In Indonesia, English is a compulsory subject for non-English majors, and the purpose of teaching English to students is to enable them to cope with all English situations related to their field of specialization. For example, geography and engineering students need English to understand instructions, tutorials, and operating procedures of certain equipment written in English (Pegrum et al., 2022).

Barnard and Zemach (2003) described the following considerations in the development and use of ESP instructional materials. First, use materials that incorporate the background, experience, and knowledge of the ESP discipline. Second, develop materials according to the guidelines of the curriculum. Third, make sure that the materials allow for personal preferences. Fourth, use and develop materials that provide guidance and templates to help less experienced teachers. Fifth, ideally design materials to allow for partial modifications. According to Hutchins and Waters (1987), the considerations for developing ESP materials are “input,” “topic,” “language,” and “task”. The “input” is any communicative data such as texts, videos, dialogues, etc. that relate to the identified needs and provide new language activities, models of correct language use. The “topic” refers to the opportunities for learners to use their information in the communicative process, their language skills and their existing knowledge of the language and subject matter. The “language” emphasizes the importance of language use as the ultimate purpose of teaching English as a second language, and the “task” is the most important factor in the development of English as a second language materials, and communicative tasks are derived from language input, topics, and language activities.

Since the turn of the 20th century, technology has become both a traditional language learning tool and a new communication space in the ESP classroom (Bloch, 2013). In order to maximize student engagement and immersion in language learning, ESP teachers want to use a variety of technologies in their ESP classes to maximize student engagement in language learning. It is believed that technology provides an environment where ESP instructors and learners can interact, which plays an important role in engagement and immersion in ESP learning. For effective ESP education, it is necessary to provide a platform to increase the availability of digital educational materials so that students can learn anytime and anywhere without the constraints of location and time (Bhattacharaya, 2014). Technology plays an important role in ESP education, and digital literacy is needed to optimize the use of technology in ESP to develop strategies for learning the language and to help students learn the language more easily. Digital materials include words, pictures, cartoons, and audiovisual films that are converted into digitized forms (Yang et al., 2014). In China, English language learning is done through the ESP linguistic corpus and emphasizes the application of e-portfolios and apps to establish an assessment test system to standardize the ESP language assessment system and set ESP competence standards (Zhu, 2020). Asmali (2018) argued that the use of technology in ESP classes can help facilitate interaction and communication activities that are relevant to learners’ future careers, and the technology-based ESP curricula can help customize learners’ needs by providing opportunities to practice authentic language expressions used in the workplace. Bloch (2013) argued that technology in ESP classrooms is a tool for language learning and a mediator in the creation of new communication, as it provides activities that go beyond the boundaries of classroom activities. The Internet can provide learners with authentic materials, create learning content tailored to learners’ needs, and increase learner satisfaction. The advancement of technology in language learning has brought many changes to all education, including massive open online courses (MOOCs), learning management systems (LMSs), cloud technology, and artificial intelligence (AI) systems (Teng & Wang, 2021). Mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) apps (e.g., bilingual dictionaries, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube) have been used as tools to facilitate English language learning (Ahmed et al., 2013). In addition, technology can promote learner autonomy, so integrating technology into the ESP curriculum provides learners with a variety of learning opportunities and benefits.

Technology in an educational context means embedding it in content, transforming information into knowledge, and enabling teaching, learning, and communication between instructors and learners. The model of technologyenhanced instruction is called Technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowledge (TPACK), proposed by Mishra and Koehler (2006), in which technology, pedagogy and content knowledge are integrated into instruction based on the context of the subject matter, the learners, the teacher and the classroom. It is seen as a model in which technology is used not as an instructional tool or medium, but as a subject matter objective. In terms of traditional English language teaching, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a dual-focus approach because it specifically aims to teach both the target language and the subject matter (content) at the same time. Thus, it’s expected that students will master both the language and the content to a certain level (Juan-Garau & Salazar-Noguera, 2015). CLIL and ESP have in common the use of different types of authentic materials, but they differ in how language and content influence instructional design and teaching. While ESP tends to be driven by specific tasks, CLIL is characterized by a variety of content aligned with language goals (Vega & Moscoso, 2019). Mudure-Jacob (1997) argued that digital literacy has a positive impact on ESP teaching because ESP students have access to virtually unlimited information and can use a variety of devices in the extended classroom. To take full advantage of this, students need a sufficient level of digital literacy to effectively use digital tools, and this requires significant pedagogical support to equip them with digital literacy (Chang et al., 2024).

