Exploring the transformative potential of duoethnography for critical language teaching

The English language is widely used in educational institutes around the world, and especially in Higher Education. This has led to the development of English for Academic Purposes (EAP), a new branch within the field of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). This chapter is aimed at providing a conceptual framework for ESP and EAP. To this end, the chapter will focus on the diachronic development of ESP, the differences between ESP, EAP and EOP (English for Occupational Purposes), and the distinction of EAP in EGAP (English for General Academic Purposes) and ESAP (English for Specific Academic Purposes). Relevant key concepts in English language pedagogy, such as curriculum and syllabus design, as well as current issues in the field of EAP research, are also examined.

This entry examines ways English for specific purposes (ESP) and English for academic purposes (EAP) support teachers in their endeavors to devise instruction to prepare English as a second language (ESL) learners for the demands of working or studying in English. EAP grew out of ESP and shares similar, pedagogical features with ESP. The entry describes a range of contexts in which specialized (ESP and EAP) language instructions typically occur and ways in which ESP and EAP are distinctive pedagogical frameworks. For learners, the provision of specialized language instruction that is based on identification of their work or study needs is widely understood to be motivating, effective, and efficient. However, for teachers of specialized English, working in this area can present considerable challenges in terms of developing their own knowledge of the specialist linguistic register, devising in‐house materials, and developing new courses or revising others, to meet the precise needs of their groups of learners. The entry describes ways the ESP and EAP research supports the work of teachers. It highlights the important role of linguistic inquiry into specialist language use and case reports of ESP and EAP teaching practices in particular contexts as major forms of support. It identifies lacunae in the literature and suggests future research directions.

The BALEAP STEM SIG 2023 Symposium on 'Deconstructing student needs in EAP for STEM' provided insights into the unique challenges and strategies for teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Key presentations included Natasha Rust's emphasis on integrating register, genre, and discourse analysis into EAP for science courses, Sanchia Rodrigues's exploration of mathematical proficiency and discourse in EAP for maths, and Aaron Woodcock and Lori-Ann Milln's strategies for creating sustainable English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) curricula focusing on vocabulary, speaking, mediation skills, and reflection. Audience discussions highlighted the need for flexible teaching approaches to cater to diverse STEM student groups and the importance of embedding EAP within the broader academic framework. The symposium underscored the collaborative nature of developing effective EAP programs that address both language and subject-specific needs, ensuring the preparation of students for academic success in their respective STEM fields. This interactive infographic and symposium write-up aims to summarise the presentations and discussion at the symposium, to foster ongoing discussions and developments in EAP for STEM education.

English for academic purposes (EAP) has emerged out of the broader field of English for specific purposes (ESP), defined by its focus on teaching English specifically to facilitate learners’ study or research through the medium of English. English for academic purposes is differentiated from English for specific purposes by this focus on academic contexts, but among the applied linguistics and English language teaching fields more widely the view of English for academic purposes as a sub-discipline within English for specific purposes still holds. Both these views are valid, as the histories of English for specific purposes and English for academic purposes do not distinguish between a view of them as parent to child, or as sister fields. It is not unusual to find articles with English for academic purposes focus in the pages of the English for Specific Purposes Journal, but English for academic purposes work also appears in all the applied linguistics and English language teaching (ELT) journals from time to time. English for academic purposes entails training students, usually in a higher education setting, to use language appropriately for study. It is one of the most common forms of English for specific purposes. English for academic purposes is an eclectic and pragmatic discipline: a wide range of linguistic, applied linguistic and educational topics can be considered from the perspective of English for academic purposes, or drawn in methodologically to inform English for academic purposes.

This introductory review article for this special issue sets out a range of issues in play as far as English for Academic Purposes (EAP) writing is concerned, but with a special emphasis on English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) (as opposed to English for General Academic Purposes (EGAP)). Following the introduction, the article begins by outlining the different types of EAP and presenting the pros and cons of ESAP and EGAP for writing. It then goes on to review work in a range of areas of relevance to ESAP writing. These areas are register and discourse analysis; genre analysis; corpus analysis; ethnography; contrastive rhetoric; classroom methodology; critical approaches; and assessment. The article concludes by arguing that whichever model of writing is chosen (EGAP or ESAP), or if a hybrid model is the choice, if at all possible, students need to be exposed to the understandings, language and communicative activities of their target disciplines, with students themselves also contributing to this enterprise.

