Today, I'm going to tell you how I got into EAP and some basic concepts around this field that I am beginning to study for my current teaching practice.
I have never been a one-to-one teaching enthusiast. Since when I started teaching, people would ask me if I taught private lessons and I would always say 'no' for many reasons. The first one being that I am shy, thus, I was scared that I wouldn't be able to maintain a conversation with only one person. In addition, people always came to me with very specific needs, such as 'conversation lessons', 'English for traveling' or 'business English' (too busy to answer my messages, though) and I was in the beginning of my career, still doing the CELTA, etc. Finally, I just thought teaching kids and groups was more fun. So, it was easier for me to refuse them.
However, when the pandemic hit, and we had to shift to online lessons, I could learn how to use online teaching platforms, took a few courses and now I really enjoy teaching English online. So, in February this year, I decided to put up a flyer and share on social networks for one-to-one lessons. Naturally, people came to me asking for private lessons online and I accepted them. And that's basically how I got to teaching English for Academic Purposes, which is a field I was not familiar with until this year. I now have two students with very specific needs and both of them are academics.
In order to be better informed on teaching EAP students, I did some research online and found books and materials that suited our needs. Now I am learning as I go since time is of the essence for my students.
Some basics of EAP
From what I have read so far and my teaching context, the most important aspect of EAP is that it is needs driven. In other words, students learn English with a particular purpose in mind. For instance, they may want to enter a university abroad, they may be professors in a another language wanting to teach in English, or they may even already be Master's or Doctorate students who need to improve their English skills to do presentations and write essays. Thus, their goal is identifiable and describable, and should inform the EAP programme the teacher will create for them.
Similarly to ELT, EAP involves the development of the four skills in an integrated way. However, the teaching and learning of English in EAP happens so that students can operate effectively in the disciplines. Also, there are many skills and competences in EAP, to mention a few:
- critical thinking
- study skills (e.g. citation, referencing)
- getting familiarized with the target academic culture
- development of student autonomy and independence
It is important to mention that EAP is not concerned with subject content. Rather, its goal involves developing key academic skills, language and competences. The field concerned with teaching content through language is CLIL (Content Language Integrated Learning). For example, EAP will refer to general academic vocabulary, such as 'analyze', 'evaluation', 'conclusion', 'focus on', etc.
An increasing trend in EAP is for students to begin learning at lower levels, such as A2 and lower B1. This is my teaching context. I have one A2 student working towards becoming a B1 by the end of May - we started in March - and one B1 student trying to improve her presentation skills to be able to teach in English my the end of May. This way you can see that I am also working with ambitious goals.
Generally, EAP students are highly motivated, as they have an specific goal in mind. EAP teachers should aim to keep this motivation high and learning relevant and engaging.
I believe this is the basics of EAP, just to give a general idea. Since I come from an ELT teaching context, I will try to focus on the main differences between these fields in my next post.
_______________
REFERENCES
1997. R. R. Jordan. English for Academic Purposes: A Guide and Resource Book for Teachers. Cambridge University Press.
2014. Edward de Chazal. English for Academic Purposes. Oxford University Press.
0 comments