I had the privilege of attending the British Association of Lecturers in EAP Professional Issues meeting on November 29th in Sheffield. It was a brilliant opportunity to catch up with some current thinking and trends in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and talk with dozens of teachers.
The theme of the conference was teacher research. Among a full day of excellent talks, I attended Phil Martin’s presentation of his research into changes in teacher identity experienced by practitioners who move from teaching general English as a Foreign Language (EFL) into EAP. Phil runs the postgraduate EAP research course at City University’s INTO London campus, and for his research, interviewed teachers who had made the EFL-to-EAP transition to find out what the major issues were. Part of his talk explored four key differences between EFL and EAP and discussed the need for new EAP teachers to reconsider certain fundamental ideas about teaching that might have served them well in the EFL classroom, but don’t work well for EAP.
Language vs. skills
EFL is language-driven while EAP, being a type of English for specific purposes (ESP), is skills-driven. EAP is characterized by learners’ need to acquire a set of very specific and well-defined language-related skills to communicate successfully in a particular context – academia. This includes study skills like note-taking, summarising, argumentation and so on, and also the development of critical thinking ability and academic rigor.
Learner vs. teacher
While EFL teachers typically aim to keep the classroom as learner-centred as possible, the EAP classroom is invariably more teacher-centred and subject-centred. Where the EFL teacher works to elicit ideas and activate language, the EAP teacher is required to transmit a certain amount of objective information to learners to help prepare them for academic life.
Emergent language vs. prescription
Some EFL classrooms are run almost entirely on emergent language. ‘Teaching unplugged’ purists use learners’ thoughts, ideas and opinions as input and deal with new grammar and vocabulary as it arises in this context, often with highly successful outcomes. While there is some room in the EAP classroom for learners’ to share their thoughts and ideas, the main focus has to be on essential academic vocabulary, grammar and skills.
Clearly defined ‘shape’ vs. response to workload
EFL teachers generally conceive of lessons as having a beginning, middle and end. Whether you’re following the presentation-practice-production (PPP) model or using a different structure, there’s generally a sense of moving through neat steps in a lesson and ending up with something that feels complete. And if the lesson goes in an unexpected direction, it’s usually seen as valuable in any case because it keeps the students at the centre and often follows emergent language. In EAP, however, reaching specific learning outcomes is the top priority, so it’s crucial to stick with the plan. EAP courses are often so intensive – usually between ten and twenty hours a week – that there’s room to start a lesson by ‘picking up where we left off yesterday’, rather than going through the usual EFL plan with warm-ups and so on.
If you’d like to explore these ideas further, check out Phil Martin’s chapter ‘Teachers in Transition: the road to EAP’.
Martin, P. (2014) ‘Teachers in Transition: the road to EAP’, in Breen, P. (ed.) Cases on teacher identity, diversity and cognition in higher education. Hershey: IGI-Global