exploring the different types of content expert’s strategies in an esap course: the case of students of criminal law

The current study attempted to explore different types of strategies that a content expert applies when encounters with unexpected situations to avoid losing face in class that is called 'in-class subject knowledge dilemma (iskd) (wu and badger, 2009)'. these strategies arise when there is a gap in content expert’s knowledge. 30 students who had enrolled in the course entitled ‘english for the students of criminal law’ were the participants of this study. first of all, the content expert had been observed meticulously by the language teacher for four weeks; second, a seven-week interdisciplinary teaching was conducted. correspondingly, three class sessions were audio-taped as the content expert was the only lecturer teaching in the class. all sessions were recorded by audio recorder in order not to miss or skip any event. this study examined teacher talk moves, avoidance, shifting, risk-taking and face-saving strategies used by the content expert. the findings also put emphasis on the value of subject-matter knowledge, teacher language awareness (tla) and pedagogical content knowledge (pck) to fulfill the immediate and delayed needs of esap students and overcoming the (iskd) situations. the paper highlights that there is an urgent need to provide an essential ground for the actual collaboration between language teachers and content experts while teaching esap classes.