What is EAP?
Following the academic tradition, we need to define what EAP is so we all agree we are talking about the same concept.
In fact I would suggest this is a contested definition. Some teachers think they are doing EAP when what they are really doing is preparing students to sit gateway examinations.
What is your definition of EAP?
Hi Kevin,
Nice to meet up with you again in this forum and I'm looking forward to some good provocative discussions :-)
I have heard someone from Cambridge ESOL say that IELTS tests whether students have the ability to read newspapers at a reading age of 16-18, i.e. about what a UK student would be able to do before starting university and that, as you say, students have to acquire appropriate study skills once they start university.
I think EAP also has to include study competence, which is fundamentally different from study skills such as listening to lectures and note-taking or knowing how to ask questions in a seminar. Study competence refers to those attributes which a student develops as a result of studying at degree level and which 'prepare graduates as agents of social good in an unknown future'.(Bowden et al.)*
I think EAP teachers have a responsibility to be aware of, and and make their students aware of, this underlying competence. We cannot give students everything they need in this regard but we do need to make them aware of the road they need to travel.
What do you think?
Olwyn
* Bowden, J., Hart, G., King, B., Trigwell, K. and Watts, O. (2000) Generic capabilities of ATN university graduates http://www.clt.uts.edu.au/ATN.grad.cap.project.index.html
Hello,
My name is Ana Luisa Lozano and I'm an English Language teacher in Ecuador. I teach English as a Foreign Language to children, teenagers and adults. However, during my lessons, I have involved my students in projects which have been very beneficial to them in different fields: language acquisition and other areas like Chemistry, Ecology, Research, etc. Since 2005 we have taken part on cross-curricular projects. For instance, in 2006, we reseached about AIDS. This information was shared in a German radio programme done by students there. So they put all the research or reports from different countries of some continents together to give a complete informative broadcast. Then this project was shown to UNICEF in Germany and we all got certificates for it. In 2008, we did something similar, but the topic was Water, as a precious Resource fo Life ..we did an interscholastic Science fair here in Ecuador and had some local UNICEF certification.
AFTER THAT EXPERIENCE, I CAN SAY THAT MY STUDENTS HAVE LEARNT NOT ONLY ENGLISH AS A LANGUAGE -just for an examination- but English as a "BRIDGE" that connects them to the world. They have learnt to be and make others be aware about the world around them by being agents of change and having their VOICE heard.
Now my question is, Can be all of that considered as an EAP action? Thanks in advance!
Kind regards,
Ana Luisa Lozano
BRITISH ALLIANCE
MACHALA-ECUADOR
Dear Ana,
Yes definitely, your activities can be considered ot be part of EAP. Benesch talks about critical EAP where students are not passively accepting the norms and conventions of their discourse communities but actively questioning what they are being told.
In our talk on Saturday, Sue Argent and I mentioned the concept of scholarship and graduate attributes, those skills, abilities and understandings which go beyond discipline knowledge and can be transferred to the workplace.
This is what you have given your students - well done you!
Olwyn
Dear Olwyn,
Thanks for your motivating words towards our work! I would like to let you know that I would love to attend to the next Annual International IATEFL Conference & Exhibition. I am new here on this site so may I ask for your help on how to do to apply for a scholarship? I was taking a look at this site and I still need some help to make sure I will do things well -taking the correct steps to do that so. Do you mind helping me with that? -any information would be great! I can also tell you that my students have taken the Cambridge ESOL Examinations. I mention this because i noticed that is one of the ways to take by writing an essay about our EAP practice ...am I right? Thanks in advance for your time!
Greetings from Ecuador - South America,
Ana
Hi Olwyn:
I am an EAP/ESP practitioner working in Pakistan and teaching English to undergrads of Fashion and Design bachelors.
I have recently started working with fashion and design students, could you please help me in finding any course meeting the specific needs of the fashion and design students?
waiting for reply,
Dear Sufia,
The answer to your question is that there is no course. You will have to create one yourself. You will have to work with the lecturers and the students to find out what they have to read and what they are expected to do with what they read, i.e. write an essay, critically evaluate some research, use an idea and apply it to another situation.
Your task is to understand the linguistic challenges of these tasks and to support the students to achieve them.
This is precisely what makes ESP so different from other forms of ELT.
Olwyn
Hi all,
I think the higher up you go in an EAP programme, the more you have to focus on study skills as much as language skills. In my advanced-level bridging course, I do a lot of work on things like what you should do in a lecture, how to deal with masses of readings, how to revise for exams... that kind of thing.
