Category Archives: ESP

English for Specific Purposes – including EO/PP & EAP

Feedback – Who is it for?

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I was visiting a colleague’s office recently and he showed me a piece of student work from another university where he was an external examiner. The piece of work was covered with red ticks, crosses, under-linings, crossings out and illegible comments. We discussed it and came to the conclusion that this feedback – if that’s what it was – was not very useful and that it was something that he – as an external examiner – should comment on. As I was leaving the office, I suddenly thought of something and went back to look at the text again. As I thought, the text was on formal examination paper and it was clear that the writing we had been looking at was an examination answer, something that the students would (might) never see again. It made me realise that comment/feedback on student writing – as with all writing – depends on purpose and audience, something that does not seem to have been discussed elsewhere. Continue reading →

CLIL- Content & Language Integrated Learning

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For several years now, I have been teaching on a university pre-masters programme. in a business school.

I have described some aspects of the programme here:

The Relationship between Academic Content and Language

The programme consists of several modules and I have been involved with several of them over the last 5 or 6 years. One module that I have spent a large amount of time on is “Introduction to accounting”. It was team-taught with an accounting lecturer and me. We worked very closely together and mainly used the same materials. The accounting lecturer concentrated on the accounting content and I focussed on the language content. I have taught on this module for 5 or 6 years – sometimes twice a year – and as time passed, I have slowly come to the conclusion that it was not really possible to separate the accounting content from the language. We described the course as a CLIL course as the business subjects we were teaching and the language was well integrated and the aim of the course was to develop both. However, as they are taught by different people, does that mean it should be described as an EMI course rather than a CLIL course or even CBI? It does not really matter what we call the course, but it is interesting to look into the distinction in more detail.

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IATEFL ESP SIG PCE 2015 – Overview

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I’ve just returned from the IATEFL English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Special Interest Group (SIG) Pre-Conference Event (PCE) in Manchester, UK.

This was a joint pre-conference event between the IATEFL English for Specific Purposes Special Interest Group (ESPSIG) & BALEAP, the global forum for EAP professionals.

The theme of the PCE was employability and transferability in EAP and ESP.

As usual it was a very interesting day with teachers from many parts of the world discussing how they go about trying to meet the academic and professional linguistic needs of their students, sometimes with limited resources.
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“The Harvard System” of referencing.

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I was recently working with a group of students who had been asked to write a list of references using “The Harvard System”. The students asked me how to reference a particular source type. I wasn’t sure exactly what the lecturer wanted so I asked him. He was a little annoyed and simply told me to tell the students to use “The Harvard System”, not realising that there is no such thing, and that such pieces of advice are not helpful. By that I mean that there is no definitive documented version, so he needs to be more specific. Continue reading →

The role of published materials in an ESAP course.

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EAP is usually considered to be a branch of ESP, along with English for Professional Purposes (EPP) and English for Occupation Purposes (EOP). In that sense, as with all ESP, the EAP teaching content is explicitly matched to the language, practices and study needs of the learners. Most definitions of ESP (e.g. Robinson, 1991, pp. 2-5; Dudley Evans & St John, 1998, pp 4-5) include the following essential feature: ESP is goal directed and based on an analysis of needs.

For that reason, any ESP course needs to specify as closely as possible exactly what it is that the learners have to do through the medium of English, and therefore what their purpose is in learning English. A central role of the EAP lecturer or course designer, then, is to find out what the learners need, what they have to do in their academic work or courses, and help them to do this better in the time available.

Every EAP course is therefore different, as every student has different needs, and therefore needs to be designed from scratch. What, therefore, can the role of a published textbook be in this process?

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History of EAP through textbooks

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I have been collecting old EAP textbooks for a while now and have quite a good collection.

You can see a summary of them at:

http://www.uefap.net/materials/materials-history

I’ve been trying for some time to come up with an analysis of trends in EAP as shown through these books. It needs more work, but this is what I have come up with so far, with some examples: Continue reading →

“EAP is a waste of time”?

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In several talks during the last few years, Stephen Krashen has stated that teaching EAP is a waste of time. I like Stephen Krashen and most of what he writes. So if he says that teaching EAP is a waste of time, the only conclusion that I can come to is that he must misunderstand what I think EAP is. As I do not think what I – and other people I know around the world – do is a waste of time! Continue reading →

“There really is no need for needs analysis”?

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Hugh Dellar – Twenty Things in Twenty Years

At the recent IATEFL conference in Harrogate, Hugh Dellar looked back on 20 years in the classroom and what he had learned. His broadly insightful presentation focused on “20 nuggets of hard-earned wisdom”. You can see it at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=755gblfOjks

This was a very interesting talk and many of the things he has learned in 20 years are similar to things I have realised – and written and talked about – after nearly 40 years in ELT.

Hugh’s 5th point, though “there really is no need for needs analysis” requires some comment as it is central to what I understand by ESP and EAP.
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IATEFL ESP SIG PCE

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I’ve just returned from the IATEFL English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Special Interest Group (SIG) Pre-Conference Event (PCE). I cannot handle – or afford – the whole conference!

ESP SIG

IATEFL ESP SIG PCE Participants

The theme of the PCE was ESP and Learning Technologies: What can we learn?

As usual it was a very interesting day with teachers from many parts of the world discussing how they go about trying to meet the academic and professional linguistic needs of their students, sometimes with limited resources.
Continue reading →