Disrupting discourses of deficiency in English for Academic Purposes: dialogic reflection with a critical friend

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Daron Benjamin Loo ◽  
Jariya Sairattanain

English for Academic Purposes course focusing on the academic language needs of students is a subfield of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). It is a type of specialized course to integrate specific subject matter, language content, and material based on learners’ needs. The study aims to evaluate the British Council’s English for Academic Purposes (EAP) coursebook in terms of content, sequencing, learners’ autonomy, motivation, feedback and focus on language skills. Furthermore, the study tries to provide a general perception of the usefulness and effectiveness of the coursebook for undergraduate students. The EAP Students’ Manual coursebook is used as a primary source for the data collection. The researcher has chosen Nation & Macalister (2010) model of language teaching principles to analyze and discuss the data. The study found the coursebook a useful, effective and an appropriate source of English language learning in terms of the investigated aspects of the book. The findings report that the coursebook provides practice and practical usage in all domains of the academically required English language skills. It helps the students to build language competency and to be more independent learners. In addition, it provides an opportunity to the learners to think in the target language, use the language more practically and learn it in a natural type of environment. The study concludes and suggests that the content needs to be supplemented with English language audios and videos presenting the students relevant documentaries and helping material in order to make the coursebook and the learning process more useful, effective, interesting and motivating. Furthermore, the study recommends that while choosing /designing a coursebook for a certain course, it needs to be evaluated following the various criteria and language-teaching-principles suggested by different language researchers.


English for Academic Purposes course focusing on the academic language needs of students is a subfield of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). It is a type of specialized course to integrate specific subject matter, language content, and material based on learners’ needs. The study aims to evaluate the British Council’s English for Academic Purposes (EAP) coursebook in terms of content, sequencing, learners’ autonomy, motivation, feedback and focus on language skills. Furthermore, the study tries to provide a general perception of the usefulness and effectiveness of the coursebook for undergraduate students. The EAP Students’ Manual coursebook is used as a primary source for the data collection. The researcher has chosen Nation & Macalister (2010) model of language teaching principles to analyze and discuss the data. The study found the coursebook a useful, effective and an appropriate source of English language learning in terms of the investigated aspects of the book. The findings report that the coursebook provides practice and practical usage in all domains of the academically required English language skills. It helps the students to build language competency and to be more independent learners. In addition, it provides an opportunity to the learners to think in the target language, use the language more practically and learn it in a natural type of environment. The study concludes and suggests that the content needs to be supplemented with English language audios and videos presenting the students relevant documentaries and helping material in order to make the coursebook and the learning process more useful, effective, interesting and motivating. Furthermore, the study recommends that while choosing /designing a coursebook for a certain course, it needs to be evaluated following the various criteria and language-teaching-principles suggested by different language researchers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8642
Author(s):  
Lucas Kohnke ◽  
Andrew Jarvis

COVID-19 and the shift to online teaching necessitated a change in approach for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teachers in preparing their students for university studies. This study explored how EAP instructors coped with and adapted their provision for emergency remote teaching. The study was conducted at an English-medium university in Hong Kong and a qualitative case study approach was adopted. The results revealed two overarching themes of opportunity and challenge. While the sudden shift to online teaching forced innovation and fostered collaborative learning and feedback, teachers experienced difficulties in communicating with students and monitoring their learning. The study voices teacher perspectives in delivering EAP courses online and highlights important implications for the successful delivery of future online EAP provisions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-152
Author(s):  
Marcella Caprario

AbstractThis qualitative classroom study investigated the development of pragmatic competence in academic discussions through content analysis of student reflective writing. The aims of the study were: to understand the greatest challenges that students faced during the learning process, the causes of those challenges, and the most successful strategies that students employed to overcome the challenges. In addition, the analysis investigated other significant themes in the reflective writing that related to the students’ experiences in developing their pragmatic competence in discussions. Five advanced English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students at a Sino-US institution in China participated over the course of a semester. Results showed that common challenges included: hesitation resulting in missed opportunities to speak, lack of clarity when speaking, inability to repair communication breakdowns, and difficulty with listening comprehension. Self-reflection allowed the learners to understand the various reasons for the challenges they faced and to develop appropriate pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic strategies for coping with them. It also enabled the instructor to make suggestions suited to learners’ specific needs. In addition to revealing specific challenges, causes, and strategies that students employed, themes that emerged through content analysis included the impact of students’ emotional lives on their learning and performance, as well as the value of authentic communication in the development of pragmatic competence for academic discussions. This exploratory classroom investigation provides suggestions for teaching pragmatic competence in academic discussions and for additional classroom explorations that empower learners to develop autonomy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136216882199034
Author(s):  
Mark McAndrews

In many English language teaching contexts, listening activities resemble listening comprehension tests. Scholars have argued that this product-oriented approach is not particularly effective in helping learners improve their listening skills and have advocated for the inclusion of instruction that targets specific features of spoken language. The current study tested these claims in the context of an English-for-academic-purposes (EAP) listening and speaking course. Sixty-four post-secondary learners of English were randomly assigned to one of two groups. In addition to their regularly scheduled listening activities, one group received 100 minutes of instruction for two prosodic features (paratone and prosodic phrasing), while the other group received an equal amount of product-oriented listening instruction. After the instructional treatment, learners in the prosody group outperformed those in the product-oriented group on comprehension of the target prosodic features, and on general listening proficiency tests. It is argued that short periods of instruction targeting prosodic features can improve the effectiveness of traditional product-oriented EAP listening instruction.


2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula Wingate

I respond to the conference theme ‘English across the Curriculum’ by suggesting that ‘Academic literacy’ should be taught across the curriculum. I first explain the concept of academic literacy, which describes the range of abilities that students have to acquire when starting out in a new academic discipline. I then discuss the dominant instructional provision at universities. As this provision fails to address students’ real learning needs, I argue for curriculum-integrated academic literacy instruction that is based on the collaboration between English for academic purposes (EAP) specialists and subject lecturers. I provide examples of collaborative, discipline-specific approaches to supporting student learning, and present some insights from an intervention study that I have carried out to explore feasible ways of teaching and collaboration. Finally, I discuss the need for lecturer training to achieve a curriculum-integrated approach, and report on my experience of running a professional development module which aimed to enable lecturers to embed academic literacy development into their teaching practice.


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