Jordan academic writing course: study skills in english publisher: longman 19 08 23 isbn: 0582400198 djvu 160 pages 4.06 mb specially designed for students starting a tertiary level course in higher education, this book addresses all aspects of academic writing, from the details of accurate grammatical construction, pronunciation and spelling to appropriate style choices. Ten appendices form a bank of useful material, cross referenced from the main units. A glossary of examination and essay terms and an extensive key are also included. Fellow, elt unit, university of manchester in esp sig newsletter no.6 june 1996 , andy gillett explained clearly the chief concerns of english for academic purposes what is eap? . he summarised the main areas: academic writing, listening, speaking, reading in addition, testing and answering exam questions. As with most subjects, the more carefully you examine something, the more complex it becomes.

Although a general isation is a good introduction for a student, more specific and often discipline bound practice is needed. Much of this can be subsumed under the umbrella term academic discourse and style . One productive area of eap research since the 1980s has been genre analysis. this involves the study of how language is used and organised within particular settings e.g. By investigating the structure of specific types of text, teachers and students are able to gain a clearer idea of the end product that is aimed for. For example, swales 1983, 1984 analysed the introductions to a number of academic articles and found that the majority of the short introductions followed a four move pattern he later modified this to three moves swales, 1990.

Some of the activities that can help to raise students' awareness of aspects of genre have been suggested by swales 1983,1984. Examples are:

colour coding: using different coloured marker pens to highlight the moves in the structure of article introductions. Jumbled introductions: mixing the moves, students then reassemble them in the correct sequence. Writing scholarly introductions: several activities are possible viz, close exercises on whole introductions, inserting references, appropriately, into the text, writing introductions based on basic data, titles and abstracts. other useful investigations of written genre have been conducted by dudley evans 1987 , hopkins amp dudley evans 1988 , brett 1994 and hewings 1993. However, thompson 1994 has analysed the introductions to lectures as being an important aid in providing a framework and context for listeners. An example of elements in the structure of a lecture introduction is as follows: andy gillett, university of hertfordshire at the esp sig general meeting at keele, there seemed to be a general lack of knowledge about eap.

Love Actually Essay

What is eap? who are eap lecturers? what do they do? what are they interested in? i would like to try to answer some of these questions. It is probably true that most eap lecturers are working in institutes of higher education where english is the medium of instruction. They see many students for whom english is not a first language and who could benefit from english classes. For some students, improving their english is essential they will fail their courses otherwise.

Some think they can get better grades if they learn more english while others study english because they like it. The object of an eap english for academic purposes course is to help overseas students overcome some of the linguistic difficulties involved in studying in english. The job of the eap lecturer is to find out what the students have to do and help them to do it better. Eap is a branch of esp in that the teaching content is matched to the requirements of the learners.

Eap students are usually current higher education students or they are hoping to go on to higher education after their eap course. Second, esp courses are based on a needs analysis, which aims to specify as closely as possible exactly what it is that students have to do through the medium of english. One important feature of eap courses is the close attention that is paid to students' aims and what they plan to study. The first stage in any eap, and esp, course is to find out exactly why the students are learning english and therefore what language and skills they will need.

Most eap students are doing fixed term courses in preparation for an academic course. Most eap students are over 18 and they will have made a difficult decision to study in an english medium university. It is the activities that the students will want to engage in that defines the course. As with all esp, an eap lecturer would not take a text and say, what can i do with this? the starting point is always, what will my students need to do with this text and how can i help them to do it? in some cases, a very high level of proficiency is not required, as long as the students can succeed in their aims. Our job as eap lecturers is to find ways to enable them to do this getting their present tenses correct may not be as important the overall structure of the essay.

even so, eap has not been mentioned very often in the standard esp methodology books up to now. 5, 30 31, 110 117 define it and use eap situations for some of their case studies they also offer some eap listening and speaking exercises. 94 95, 115 117,122 123 looks at the language of seminars and eap testing and robinson 1991, pp. Several articles in mackay amp mountford 1978 look at specific eap problems: listening, language for economists and study skills. It is to be hoped, however, that this will be addressed by the publication of jordan in press. Most universities in the uk offer these pre sessional courses, which vary in length from one year to two weeks.