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:

Early 1960s – Pre Linguistic Analysis – Mainly literary texts from eminent scientists with comprehension questions and grammar exercises.

• Clarke – English studies series 1: History, sociology, politics, economics (1964)
• Clarke – English studies series 2: Anthropology, psychology, education, language, philosophy (1966)
• Hawkins & Mackin – English studies series 3: Physics, mathematics, biology, applied science (1966)
• Close – The English we use for science (1965)

1960s – Register Analysis – Barber (1962) – early linguistic analysis, mainly EST

• Thornley – Scientific English practice (1964)
• Herbert – The structure of technical English (1965)
• Ewer & Latorre – A course in basic scientific English (1969)
• Swales – Writing scientific English (1971)

1970s – Rhetorical/Discourse Analysis – Widdowson (1978), Selinker, Todd Trimble & Trimble (1976);  Functions/Notions – Wilkins (1976), van Ek & Alexander (1975), Munby (1978)

• Bates & Dudley-Evans – Nucleus (1976)
• Glendinning – English in mechanical engineering (1973)
• Jordan – Academic writing course (1980)

1980s – Skills: Reading, writing, speaking, listening – moving away from specific language

• Jordan – Academic writing course (1980)
• James, Jordan & Matthews – Listening comprehension and note-taking course (1979)
• Sim & Laufer-Dvorkin – Reading comprehension course (1982)
• James – Speak to learn (1984)
• Wallace – Study skills in English (1980)

Late 1980s/ Early 1990s – Strategies; Process approach to writing (Robinson, 1988); Listening strategies (Anderson & Lynch, 1988)

• Hamp-Lyons & Heasley – Study writing (1987)
• Lynch – Study listening (1983)
• Glendinning & Holmström – Study reading (1992)
• Waters & Waters – Study tasks in English (1995

1990s/2000s – Genre approaches; Swales (1990), Bhatia (1993), Paltridge (2001), Johns (2002), Hyland (2004)

• Weissberg & Buker – Writing up research (1990)
• Dudley-Evans – Writing laboratory reports (1985)
• Swales & Feak – Academic writing for graduate students (1994/2004)
• McCormack & Slaght – Extended writing and research skills (2005)

1990s/2000s – Vocabulary, Corpus studies; Coxhead (2000), Cobb (2006)

• Zwier – Building academic vocabulary (2002)
• Schmitt & Schmitt – Focus on vocabulary (2005)

2000s – Disciplinary differences – ESAP; Hyland (2000)

• Manning – English for language and linguistics in higher education studies (2008)
• McLisky – English for banking in higher education studies (2008)
• Walker – English for business studies in higher education (2008)
• Wallen – English for law in higher education studies (2008)
• Lee – English for environmental science in higher education studies (2009)
•  McCullagh, Wright & Fitzgerald – English for medicine in higher education studies (2009)
• Short – English for psychology in higher education studies (2010)

2010s – Graduate attributes –

• Argent & Alexander – Access EAP: Foundations (2010
• Argent & Alexander – Access EAP: Frameworks (2014)