We also spend a lot of time on the cultural aspects of going to university, as Kevin mentioned above. We talk about how to speak up in a seminar, or how to read an article critically - when doing so contradicts the expectations of your own culture.
We also explore the psychological aspects of successful university study - we talk about EQ, and I try to get my students to develop some understanding of their own study habits and preferences. Things like time management and group work strategies figure prominently
Come to think of it, at this level, I actually teach very little language! It's more about strategies for success than learning more verb tenses.
Tania
Hi Tania,
Welcome to the EAP forum!
I agree that EAP is more about teaching strategies for success rather than verb tenses. It's also really important for students to be able to evaluate their own attitudes and performance in realistic ways.
I run in-sessional classes for students who are already on their degree programmes in my university and initially I called them 'language and study support' classes. However, the second year I had to rebrand these classes because students said they did not want to be told they needed language and so they did not attend the classes.
The following year I called the classes 'enhancing scholarship: helping you get the grades you deserve'. This gave a more positive message about the aims of the class.
I wonder if anyone else has come across this branding problem, particularly for in-sessional classes?
Olwyn
Referring to your last two replies, Olwyn, I think with my sole experience of EAP in a pre-sessional environment, I come at it from a different angle to you. 'We have five weeks (increasing to six starting this year) to improve the students' language ability to the level required by the university. Whereas I can see time being available for the skills element, I can't really see any time for such study competence training. I have to admit, even if I did, I am not sure that I would see it as my job, given that there are usually more fundamental areas to work on that imparct directly on the students' chance of success in their degree programme.
As a result of this pre-sessional environment, where attendance and successful completion is a requirement to gain access to the degree programme, there is no branding problem :-)
Kevin
"Although there are important variations between EAP courses in terms of
length, content and context, level, etc., traditionally the primary purposes of all
such courses is to equip NNS with the language and study skills required for successful
academic study." Source: Jarvis, H. (2004). ‘Investigating the classroom applications of computers on EFL courses at Higher Education Institutions.’ Journal of English for Academic Purposes. Vol. 3, No.2. pp.111-137.
Hi Huw,
Do you think things have changed at all in the 7 years since you wrote that? I would suspect that we have to do more now than just teach langauge and skills.
Olwyn
Hi
I'm Andy. I teach ESP/EAP, mainly in the UK.
I'm worried that we can so easily spend all our time teaching skills and strategies that we forget about the language.
Hi Andy,
I see your point, but I think it depends on the programme and the students. At the level I teach, students are already taking undergraduate courses. They are dealing with things they have never come across before (e.g. lectures) in a second language - I feel that I would be doing them a disservice if I didn't talk about what to do in those lectures. We get into things like where to sit, whether it is a good idea to record the lecture, what to do if the lecturer has an accent you don't understand, etc., etc.
Just today, I had a young Chinese woman in my office, very worried about the fact that she could not bring herself to speak up in seminars. I know her well enough to know that it is entirely a confidence issue, not a language one - and that if she does not deal with this, she will lose marks for seminar participation. We had a long talk about strategies for speaking up.
At the lower levels, I would agree that language comes first, but when you're working with students who are already in undergraduate courses, I think the priority has to shift a little.
Tania
Hi Andy
Hi everyone
I think sometimes we go a bit too far in dividng skills and language. In my experience (TEFL at a German university), the basic study skills may have been covered in students' L1 before they hit university, but they need the language keys to master those skills in English.
To give an example - following a lecture given in English requires not only note taking skills, listening comprehension, etc, but also knowledge of markers in English that show connections between pieces of information, or of phrases which highlight what is to come. Teaching and learning these is what, for me, constitutes the main part of EAP - and here we can't really separate skills from language.
Clare
Hi Clare,
I agree. A course which only teaches skills is not an EAP course. We need the academic langauge and the academic purpose as well. I think that the need to pass gatekeeping exams, which are based on skills has led to this assumption that EAP is about skills.
I think it is our job to help our students with strategies which they can use to understand how texts are structured and what they are used for at university (I include lectures and seminars as 'texts') and what langauge is approriate for these purposes. Then students have the capactity to do this analysis for themselves on any new texts they meet.
Olwyn
Hello everyone, good to be here.
I don't think we can help students to develop the study competences they need for university (e.g. critical thinking) without integrating them in our lessons AND developing the language used to express them. There was too much emphasis on 'skills' at the expense of language a few years ago, but I think language is making a comeback in EAP.
