Hi Andrea,

I'm writing to you from the BALEAP conference in Reading, UK. BALEAP stands for British Association of Lecturers in English for Academic Purposes but it is becoming more international with delegates attendig the conference from China, New Zealand and Australia. Some have come straight from IATEFL - like me. You can find more about BALEAP here http://www.baleap.org.uk/

I think these kinds of conferences have been the main way that teachers have developed expertise in EAP as there are very few training courses. Just coming to a conference like IATEFL and attending the EAP/ESP themes allows teachers to hear what EAP practitioners consider to be important aspects of their practice.

 There are very few training courses in Britain. I used to run one with my two colleagues, Sue Argent and Jenifer Spencer, but it was recently discontinued. Our main purpose was to get teachers to think beyond the level of word and sentence to paragraph and whole text.

Do other people know of training courses in their contexts?

Olwyn

Hi Olwyn!! Yes, I knew about BALEAP, thanks a lot for the links. Please say hello to people at Reading for me!! I did my MA there! I was wondering about other contexts as well; here in Argentina there are no EAP training courses unfortunately, and I wondered if it was the same in other contexts.

Best

Andrea

Hi Olwyn, Andrea and everyone,

here at Nottingham University we run a Post-graduate Certificate in Teaching English for Academic Purposes -both onsite and distance. I teach a module on New Technologies and EAP and two of my colleagues (Martha Jones and Julie King) teach three modules. If anyone is interested there's some information available at

http://www.cele.nottingham.ac.uk/courses/teacher/PGCTEAP/

or feel free to contact me.

Best wishes

Alex Ding

Hi everyone,

I attended three interesting talks at the conference which haven't made it online but I'd like to summarise them here very briefly because I think they are quite important for EAP teachers.

Silvana Richardson based her presentation of 'The Good teacher' on a recent book by Alex Moore (2004) with the same title. She was looking at the discourses we use to understand this notion: the charismatic performer, the reflective practitioner and the competent craftsperson. The first one is born not made, the second one is made by reflection but not all reflection leads to development. Only the third way of thinking about teaching is amenable to hard work and skills development.

Anne Burns from Macquarie University in Sydney talked about visible pedagogy and the need some learners (e.g. adult migrants) have for the teacher to be very explicit about teaching methodology in the classroom. Communicative approaches have tended to suggest that we should hide our aims, lesson plans and curricula from the learners but this can result in frustration on the part of adults who come from very different educational cultures.

Richard Kiely talked about a continuing professional development project he was engaged in at Bristol University in collaboration with teachers in his local Further Education. He called his talk 'Understanding the craft of the experienced teacher'whch suggests he is using the the third discourse mentioned by Silvana Richardson but he also brings in a large amount of guided reflection by having teachers comment on videoed episodes from their classrooms.

All these three presenters seemed to me to be delving into just what it is that makes a good teacher and how this knowledge and skills can be developed.

Olwyn