To design the ESP instruction based on digital literacy, various components of digital literacy are proposed, which are functional skills, critical thinking and evaluation, and the ability to locate and select information. ESP learners also need a technical understanding of creativity, cultural and social understanding, collaboration, effective communication, and e-safety competencies (Hague & Payton, 2010). Anggini and Rodliyah (2020) suggested that it is necessary to embed digital literacy into the existing curriculum through appropriate selection of digital activities. Pegrum et al. (2022) introduced three approaches to integrating digital literacy into the curriculum, which are the coursebook-driven approach, the topic-driven approach, and the digital literacy-driven approach. The coursebookdriven approach involves integrating digital literacy into the curriculum of existing textbooks, while the topic-driven approach involves integrating digital literacy into less structured lessons. The digital literacies-driven approach is the use of digital literacies as an instructional design itself. The coursebook-driven approach involves teaching specific digital literacy activities in a given course and is the most basic and straightforward way to begin integrating digital literacy into the curriculum. In a coursebook-driven approach, teachers teach digital literacy activities that are relevant to the content of each course. This approach requires teachers to have a certain level of digital literacy skills and also requires consideration of pedagogical factors. In a topic-driven approach, teachers don’t need to have a specific textbook or curriculum; instead, they find out what students are interested in and organize instructional activities around different topics. Therefore, teachers need to consider a combination of personal and educational factors. If students are interested in politics, current events, careers, debates and discussions, it’s permissible to tailor the instructions accordingly. Therefore, it is important to choose a digital literacy activity that is relevant to the topic being discussed in class. Finally, a digital literacies-driven approach is one in which learners develop literacies through the process of creating digital literacy products rather than through a series of disjointed lessons. It requires the analysis of learner factors and the provision of digital factors in classroom activities. In designing digital literacybased ESP instruction, learners’ needs and digital literacy activities should be added to the curriculum with the following approaches: coursebook-driven, topic-driven, and digital literacies-driven approaches, depending on the goals of instruction by considering pedagogical factors, personal factors, and digital factors (Pegrum et al., 2022). When applying digital literacy activities in the classroom, it is necessary to design digital literacy classroom activities by identifying learners’ competency levels through digital literacy level diagnosis.

The participants in this study are enrolled in tourism English courses. The demographic characteristics of the participants were described by grade, gender, and nationality. Grades were categorized as 1st to 4th grade, gender was categorized as male and female, and nationality was categorized as Korean and international students. The participants are 4th graders (65%, n = 60), 3rd graders (32%, n = 30), and 2nd graders (0.2%, n = 2). In terms of gender, 69% of the participants were female (n = 64), while 31% were male (n = 28). The nationality of the participants was reported as Korean (59%, n = 55) and international students (41%, n = 47). Before the survey was conducted, the purpose of the study and the content of the questionnaire were explained to the participants. Of the collected questionnaires, a total of 92 surveys were used for analysis, excluding surveys that were deemed incomplete or compromised reliability.

In order to propose the digital literacy based instruction for ESP tourism English learners, the DBR approach (McKenney & Reeves, 2012) was adopted in this study. As shown in Figure 1, DBR is a problem solving instructional design research approach that involves diagnosing a problem and then designing and refining lessons to solve the problem through the phases of exploration, construction, and reflection. For this study, the exploration phase diagnosed participants’ digital literacy levels, the construction phase designed and implemented the digital literacybased ESP instruction, and the reflection phase analyzed participants’ reflective journals.

For research question 1, the questionnaire of Knowledge Information Processing Competency (KIPC; Jang et al., 2020) was administered to diagnose the level of digital literacy of the participants at the beginning of the semester. A total of 25 items were used for explanation, which were divided into three competencies; 1) 11 items for knowledge and information collection competency, 2) 6 items for knowledge and information processing competency, and 3) 8 items for knowledge and information utilization competency. Each item was measured on a 5-point Likert scale. Table 1 shows the details of the KIPC questionnaire.

For the collected data, the frequency analysis was conducted to understand the demographic characteristics of the participants and analyze the detailed items of KIPC. For the research question 2, the study reviewed the digital literacy related courses and approaches and proposed the digital literacy activities for ESP tourism English learners to facilitate their digital literacy level. For research question 3, self-reported reflective journals were collected at the end of the semester, and analyzed through word-cloud analysis using Orange3-3. The reflective journals consisted of 10 items with the open-ended format, the items are as follows; 1) Did you actively participate in the activity? 2) Did you make comments or behaviors that contributed to the activity? 3) Did you actively listen to others? 4) Did you analyze the problem from multiple perspectives? 5) Did you derive solutions/ideas logically? 6) Did you provide critical and creative input? 7) Did you present your work with integrity? 8) Did you attempt to gather and utilize a variety of digital information? 9) Did you take self-directed learning? and 10) Did you actively interact online?

In the first phase of DBR, learners’ digital literacy was diagnosed through the KIPC survey. According to Table 2, among the three categories of KIPC, tourism English learners showed the highest competency in collecting knowledge and information (M = 3.89), while processing knowledge and information (M = 3.80) and utilizing knowledge and information (M = 3.80) were equally ranked second. Tourism English learners have difficulty in processing and using collected digital knowledge and information, while they are more free in using digital knowledge and information collection. However, the difference in mean scores was not significant, so subcategories will be analyzed for further investigation.

In Table 3, in the results of seven subcategories of KIPC, selecting media (M = 3.93) in collecting digital knowledge and information was reported as the highest competency, while analysis of processing digital knowledge and information (M = 3.79) and producing in utilizing digital knowledge and information (M = 3.79) were reported as the lowest competency. In the analysis of 25 items of KIPC, identifying the characteristics and strengths and weaknesses of media information (M = 4.00) and setting the scope of data collection and information search (M = 4.00) was the highest KIPC, while systematic organization of collected data (M = 3.65) was recognized as the lowest KIPC for tourism English learners.

