Category Archives: ESAP

English for Specific Academic Purposes

The Grammar of EAP

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EAP teachers often discuss whether or not grammar has a role in an EAP course. They often talk as if EAP is simply about vocabulary, texts, strategies, referencing etc, forgetting that without grammar, there is nothing to hold the vocabulary items together within the texts.

Grammar is an important part of ESP, especially EAP, as, ultimately, all that exists is words on the page or sounds in the air. These words are constructed from parts and inflect (morphology) and occur in sequences (syntax). Like all registers of English, ESP uses prepositions, articles, adverbs etc.  So it is obvious that grammar is an important component of any EAP course.

Many people have also said that ESP is for advanced learners and that learners should have learned most of the grammar before they start their ESP course, or that they cannot learn ESP without a good grammatical foundation.

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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 →