Category Archives: EAP – General

English for Academic Purposes

The 6 principles for exemplary teaching of English learners:  Academic and other specific purposes.

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The 6 principles for exemplary teaching of English learners:  Academic and other specific purposes. TESOL International Association (2020),

TESOL International Association have recently published 2 more books of interest to ESP teachers in their 6 principles for exemplary teaching of English learners series. The third book in the series focusses on teaching English for academic and other specific purposes.

The book consists of a preface and 5 chapters.

The preface introduces the 6 principles of exemplary teaching on which the series is based and describes the intended audience for the series. The 6 principles provide a solid foundation for any ESP programme, and, though they need a some localised refinement for the wide diversity of ESP contexts, they are an excellent source of
reflection on current teaching practice.

The 6 principles provide a basis for decision making, planning and teaching. They are:

  1. Know your learners,
  2. Create conditions for language learning,
  3. Design high-quality lessons for language development,
  4. Adapt lesson delivery as needed,
  5. Monitor and assess student language development,
  6. Engage and collaborate within a community of practice.

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Mark Krzanowski (1963 – 2021)

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I was very sad to hear of the death on my good friend and colleague Mark Krzanowski in Ghana on 19th January. I knew Mark for almost 25 years and he will be greatly missed. He was on holiday in Ghana, where he liked to spend some time every winter. Although he had spent many years in London, he still could not get used to the cold winters and in the last message I received from him – early January – he said he was hoping never to spend another Xmas in Europe! Continue reading →

METHODOLOGY AND PRESENTATION IN RELATION TO PUPIL INTEREST

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METHODOLOGY AND PRESENTATION IN RELATION TO PUPIL INTEREST

In schools that train pupils in the vocations and in special techniques, in those devoted entirely to the arts or sciences, and in those offering specialized courses and training for other than an academic degree, great care must be exercised not only in selecting textbooks but in drawing up a course of study which will be in harmony with the particular interests of the students. Unfortunately very few specialized language textbooks are available for such schools, but material can be mimeographed and distributed to the students.
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Turnitin Similarity Report

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I have been supervising dissertation students recently at several institutions.

One thing that has been mentioned several times is the interpretation of the Turnitin Similarity Report. One student showed me her Turnitin report in which she had received a similarity score of 32%. She was worried as she had been told that anything above 20% was problematic. I looked at her work and found that most of the 32% similarity was made up of typical EAP phrases. Examples are “questions have been raised over the ,,,”, “… have received very little consideration” and “this evidence leads us to reject the hypothesis that…” These are kinds of phrases that EAP students are expected to learn and use and are covered in books such as Jeanne Godfrey’s The student phrase book (Godfrey, 2013) and John Morley’s online Academic Phrasebank.

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Dissertation Management

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I have been supervising MA student doing dissertations for many years now at several institutions and this is the time of year when we usually get started.

As soon as I am given the list of students who I will be supervising, I usually email each student and give them some information about me. I ask them to reply with some information about themselves. Some reply quickly, some reply slowly and some do not reply at all until I have sent several reminders.

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Reporting Findings from Interviews

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I have been supervising students doing research at both undergraduate and graduate levels recently and many of the students have been doing qualitative studies, involving interviews. In doing so, I have found that many of them find it difficult to report their findings and provide evidence. I am not surprised as there does not seem to be much information available. As Robert Yin (2011, p. 234) has made clear:

At a minimum, a common kind of narrative data would take the form of quotations and paraphrased passages, representing your study participants’ descriptions their own lives, actions, and views. In qualitative research, even these briefer descriptions serve as an important form of data. Not surprisingly, the choices about how to present these narrative data are more than a matter of literary style. Methodological issues also are relevant. Yet, this type of narrative — whether brief or lengthy — has not received much attention in existing guides for doing qualitative research.

I have looked through the publications in the references list below. Most of them are excellent, but none of them provide the useful information that my students need.

There are some useful suggestions, but none of them – apart from Yin – are detailed enough:

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ESP/EGP Distinction: Is it Real?

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I have been supervising MA TESOL and Applied Linguistics students this summer as they write their dissertations and I have most recently been marking them. May of the students have focussed on ESP (both EAP and EOP) for their research, but most of them have concentrated on general English (EGP).  I also attended a Business English conference in the summer. I saw some interesting presentations at the conference  and have have seen some interesting MA studies and it has made me realise that the distinction between EGP and ESP may not be so clear.

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