This chapter is informed by the author's experiences of teaching English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL) before moving on to teach English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Accordingly, it is shaped by the laments of ESOL practitioners at their perceived Cinderella status and an understanding that EAP teaching is regarded by much of the academic community as support work. Qualifications in EAP per se are not awarded, but rather, like scaffolding, language teaching sits alongside a student's principal course of study. Most EAP teachers have provided scaffolding to the educational edifice at a range of levels spanning compulsory and post-compulsory education. This affords a unique perspective on what teaching looks like at different levels. Founded on a familiarity with pedagogy at other levels then, the chapter draws on personal insights into teaching practices at universities and posits that certain characteristics of teaching younger learners might be equally effective in EAP and throughout the post-compulsory context. After all, pedagogy, the term used to describe teaching throughout educational levels, derives from the Greek “paid,” meaning child, and “agogus,” meaning leader. Thus, pedagogy literally means “the art and science of teaching children” (Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, 2012).
Corpus linguistics and its aplications in higher education
