Author Archives: Andy

Assessment Criteria

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Assessment Criteria

I ran a workshop at a BALEAP conference several years ago about assessment criteria. I was particularly interested in the difficulty of marking assignments, especially when the English course is part of a degree course and the marks contribute to the student’s degree classification.

The purpose of the workshop was to look at ways of using profile forms to assess such writing assignments. I was not satisfied that we came to a satisfactory solution at that time, and I’m still not happy with it. Continue reading →

Analytic & Synthetic EAP

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The title refers back to David Wilkins’s (1976) distinction between analytic and synthetic syllabuses. He argued that a synthetic language teaching strategy was one in which the different parts of the language were taught separately and step-by-step so that acquisition was a process of gradual accumulation of the parts until the whole structure of the language has been built up. The learner’s task was then, therefore,  to re-synthesize the language that has been broken down into smaller pieces with the aim of making his or her learning easier. Continue reading →

Do we Teach just Language?

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It is often said that, as EAP teachers, we teach more than just language. I’d like to know what other things we do teach, that are not taught by everyone in education.

EAP  refers to the language and associated practices that people need in order to undertake study or work in English medium higher education. The objective of an EAP course, then, is to help these people learn some of the linguistic and cultural – mainly institutional and disciplinary – practices involved in studying or working through the medium of English. Continue reading →

ESP Training

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I did some work for a well-known organisation recently. My job was to investigate ESP teaching in universities in the capital city and make recommendations. I spent a few days driving round the city, meeting teachers, lecturers, administrators, course directors, students, subject lecturers etc. and was generally very impressed. The ESP teachers knew what they were doing. They had talked to students, lecturers and course managers. They had examined students materials. They knew what the students had to read and to write and had analysed the required language and designed their courses accordingly. The only problem I could see was that the various universities did not talk to each other and so the main recommendation I made was that there should be ways in which the universities could talk to each other and share materials and ideas. Continue reading →

Teaching EAP for No Obvious Reason.

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I have just been reading an article in the latest issue of ELT Journal by Duncan Hunter and Richard Smith (Hunter & Smith, 2012) about Communicative Language Teaching. In the article, they take a historical view by studying the use of the term Communicative Language Teaching – or CLT in ELT Journal during the period between 1958 and 1986. I find it interesting as, in my view, EAP is Communicative Language Teaching par excellence. Since the early days, CLT had focussed strongly on the authentic language of communicative purpose as well the belief that learners need to use the language actively in order to learn. Hunter & Smith argue that precise academic definitions of CLT existed in early days and still do to some extent, and this was supported my many academic publications (see, for example, Brumfit & Johnson, 1979). However in the last 20 years or so publishers have so diluted the meaning of the term CLT that it is almost meaningless these days. As a consequence of this, perhaps be this will lead to the end of CLT as we know it. And I think that would be a shame. Continue reading →

Teaching EAP at Low Levels.

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It is often believed that EAP can only be taught at advanced levels and that lower level students need a course in general English before they start their EAP course.

Before we can discuss this, however, it is important to understand what we mean by general English. General English means different things to different people. To some people it is survival English; to others it is conversational English. However, in the context of EAP, it is often used to mean the core of grammar and vocabulary that is common to all registers. It is often believed that this common core must be mastered before more specific  aspects of the language can be learned. Continue reading →

What is EAP?

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Several years ago, when I was more involved with BALEAP, someone on the executive committee suggested that BALEAP needed a good definition of EAP. As I had written similar things before when I was chair, I wrote the following and sent it to the committee.  Nobody responded or commented at all! A while later, the request was repeated and I circulated my article again. Again no response at all!  I wondered why, but I think I know now. Anyway, this is what I wrote.

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