English for Specific Purposes has now become an established discipline in many higher education institutions and, as such, it has attracted the attention of many practitioners who need to deal with it on a professional level. Being an important programme to university curricula, it requires a deeper understanding of both the basic concepts and the new trends and directions applicable to its teaching. Therefore, the main concern of this research is twofold: on the one hand, it aims at reviewing briefly the evolution of the essential prin-ciples of ESP from its modern origins in the early 1960s until the present day, and, on the other hand, at describing the current situation in the field, especially its methodology, focusing on identifying the best practices for teaching ESP and aligning them with the modern trends.