Integrating listening and reading instruction in EAP programs

English for Academic Purposes (EAP) has become one of the most important fields in English Language Teaching (ELT) in Iran. Thus, researchers, syllabus designers, and EAP instructors are always in search of new materials and tools to enhance learning. The Internet is regarded as one of the most useful and practical tools which can be used in EAP pedagogical settings. As a result, becoming aware of the EAP stakeholders’ attitudes toward using the Internet is so necessary. To this aim, university students (Chabahar Maritime University) and EAP lecturers were given questionnaires. The analyzed data revealed that most EAP instructors and students have a positive attitude toward using the Internet as one of the main sources of EAP courses. However, there were few cases that a relatively significant number of participants had a negative attitude toward internet resources. These cases are discussed in detail and some solutions are suggested.

A Parallel Approach to ESAP Teaching

The role of English language teaching (ELT) in English-medium instruction (EMI) can vary widely depending on education policy objectives and teachers’ responses to EMI students’ language and learning needs. In this paper, we provide a narrative review of a growing number of studies reporting language-related challenges as the foremost barrier to successful implementation of EMI. Such research highlights the fundamental roles that English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Specific Purposes have in the provision of targeted language support for EMI students. Based on this review, we set a future research agenda, calling for explorations into the efficacy of English language programs for supporting EMI students to reach educational outcomes. We also call for explorations of greater collaboration between English language practitioners and content lecturers to ensure the right type of language support is being provided to students. The paper ends with a discussion for the need to reposition EAP as English for Specific Academic Purposes to ensure students’ specific academic needs are met. Essentially, universities offering EMI will need to account for their unique institutional characteristics to ensure ELT provision is central in organizational and curricular structures; otherwise, they may be setting their own students up to fail.

English for academic purpose (EAP) emerged as a branch of English for specific purposes in the early 1980s. EAP grounds English language teaching in the linguistic demands of academic context, tailoring instruction to specific rather than general purposes. There is a growth of interest in EAP in the recent years. The interest in EAP developed in response to the growing need for intercultural awareness and of English as a lingua franca (ELF). EAP has become a major area of research in applied linguistics and focus of the courses studied worldwide by a large number of students preparing for study in colleges and universities. The increase in students’ undertaking tertiary studies in English-speaking countries has led to a steady demand for the courses tailored to meet the immediate, specific vocational and professional needs. Thus, most universities in the present day world prioritize the role of academic skills. The aim of the paper is to examine the key approaches to the teaching of English for academic purposes, current trends in teaching EAP, and to argue the centrality and significance of EAP in the academia. The paper concludes by arguing that a greater emphasis needs to be placed on methodology in EAP.

In Europe most studies of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) focus on language knowledge and language skills and most studies of CLIL are carried out in primary schools and secondary schools. As for the implementation of CLIL in China, most studies are done theoretically and are carried out among undergraduates. CLIL is mainly applied in the teaching and learning of general English rather than in the teaching and learning of English for Academic Purpose (EAP). In order to have a better understanding of the effect of CLIL on EAP learners, a sample analysis is undertaken among doctoral students of science. Two kinds of instruments are adopted in this paper to conduct both quantitative and qualitative study, including two questionnaires and a series of classroom observations. The study obtains the following findings: Firstly, as CLIL is effective due to its dual-focus, it is possible to implement CLIL in EAP teaching and learning. Secondly, class activities such as group work, pair work, class presentations as well as task-based course activities such as translation, paper writing, paper analysis and rewriting practice play an important role in motivating the participants to integrate discipline content and language. Besides, the four factors of CLIL which include content, communication, culture and cognition are attached great importance to by learners. Finally, the increasing ability to integrate content and language as well as the thinking patterns and cultural awareness in EAP writing greatly contributes to the participants’ further academic researches.

