Part of the Academic English online conference with Cambridge, Adrian Doff talked about motivation in EAP and the use of intrinsically interesting ‘academic light’ topics and engaging tasks.
There are good reasons for making EAP materials lively and engaging, especially as learners who need English for academic study are not always highly motivated and may have little background knowledge of academic topics beyond their own specialism. EAP syllabuses provide learners with significant challenges in terms of linguistic content and skill deployment and teachers can mitigate some of these challenges by offering engaging methodology and materials. This webinar considered these issues and looked at ways of applying features of general English teaching to academic skills materials.
During the webinar Gary gives an example of academic materials vs a general English course book like Empower highlighting the different approaches they offer. The general English version focuses highly on the topic, enables students to listen to news items and discuss them. This then leads into the skills focus of an essay which is writing. In order to support development students need to feel engaged with what they are learning and this is offered through the use of visuals, active discussions of the topic, group work and practice.
Find out more about Academic English with Cambridge
You can watch the next webinar in the series; What are the challenges in testing language proficiency and academic skills of high level (B2+) learners? by Sarah Unsworth and Sian Morgan