Hello,
a colleague at Nottingham University, where I teach EAP, has just alerted me to this forum! Great!
At the moment, we are facing the issue of ‘how low’ it’s possible to go with ‘academic’ English and therefore the balance between the development of language vs skills/competence is being hotly debated.
My feeling is that in order to develop the competencies (e.g. critical thinking) that Olwyn refers to above, even at lower levels of language proficiency, students and tutors need to engage more in processes of knowledge discovery and mediation which offer more immediate opportunities (and motivation) for the language and the skills to be ‘activated’ (and be fit for purpose).
So, for instance, I wonder whether we should adopt a more content-oriented syllabus and more project work which focuses on themes that can be developed in depth. This would mean using all the skills to learn content (as is done on a degree programme) which in turn would bring the focus back onto scaffolding relevant language. Basically, more of a CLIL approach. Would that be feasible? Would that help to define EAP? Perhaps ‘English for Academic PROCESSES’?
I’d really like to know what you think,
Julia
Hi Julia,
I wholeheartedly agree!
I worked at Ningbo with a Nottingham University EAP syllabus that was content based -- we used a book about global issues, written for English speaking students at 6th form level. I think it worked very well. The syllabus was written by John Hall and Ann Smith. Do you still use it?
We used a context based syllabus for our low level EAP book 'Access EAP: Foundations'. The idea in the book is to teach the language and study competence needed for university through the contexts -- texts, situations and processes -- that a group of students have to deal with through a semster at a university. It tries to get the readers to interact with these contexts.
You are absolutely spot on when you identify the importance of developing themes in depth and scaffolding relevant language.
Sue
Hello Sue,
thank you very much for your reply!
Yes, I share an office with Ann Smith, and both Ann and John are great to work with and talk to about this issue. They teach on the Foundation programme which, as you say, is context and content-based, and focuses on tasks and process. It also includes a module called 'analytical thought', which essentially deals with logic and argumentation: i.e. philosophy!
I have also just been mining your (and Olwyn's) 'Access EAP' in preparation for BALEAP, next week ...
Personally and professionally, I would like to see this approach in pre-sessional programmes, which is what I teach on, but I suppose that some of the objections might be that pre-sessional features:
- shorter courses (as short as 4 weeks)
- intense summer programmes where new tutors are recruited
- lower language proficiency (IELTS 3.5)
- different disciplinary interests
The other consideration is that this process approach requires tutors to rise to the challenge of learning new content and steering/facilitating lessons as equal participants in the learning process. This presupposes that tutors are qualified and predisposed to adopting that role. They would have to think on their feet, and keep up-to-date.
I've been trying some of the tasks in your book, and have to admit that I had to check some of the answers! I think it's great, and I think that showing our students that we also struggle to reach conclusions on complex data is part of the learning process. It's part of negotiating meaning, which is what we want them to be able to do. But this is precisely where some might argue that we should be challenging them with language instead, not content ....
Julia
Hi Julia,
Welcome to this forum and thanks for these thought-provoking reflections. I would make a couple of points:
There would seem to be a contradiction between short course (4 weeks) and lower language proficiency. When Sue and I wrote Access EAP, we had in mind a programme at least a year long for lower proficiency students to develop language and a scholarly approach.
We thought the mixture of disciplines could be handled by encouraging students to take an interest in their classmates' disciplines. As Sue mentioned, we tried to show students the typical tasks and activities found at university but to contextualise these within three different disciplines, environmental science, business management and computer science.
In my view, depth can be achieved by concentrating in turn on each subject area through a variety of authentic tasks and reflection. Personally I think it is better to see content as a carrier for learning langauge and study competence and not as something to be learned in its own right. I don't think learning about global issues, for example, necessarily teaches all the language and study competence required.
There would still be the same issue with inexperienced teachers not able to identify the langauge and skills but instead just teaching the content.
Olwyn
Hi Everyone and I look forward to meeting you at the conference.
'Academic Purposes' can be considered a 'specific purpose' which in my conception implies 'domain specific' and 'goal-oriented'. Each profession or set of professions has its own language, technical as well as communicative. This is not only relevant for adult learners already in a profession but EAP learners as well, who will benefit from subject-specific language, academic skills and recycling of concepts into an enjoyable language class atmosphere.
