Elizabeth Pinard discusses how EAP students can become more autonomous through the use of corpus tools and organisation systems.
EAP, or English for Academic Practices, covers a multitude of contexts. For the purposes of this article, I will focus on students who are doing a pre-sessional course to prepare for entry into university. Fostering autonomy in this situation is very important. Autonomy looks different in different cultures and contexts. We therefore need to help our learners adjust to the expectations of autonomy in their current context, which may be similar to or very different to what they have experienced in their previous learning.
A pre-sessional course is the ideal time to introduce EAP learners to different tools and approaches to managing their learning. This could range from corpus tools such as Word and Phrase Academic to organisation systems such as Evernote and Googlekeep or Mendelay. Integrating these tools into a programme trains students in their use. Once students start their degree programmes, they can then integrate the tools into their learning process.
Word and Phrase Academic
Word and Phrase Academic is a useful tool for students to use in their writing. Like its sister site Word and Phrase Info., it generates concordances of words in use, colour coded by part of speech. It also gives information such as a definition, collocations and synonyms, as well as frequency of use in different genres. The difference with Word and Phrase Academic, as you might imagine, is that the basis for the information it proves is a corpus of academic language. Students can use this tool to help develop their understanding of the academic language that they will be expected to use in their university written work.
Evernote and Googlekeep
Evernote and Googlekeep are both applications to help students organise their work. Both applications allow users to keep notes organised by topic or purpose. This includes integrated materials from the internet such as articles and links. Any notes and materials saved are taggable and searchable via these tags.
Evernote also allows students to search entire documents for a particular word or words. Students can tag their work by module, by assignment or by author/topic/keywords. This makes large quantities of information much easier to use. It also means that work done in preparation for writing an assignment is easier to refer back to.
Mendelay
Mendelay is an application that helps users to organise journal articles. It also allows annotation of articles and, via a freely downloadable plug-in, helps users with referencing correctly. Users are able to harness the application for in-text referencing and for generating the end-of-document reference list, based on the in-text references made. It is a very useful tool for students to be made familiar with prior to starting their university courses. It is, however, also important to raise students’ awareness of different referencing systems and the importance of finding out which one is in use in their department as well as how to access guidance for using it. This is because, like any software, Mendelay is not foolproof so students need enough knowledge and awareness to be able to identify any errors that occur.
Integrating the training and use of these tools, and others, into a pre-sessional programme will mean that EAP students will start their university programme with the confidence to be able to use them independently. In this case the teacher will have fostered autonomy by guiding the students towards independent use of learning tools. If teachers provide the support necessary at the outset, students will develop autonomy in the long term.