Our CELFS intensive TEAP course has just finished for this year, and whilst reading through the participant feedback I was interested to note several comments to the effect that we should have defined EAP (English for Academic Purposes) at the start of the course. This raised several questions for me:
Should we? Could we? Is there a fixed definition? Does the definition depend on context? Is the definition evolving? Should I attempt a definition? Why not?
A definition clearly reflects the values of the writer. Ian Bruce’s 2011 definition reveals a genre-based approach with a nod to the English for General Academic Purposes versus English for Specific Academic Purposes (EGAP vs ESAP) debate:
- ‘the study of English for the purpose of participating in higher education. This study will be centred on the texts (spoken and written) that occur in academic contexts and will include the discourses and practices that surround and give rise to such texts… EAP course design needs to be grounded in knowledge of the more general assumptions, values and practices of universities as well as understandings of the more specific differences that can occur among different subject areas…’
When discussing the difference between EGAP and ESAP, I contrast these two definitions:
- ‘communication skills in English which are required for study purposes in formal education systems’ (English-Teaching Information Centre, 1975)
- ‘the literacy skills which are appropriate to the purposes and understandings of particular communities’ (Hyland, 2002)
Now is the time to pull my thoughts together and attempt my own definition to describe what for a few years now I have been calling EMDAP – English for Multi-Disciplinary Academic Purposes. My full definition is at the end of this post: I will first build up the definition phrase by phrase with a commentary to make my choices and values transparent. EAP is…
‘an extra layer of the English language’ – to highlight the fact that this is a developmental not a remedial process. We are adding an additional optional layer of English that can be employed in specific circumstances, rather than filling in gaps in faulty existing knowledge. They need it now – they didn’t need it before. There is no blame attached to the student, their cultural background or their previous learning experience – which prepared them to succeed in that context for that purpose. The responsibility now lies firmly with the university to facilitate continued success in a new context for a new purpose.
‘anyone studying at university level’- anyone, not everyone, to highlight the fact that it is not only speakers of languages other than English who have to develop this layer of language. The oft-quoted comment from Bourdieu and colleagues about the lecture theatres of France in the 1960s is on our Centre’s wall and used in our promotional material: ‘Academic language is nobody’s mother tongue’. I realised that I have been moving away from the use of the term EAP because of its connection to international students. Instead I tend to talk about Academic Language and Literacy in my campaign for ALL for all.
‘can develop’ – the choice of modal is important here. I have chosen to state that ‘anyone can’…not ‘everyone should’… I am aware of the Academic Literacies view of EAP as part of a socialisation process that takes away agency from the student, forcing them to conform (cf Lea & Street 1998). I feel uncomfortable in this box. I see my role as an EAP practitioner as helping the students uncover what is going on in the academy; thereby empowering them to make a choice to either follow the conventions to achieve their immediate academic purpose or to flout the conventions knowingly in order to achieve a different purpose – the development of their own hybrid identity as an academic.
‘through noticing’- this reflects my preferred inductive teaching style that encourages guided discovery and is based on my personal pedagogy of ‘helping others help themselves’. I was hoping that our participants would discover our definition of EAP as the course progressed – some certainly did – and realized that it was not the same as their own. In the same way, rather than providing students with a template to follow unthinkingly, I aim to equip them with noticing skills and a set of questions to ask in any academic context. I work alongside them as a ‘meddler in the middle’ (cf McWilliam) to model the process of uncovering the choices made in their particular context for a particular purpose.
‘the choices of content, organisation and language made’ – this reflects my adherence to the SFL view of language as a meaning-making choice at an experiential, textual and interpersonal level. I recommend Nigel Kaplan’s ‘Grammar Choices for Graduate and Professional Writers’ for an accessible and practical way in to the complexities of Systemic Functional Linguistics. These are the questions we should be training our students to ask in every context.
‘by specific discourse communities’ – the plural is important here since the students are likely to come into contact with more than one in this increasingly multidisciplinary world. Even if they do not study across disciplines, they may well be called upon to work in cross-disciplinary teams in the future. I see cross-disciplinary communication as a form of cross-cultural communication, and we should help our students develop this competence. I chose Swales’ ‘discourse communities’ rather than Lave and Wenger’s ‘communities of practice’ since I am a linguist and it is the concept of language at discourse level that I find myself trying to explain across the university again and again. I could equally well have used Holliday’s concept of ‘small cultures’. However, it is linguistic knowledge and discourse analysis skills that set ‘EAP’ apart from ‘study skills’.
‘in order to achieve a particular purpose with a given audience’ – this highlights the fact that even within a discipline there will be multiple modes of communication for a myriad of purposes (cf BAWE). The questions that we encourage our students to ask (in order to notice the choices that are made) function at an individual task level rather than at discipline level. They need a toolkit to be used with discernment in any new context, not a template to be transferred unthinkingly from one task to another.
That’s all for now, folks! Thus it is with thanks to the fantastic participants of our 2018 TEAP course that this definition of EAP has begun to take shape and hopefully will be refined through feedback before we run the next course! For the moment it reads as follows:
‘EAP is an extra layer of the English language that anyone studying at university level can develop through noticing the choices of content, organization and language made by specific discourse communities in order to achieve a particular purpose with a given audience.’
I am interested to hear your own working definitions of EAP.
Interesting to look back on 2018 and see how my working definition of EAP has evolved.
In June 2018, I gave a plenary presentation at the Bilkent University EAP conference. By then, EMDAP had become English for Multiple Disciplinary Academic Purposes rather than ‘multi-disciplinary’. This reflects my ongoing concern with the tension between increased specificity and transferability in EAP. We can never hope to tackle all the genres a student will be faced with, even within a single discipline – especially the engineers. We therefore need to ensure that they are aware that we are providing tools not rules. We want them to learn the process of making choices of content, organisation and language based on consideration of the audience and purpose of any task they may be faced with.
One significant word also changed in the definition – studying became working. This reflects the role of many EAP practitioners who work with researchers and other members of the community. They are not all studying, but hopefully they are all learning.
‘EAP is an extra layer of the English language that anyone working at university level can develop through noticing the choices of content, organization and language made by specific discourse communities in order to achieve a particular purpose with a given audience.’
At the Bilkent conference Edward de Chazal presented on EAP in a secondary context and I realised that there was still work to be done. My definition reflects my own experience of EAP in tertiary institutions in the UK and overseas. Some might argue that we need to remove the phrase ‘anyone working at university level’ all together. This would then leave a definition that could apply to any form of ESP. To be continued…
I think it is time to remove the term EAP as it is too restrictive. It also creates barriers, where international students want to be part of an academic world and are often offerered EAP classes because they are struggling. Though this may be true to many, there are just as many – maybe more due to cohort size – home students who have no concepts of academic writing etc. When I teach international students and home students, I am basically teaching them the same things and even when we label classes as “EAP”, more home students attend. This is good and I want this to happen, which means to me that EAP as a term is ineffectual. It might work at red brick places where there are clear divisions in academic ability where home students are better equipped than international, but where I work the division is not so wide so do we have another acronym? There is also the issue of how EAP is perceived by non-EAP teachers, but that is another story of course………..