One of the biggest hindrances to successful learning is EAP. What Olwyn said above makes sense, as 'global issues' are great for discursive essays and advantages and disadvantages presentations, but these types of content-generic activities offer little assistance in Technical Report Writing, Lab Report Writing, or content-related seminar skills that Science learners need, for example. The IELTS productive activities are perfect examples of language work that detracts from learner's goals. Who in the real world is asked to write an essay on a topic they know nothing about?
Thankfully, we are not all the same, so we learn in different ways. In my Workshop on 17 April in the Tbank at 14:35, an 'entry points approach' will be introduced using the example of 'tourism', to show how to engage learners' multiple intelligences towards content, which in turn gets them closer to their specific academic goals.
Josh Lange
Hi Josh,
Welcome to the forum!
I agree that the kinds of tasks that students have to do in exams cannot be as authentic as we can make them in a classroom. I do not think we should blame the exams for that because there are other constraints such as validity and reliability to contend with. However, I think we can blame course directors and teachers whose focus is solely on exam preparation and who do not set their exam prep in the context of a wider EAP course.
Just to be a little bit provicative here, I would need to be convinced that 'tourism' wasn't a similar sort of topic to Global Issues - not exactly an academic subject. How do you square that circle in your presentation?
Olwyn
It was great to hear that Sue remembers our approach positively. We still follow this in our foundation for Arts and Social Sciences students at the University of Nottingham.
I thought I’d just say something about what we do, as the issue of using content is an interesting one with regard to the original question posed.
Global Issues is both a core book we use in our academic reading & writing module (a 250 page academic text) and a set of closely connected content areas that are explored further via supplementary academic texts, e.g. through reading lists for extended essays, and authentic academic tasks. The course we do is not for hard science students for reasons noted in a previous post.
I hope I’m not being too obtuse (!) but I’m not clear Olwyn what you meant about tourism and global issues not being academic subjects. The subject areas involved in the latter - Economics (e.g. global trade, economic development), Business (e.g. multinationals), Law (e.g. liberal interventionism, international treaties), Politics and International Relations (just about everything), Social Policy (e.g. population, poverty) and more - are as academic as they come, and tourism is taken as a subject (tourism management) at a number of universities. I’d argue that just about any topic can be academic if you choose to approach it that way, but whether you would select it as an EAP content vehicle for a particular student cohort is another matter. Again going back to the original question I think the key role of the EAP teacher or curriculum designer is to select appropriate disciplinary models, approaches, tasks and texts, many of which are relevant across disciplines, and to break them down into what is needed to help your own particular students manage them effectively.
For a foundation programme like ours the range of input and support runs from language skills to critical thinking skills, from the development of autonomy to how to manage groupwork. Sometimes an inability to make progress is caused by something so fundamental it blots out everything else, like a family problem. For this, pastoral guidance is crucial. I admit that this role would fall outside most definitions of EAP but if our ultimate goal is to promote an ability to manage relevant academic tasks (discuss!), then we do open ourselves up to a potentially wider set of responsibilities. I’ve noticed a recent sharpening of the debate between those that see our job as mainly academic language teachers – the way we are naturally seen by most other stakeholders - and those that would go further. Perhaps to ‘how low can you go?’, we should add ‘and how wide?’.
Hi John,
Thanks for joining the debate and for clarification of the way Global Issues is used in your courses. I agree with you that 'our ultimate goal is to promote an ability to manage relevant academic tasks' and also that almost any subject can have an academic treatment, e.g. in Access EAP we looked at shopping by considering the factors which contributed to the decline of the co-operative movement. In being a bit provocative about tourism I was hoping Josh would come back and explain how he takes an academic perspective on it.
As far as the family problems are concerned, yes I do think we have a pastoral role as well, particularly when students have family or other personal problems. However, I think it is important for students not to see their EAP teacher as the sole source of solutions to all their problems. Our institution has a number of trained staff to help deal with depression, money problems, accommodation etc. Part of my admin duties involves being a mentor for undergraduate home students and overseeing their academic progress. If they come to me with these other issues, I listen sympathetically and then refer them to the appropriate service.
I'm always thinking of the EFL attitude, particularly for low level learners, which is often to infantilise the learners (Cook, 2003) and try to give them everything they need. I don't think that's helpful for teachers or students.
What do you think?
Olwyn
Cook, V. (2003) Materials for Adult beginners from an L2 User Perspective. In Tomlinson, B. Ed., Developing Materials for Language Teaching. London: Continuum. 275-290.