The online and blended delivery of courses through the use of technologies has attracted attention and research.The teaching and learning of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in multilingual contexts such as in Africa has also been given prominence in research, as well as the benefits of technology in EAP programmes. The pressing need for technology - supported educational practices has been evidenced by the COVID-19 pandemic that affected most educational systems around the world. Although there is an increasing body of research on the integration of technology in education emerging from developing contexts, most proposed models still come from high-income countries.Therefore, there is a need for more critical and contextually relevant approaches to the integration of technology in education. Based on the authors’ narratives of their lived experiences as teachers of EAP in a university in East Africa, this article aims to describe and reflect on the practices related to design and delivery of online and blended courses to university students, including in a teacher education programme. It is hoped that this work will contribute to discussions on how to make online and blended teaching practices of EAP more contextually relevant and how exogenous resources can be adapted to the realities of students in multilingual developing contexts.The online and blended delivery of courses through the use of technologies has attracted attention and research. The teaching and learning of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in multilingual contexts such as in Africa has also been given prominence in research, as well as the benefits of technology in EAP programmes. The pressing need for technology-supported educational practices has been evidenced by the COVID-19 pandemic that affected most educational systems around the world. Although there is an increasing body of research on the integration of technology in education emerging from developing contexts, most proposed models still come from high-income countries. Therefore, there is a need for more critical and contextually relevant approaches to the integration of technology in education. Based on the authors’ narratives of their lived experiences as teachers of EAP in a university in East Africa, this article aims to describe and reflect on the practices related to design and delivery of online and blended courses to university students, including in a teacher education programme. It is hoped that this work will contribute to discussions on how to make online and blended teaching practices of EAP more contextually relevant and how exogenous resources can be adapted to the realities of students in multilingual developing contexts.

This article considers a case of local language socialization and accommodation in a multilingual community of practice: the use of English as an additional academic language for specific purposes at a bilingual Swiss university and its implications for teaching. The acronym ELF(A) is used throughout as short for English as a Lingua Franca (in Academic settings). The bilingual university’s multilingual habitat also shapes the kind of ELF(A) used and this has in turn informed the teaching of English for Plurilingual Academic Purposes (EPAP). The discussion draws on both ethnographic research carried out in multilingual disciplinary speech events and on the author’s simultaneous and continuing experience of developing and teaching English for academic purposes (EAP). It focuses on an oral presentation to a life science journal club made by a multilingual doctoral student socialized into the use of English almost exclusively in the ELF(A) habitat. Using the plurilingual repertoire to sustain “code-sharing” lingua franca mode, one of the habitat’s most striking effects is the effort users are willing to expend in striving for autonomous functionality in their Englishes without overt switching, while simultaneously relying on their audience’s multilingual flexibility and shared disciplinary knowledge, e.g. in the pronunciation of technical terminology. The habitat of a multilingual community of practice that assumes responsibility for its novices’ language socialization in an additional medium is thus a supportive factor empowering junior scientists to function in English. To the extent that the habitat factor contains a limiting dimension of context dependence, however, teaching EPAP should also target speakers’ (potential) needs for spoken academic language use elsewhere.

English for academic purposes (EAP) has established itself as a considerable part of English as a foreign language (EFL) instruction in Iranian universities. Considering the Internet as a major educational source in EAP reading courses, it is highly important that the stakeholders have positive attitudes toward it and be aware of promises and challenges. This study was conducted to investigate the participants' attitudes toward the Internet in EAP courses for undergraduate students of civil engineering (CE) in Iran. To this end, 723 undergraduate students, 67 EAP instructors and 105 CE instructors participated in the study. Instrumentation included a questionnaire, semi-structured interviews and non-participant observation. Our analysis of the data revealed that the majority of EAP instructors, CE instructors and undergraduate students have positive attitudes toward the Internet. However, the results showed that EAP instructors do not make use of any types of Internet-based activities in their classes. Moreover, the majority of limitations in using the Internet in EAP courses were identified. It is concluded that undergraduate students of CE need training in various Internet-based skills. The findings promise implications for renewing the EAP programs.