The present study proposes the design of ESP instruction based on digital literacy following the phases of exploration, construction, and reflection of the DBR approach. In the exploration phase, problems are diagnosed and digital literacy activities are planned as a solution. The level of digital literacy was measured by KIPC. As shown in Table 2 and 3, tourism English learners showed the lowest competence in processing and utilizing digital knowledge and information. As Mundure-Jacob (1997) mentioned that digital literacy has a positive impact on ESP education, to maximize ESP learners’ English competence, it’s important for them to have a sufficient level of digital literacy to effectively use digital tools. Therefore, the instructional treatment to promote the digital literacy of ESP learners is required. In the construction phase, the digital literacy based ESP instruction for tourism English learners provides activities on processing and utilizing digital knowledge and information. Anggini and Rodliyah (2020) recommended that digital literacies need to be embedded in the existing curriculum through appropriate selection of digital activities. Thus, the present study proposes digital literacy activities based on the coursebook-driven approach, which recommends to design the digital literacy based instruction for the beginner level of digital literacy students (Pergum et al., 2022). As shown in Table 4, the present study proposes the lesson plan for teaching tourism English to facilitate digital literacy. According to the model of technology enhanced instruction, TPACK, technology is not used as a teaching tool or as a medium of delivery, but as a subject objective, so the development of digital literacies was listed as subject objectives and the digital literacies were selected and listed from the KIPC items. Hutchinson and Waters (1987) mentioned that the instruction should consider “input”, “topic”, “language” and “task” to develop the ESP materials, and in Table 4, as “input” for digital literacy facilitators, various AI programs such as ChatGPT, DeepL, Canva, Vrew and Hotel bots were introduced. A “topic” is “AI-based hotel service”, which allows learners of tourism English to collect, process and use the digital hotel service knowledge and information. For “language”, vocabulary exercises and role-play cards were prepared. Finally, for “task”, a problem statement was provided as a team project. In addition, digital literacy activities such as the use of question banks, teaching and learning materials, multimedia videos, interactive content (voice-generated, text-generated, multimodal-generated, etc.), audio materials, virtual labs, immersive content (VR, AR, Metaverse, etc.), and various AI-based educational content were considered in the lesson plan.

In the reflection phase of DBR, the reflection of digital literacy based instruction were analyzed based on participants’ self-reported reflective journals. Most of the participants showed the highest satisfaction with the newly introduced AI tools such as ChatGPT, DeepL, and Canva. In addition, they showed a preference for the instruction that explained the writing prompts for ChatGPT and Canva. ChatGPT was introduced to help the learners to collect the digital knowledge and information, while Canva was brought to the class to provide the tools to use the digital knowledge and information for the presentation. According to the word-cloud shown in Figure 2, larger words such as “group,” “team,” “actively,” “problem,” “points,” and “participated” are prominent, indicating that they are frequently mentioned or have significant importance in the text. Smaller words appear less frequently, but still contribute to the overall context. The prominence of words such as “self,” “members,” “activities,” “ideas,” and “solving” suggests a focus on teamwork, problem solving, and self-assessment, while words such as “initiative,” “assessment,” “listened,” and “presentation” indicate actions and qualities valued in the context, such as taking initiative, generating ideas, listening to others, and being creative. Thus, this word-cloud in Figure 2 suggests that teamwork and problem solving seem to be central themes, along with individual contribution and evaluation.

The present study stems from the ideas of facilitating digital literacy for ESP learners. Tourism English learners were encouraged to participate in the KIPC survey and enroll in the digital literacy based tourism English class. To analyze the level of digital literacy of ESP learners, the first research question found that the level of digital literacy was not significantly increased compared to the previous study (Yun et al., 2021). The previous study used the same survey, KIPC, but the participants were different because Yun’s study was conducted for college students of humanities, while the present study was conducted for tourism English learners. The statistical comparison was not done, but in the simple comparison of the mean scores, the 2021 study showed that collecting knowledge and information was 3.66, processing was 3.54, and utilization was 3.53, and the present study reported that collecting was 3.89, processing was 3.80, and utilization was 3.80. Between 2021 and 2023, there was a significant change in knowledge and information processing, but the external effect was not enough for English learners to improve their digital-related competence. Therefore, the instructional design for learners to facilitate their digital literacy should be developed (Chang et al., 2024). For the second research question, based on the results of the digital literacy level of tourism English learners, the present study proposes the digital literacy based tourism English instruction with various digital literacy embedded activities. According to Bloch (2013), technology provides both a traditional language learning tool and a new communication space, so learning to use AI programs such as ChatGPT, DeepL, Canva, and Vrew provides ESP learners with a new communication platform to develop interaction and communication in virtual and authentic workplaces. For the third research question, a coursebook driven approach allows tourism English learners to explore AI programs during class. To complete the problem-solving task, participants had many opportunities to collect, process, and use digital knowledge and information. Consistent with Ahmed et al. (2013), the present study provides findings that integrating technology into the ESP curriculum can provide learners with a variety of learning opportunities and benefits.