Thanks, and a quick reply before the weekend is upon us. Yes you are right about our role re pastoral support – the serious cases should be referred to the experts. I guess I was thinking more that to know when and how to refer on, when and how to proffer our own advice and when to let experience take its own course (i.e., as you say, to avoid the temptation to spoonfeed) are all responsibilities that can fall into an EAP tutor’s lap.
At the less serious end of the continuum of problems, we have a couple of cases each year where tutors manage to put students on the right track via pastoral tutorial support, clearing the way for them to focus more clearly on the things we want them to. It’s often connected with the process of acculturation. In this context we are I suppose acting more as personal tutors than EAP tutors, but there’s something in the nature of EAP work, our brief to help students to manage their studies, that makes ‘mission creep’ a common issue not just in this context but with regard to the teaching of content etc. I’m sure all of us have been told at some point that something or other was ‘not your role’.
I had another thought, but it’s more connected to what Julia said so I’ll post that as a reply to her.
PS I’ll definitely seek out the book you mentioned by Ian Bruce.
Hi Everyone
I've just read your posts and sorry if I'm bringing back some already discussed ideas but, anyway... :)
I think Josh said something that seems obvious but not always the obvious is just that visible. 'We are not all the same'. I teach EAP both is pre-session and in-session courses and this term I had a group of undergrads, another one with Masters students and another one with PhDs!
I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all regarding the balance between language, study skills and critical skills. It all depends on the needs of particular groups and the strengths and weaknesses they have - and it even varies from group to group studying at the same academic level
Besides that, it seems to me that even when we decide to focus on more than one of them, we still have this sort of dialectical mentality. It is always a matter of X or Y. Most of the times we still see the world in Saussurean terms of binary oppositions. Why not X and Y and Z? They can happen simultaneously if we design activities that can foster all of them, even if, unavoidably, the focus will shift from activity to activity. As I see it, the trick is to keep language, study skills and critical skills in a sort of dynamic tension.
Cheers - Chris
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your insightful comments, bringing a different dimension to thinking about EAP :-) I agree that we need to keep all these balls in the air and this is a very difficult task. I believe we do not think enough about syllabus design and consider what drives a syllabus, i.e. what constitutes the spine of a course, and what must be inserted into the course at all stages but is not necessarily the overall anchor.
My colleague Ian Bruce, who teaches and researches at Waikato University in new Zealand (my alma mater as it happens) has written an important book that all would-be EAP teachers should read in my view: Bruce, I. (2008) Academic Writing and Genre: a systematic analysis. London: Continuum. In this he sorts out the complexity of text classification and enables teachers to see how syllabuses can be based around whole texts and text segments.
It's not so much about differences between engineering texts and poems but differences between what Ian calls social genres (essay, report, lecture, seminar) and cognitive genres (comparison, contrast, problem-solution, argument).
Ian is a plenary speaker at the BALEAP conference to be held in Portsmouth just before IATEFL from 10th-12th April.
Olwyn
Hi Olwyn
Thanks a lot for the biblio :)
Will you be in Portsmouth? I have a colleague attending but I'll not be able to make it. Pity!
By the way, all invited to the PIM in Leicester in June. I hope to see you here :)
Cheers - Chris
Hello again,
I really like the direction of this discussion, and the complexity it's flagging up. I'm particularly interested in the implications of one of the comments John Hall made above (from a Foundation perspective):
"I’d argue that just about any topic can be academic if you choose to approach it that way, but whether you would select it as an EAP content vehicle for a particular student cohort is another matter".
I'd argue that whether we are teaching Foundation, presessional, insessional, etc., our role is to facilitate the process into academia. So, the aim of all EAP courses should be to support this transition into the academic community of practice - in its wider, academic literacy sense (Street and Lea 1998). If we agree that:
- processes
- content
- context
- integrated skills
- collaboration
- genre, authenticity, purpose
- criticality and autonomy ...
are defining characteristics of university study, then couldn't these be what all EAP courses have in common (with varying degrees of focus on language as a conduit for all of this)?
I'm trying to connect this to the original question of defining EAP, but when I look back at the list I've just started, I think that those are the defining characteristics of actual academic disciplines and I lose sight of what sort of EAP ours is ... I think what defines us is language, is the attention to how language helps to realise all of the above ...
yet, having said that, being proficient in the language (even native) is no guarantee of academic success ...
I'm thinking aloud!
Julia
I sort of agree yet disagree with this!