With English as the medium language of communication around the globe, EAP (English for Academic Purposes) research has increasingly gained its attention. For learners of EAP, it is necessary to be able to academically and persuasively produce written practices acknowledged by members of academic discourse community. Plenty amount of EAP studies, accordingly, have explored genre analysis, move analysis, and metadiscourse analysis of RAs (research articles). Up to date, limited attention has been given to another crucial academic written genre: master’s thesis (MA thesis), which is the first step young researchers must be engaged with in order to join the academic discourse community. Writing is the process and production of interaction among writer, readers, and discourse. Metadiscourse in academic writing refers to writer’s self-projection toward him/herself, readers, and disciplinary discourse community. Metadiscourse is crucially applied in academic writing to achieve writer preferred communicative purposes. Reformulation is a type of metadiscourse that functions to “supply additional information by rephrasing, explaining or elaborating what has been said to ensure the reader is able to recover the writer’s intended meaning” (Hyland, 2007a, p. 268). In other words, metadiscoursal reformulation markers are employed to facilitate comprehension and appropriateness of academic production. However, unlike other metadiscoursal research, little attention has been paid to reformulation markers, especially how they are used in MA theses as a research genre. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate reformulation markers and their discourse functions in MA theses. The present study integrates corpus analysis and discourse analysis to examine reformulation markers and their discourse functions in 60 MA theses by Taiwanese graduate students. There are 28 reformulation markers examined with a total of 3883 elicited reformulation data. A coding scheme modified from Hyland (2007a) is used to analyze discourse functions. The results show that there is a tendency toward the use of simple apposition reformulation markers and fixed connectors. The top five preferred markers in MA theses are parentheses, i.e., that is, especially, and particularly respectively, of which parentheses accounts for nearly half of the frequency. In the comparison of the distribution of reformulation markers with previous research (Hyland, 2007a), it is found that the distribution of MA theses in the present study (i.e. soft science fields) is actually more resemble to hard science fields. Regarding discourse functions, Expansion and Reduction together constitute about 80.00%, and Other 20.00%. It reveals the dynamic representation of metadiscoursal reformulation markers. It also pinpoints the importance and necessity of contextual discourse analysis in metadiscourse research. As for the subcategories of discourse functions, Specification and Presentation are used most frequently, while Implication and Explanation are least used. As compared to Hyland (2007a), the percentage that Paraphrase in MA theses is two times that of RAs, while the percentage of Specification in MA theses is only half of that in RAs. The result could be attributed to generic difference, graduate students’ familiarity with the application of such markers and their discourse functions. Mutual multifunctionality between reformulation markers and discourse functions found in the present study is corresponding previous studies (Adel, 2006; Hyland, 2005). It means that the realization of reformulation function is diverse, for it crucially depends on metadiscursive contextual factors. In the present study, parentheses and namely have more functions than the other markers in the top five reformulation markers. Moreover, both of that is (to say) and its form variant i.e. can trigger Expansion and Reduction function; however, Implication can only be performed by that is (to say) and Explanation by i.e. Furthermore, with regard to sectional distribution of reformulation markers and discourse functions, it is Literature Review, and Results and Discussions that account for the most frequency. It is also observed that the distribution of discourse functions and their subcategories in these two sections conforms to the move development in MA theses (Bitchener and Basturkmen, 2005, 2006; Kwan, 2006). Some research has revealed the importance of reader awareness construction and the advantages of explicit/implicit metadiscourse teaching in academic writing. It is, accordingly, suggested to combine implicit and explicit instruction of metadiscoursal reformulation markers in EAP curriculum design to equip learners with such essential linguistic knowledge which is highly valued in academic disciplinary discourse community. In addition, in EAP research, it is recommended to connect and to relate reformulation markers and discourse functions to research of move analysis in various disciplines, or even genres.