We're moving out of EAP now, but one could argue, and I've heard people do so, that the whole purpose of undergraduate education is to enable students to deal with matters such as:
- processes
- content
- context
- integrated skills
- collaboration
- genre, authenticity, purpose
- criticality and autonomy ...
etc. And there are many arguments about the nature of graduateness, transferable skills etc.
I don't know about that. But even if it is the case, it's not what students go to university to study. They go to university to study something they're interested in, such as law or pharmacology. And if we don't think about our students' purposes in HE, we will not succeed. That is why, if possible, I would always choose narrow subject specific EAP, and make sure that the relevant practices and language are included!
Your last point is something I sometimes ponder, questioning how important language proficiency (in its most general sense and above a certain level) actually is at presessional/foundation level as a predictor of future academic success. Native or near native speakers (Nigerians or Zambians for example, or students educated in International schools) can struggle and fail after leaving foundation just as many EFL background students on the same course with greater language limitations, perhaps just scraping through in this respect, can continue to build up steam and thrive as they go. I worry that some near misses with weak 'general' language may have actually been OK given the chance. They are dedicated and work hard. What they say (once deciphered admittedly) can be quite sophisticated. They communicate and seek guidance. They are on an upward trajectory of progress. I'd let them through if it were me, but...
I suppose I'm leading to the thought that each individual notion of 'What EAP is' will be be indicated by the chosen task assessment criteria, i.e. the weight given to general language ability compared to task fulfilment or academic literacy/competence in all its complex parts. It might be time to look again at ours.
I think I agree with you, John. I think I'm quite clear what EAP is. And it can be extended to everything that involves the English language. However, I think it is clear that students on Foundation courses and Pre-Masters programmes often need more than EAP. It's probably true on pre-sessionals as well. But who teaches it? Often the EAP teachers do and on a pre-sessional, there might not be anyone else! But Foundation and Pre-Masters programmes usually include some subject-content and in that case thes ubject teachers can include the relevant skills etc in their teaching. So I guess we have some sort of EAP continuum, with narrow ESAP at one end and non-linguistic study skills (e.g time management) at the other. I still strongly believe, though, that whetever we call these things (ESAP, EGAP, ESP, study-skills), it is best to embed everything into the students' subjects.
Thinking about what Julia and Andy have said, if the argument remains that our core work lies in the part that language plays in academic competence, with issues like pastoral care and time management dealt with elsewhere on the continuum, it seems to me that the language we teach has to be overtly defined in a way that reflects the underlying rationale for how it is framed in the academic context (hedging, linking, paragraphing, arguing, supporting – you name it) so that it can be presented in a coherent manner. Perhaps this sounds pretty obvious (yes, we teach ‘academic’ English), but it is a way of reminding ourselves that for EAP to mean anything we cannot separate thinking skills from language skills, that they are our core business too.
On content I agree with Andy that subject specific EAP is the way to go if possible, but a) logistical issues often stand in the way, and b) it may not be a priority where academic requirements are similar across disciplines. Where the latter is the case, though I admit it is rarely clear cut, general EAP classes may suffice and what remains is to address motivation (as you said before Andy, students are principally here to study their subject rather than language or skills), involving the possible need to ‘sell’ a mixed or compromise content vehicle, and the issue of whether/how far to introduce subject specific technical vocabulary. I’m all for ESAP where it is clearly necessary and practical (splitting science and arts students is the clearest case in point) but when in the arts & social sciences it amounts to no more than a light sprinkling of subject specific vocab, it seems less of a priority. We could argue that students can learn this vocab along with everyone else on their subsequent course, taught by the experts. Olwyn has previously mentioned the dangers of nannying and it is commonly agreed that the development of autonomy (in this case an exposure to strategies for recognising and learning new core vocabulary) has a place in the pre-sessional curriculum. Introducing commonly relevant sub-technical academic vocabulary through a more general though perhaps still faculty-tinged EAP approach allows us to teach students together (within reason) from a wide range of subjects in commercially viable groups.
>taught by the experts
The other experts you mean :-)
Hi Olwyn,
I agree with you. The IELTS academic paper doesn't seem to have much to do with academic language, for example. EAP for me is preparing students to study in an English-language environment at university. In my experience it usually goes no further than giving them a fighting chance in their degree programme, with a need to continue learning once the course starts. It includes the four skills - reading, writing, listening, speaking - and also includes cultural aspects, like questioning (in an appropriate manner) what your tutor or other students might say in a seminar.
I'm sure there is more, but that will do for now.