English For Academic Purposes Classes Research Articles

Using ChatGPT to Teach English for Academic Purposes

Much attention has recently been given to the implications, potentials and pitfalls of ChatGPT in higher education. Thus far these discussions have taken a largely theoretical and exploratory perspective on what the strengths and weaknesses of ChatGPT are and how it could be used to either disrupt or enhance teaching and learning in higher education (Gimpel, et al., 2023; Kasneci, et al., 2023; Rudolph et al., 2023). Currently, there are few studies that have provided empirical evidence about the practical implementation of ChatGPT in the classroom, how it is being used and received by students, and its impact on student learning outcomes (Firat, 2023). This paper begins to address this gap by describing the ways in which ChatGPT was used in an English for Academic Purposes class for bachelor students in the Spring Semester of 2023 and assessing how it was received and used by students. Part one of the paper describes the curriculum design and the specific ways in which ChatGPT was incorporated into the syllabus, the learning outcomes, the assessments, and in-class activities. At the end of a semester a set of open-ended reflective questions was used to collect data from the students and gather insights into how students had experienced using ChatGPT in the class, what they saw as its strengths and weaknesses, and how they planned to use it in the future. Part two of the paper therefore uses a thematic analysis approach to consider the reflections of 26 students and identify patterns and themes in the students’ responses. Seven key themes emerged from this analysis which included: generating ideas, improving essay structure, editing, too vague/unreliable, prompting, limiting creativity, and critical thinking. The data suggests that students largely understood both the strengths and weaknesses of ChatGPT as a writing tool, however, they were not able to use it in a way that significantly improved their writing. The ways in which students planned to use ChatGPT in the future varied significantly with the most common plans being to use it to generate new ideas and edit texts. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these findings.

Investigating teacher talk in EAP and EGP classes: In pursuit of communicative features

PurposeThis study aims to explore the communicative features of teacher talk in English for General Purposes (EGP) vs. English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes in Iranian contexts based on the Self-Evaluation Teacher Talk (SETT) framework.Design/methodology/approachFor the purposes of this study, EAP and EGP classes run by three language instructors and three content instructors were observed and interviews with teacher participants were conducted. The data were analyzed by content analysis, and emerging overarching themes were recorded.FindingsThe findings of this study indicate that the translation of texts into Persian was the dominant theme in classes run by content instructors who were less aware of the communicative features of teacher talk. However, one of the content instructors who was familiar with the communicative features of teacher talk as well as general language instructors were found to be highly aware of the potential of their teacher talk to encourage communication in his classes. The innovative and communicative features in the language/content instructor suggest the importance of teacher agency in bringing change in education at the micro-level. This study has implications for various agencies involved in teaching EAP, EGAP and English for Specific Purposes (ESAP), raising awareness regarding the communicative features of teacher talk as a driving force leading learners and teachers to more communicative opportunities in language classrooms. The findings suggest that teacher talk is an essential component of classroom discourse, shaping students' linguistic and academic development, and that teacher agency is crucial in promoting communicative opportunities in language education. To boost communication, the authors recommend translanguaging with a focus on both communication and optimal use of the mother tongue in EAP classes.Originality/valueThere is little empirical evidence on the communicative aspects of teacher talk in higher education. This study can inspire more parallel research on EAP settings in higher education with a focus on communication and teacher talk features.

Tunnel, teapot, mermaid, ghost: Creative-critical practice as critical language awareness

What if a writing class is expressed as a shape? What if English is reimagined as an entity? Presenting case studies from two tertiary-level L2 English for Academic Purposes classes in the United States, this article explores intersections between creative-critical practice and critical language awareness (CLA). The multimodal and interdisciplinary approaches included here demonstrate how concepts from art education can be used to center students’ language practices and knowledges. Through prompts designed to elicit creative-critical responses, students explored their multilingual identities and their relationships to academic writing and academic writing classes. Examples of their work are analyzed according to three strategies of creative-critical practice: relationality, recursivity, and interpretation to demonstrate how arts-based practices align with CLA. Working inventively and imaginatively in response to these prompts, students’ work offers productive disruptions to dominant language ideologies and positively (re)frames their experiences as multilingual writers.

The Role of EAP Genre-Focused Instruction in Preparing Novice Research Students for Thesis Writing: A Case Study

Although writing master’s theses are believed to be a major challenge for many L2 research students, there has been no extensive discussion about to what extent students are prepared for such advanced academic writing through learning in English for academic purposes (EAP) classes. This study investigated a group of novice research students learning to write master’s theses in an EAP course at a Chinese university and explored their progress in developing genre knowledge. Data were drawn from interviews, participants’ learning diaries, and their written texts. It was found that most learners had developed the macro-level formal genre knowledge, including the overall structure and content of thesis writing, and raised the declarative meta-cognitive genre awareness, but they had not yet grasped the tacit aspects of rhetorical knowledge, the micro-level formal knowledge, and the complicacy of process knowledge, including the abstract thinking processes, intertextuality, and the interpersonal meaning of academic texts, as well as the correspondent lexicogrammatical features. The nascent status of the students’ genre knowledge developed in the EAP class, and the role of EAP genre-focused instruction in preparing novice research students for their future thesis writing, are further discussed. It is suggested that thesis-focused EAP writing courses take advantage of explicit instruction to inform students about the meta-generic specifications of thesis writing and emphasize the multiple dimensions of genre knowledge development.

フィードバックによる学術的社会化―EAP授業における教師のポスト・パフォーマンスフィードバックの会話分析 Socializing Students into Academics Through Feedback—Conversation Analysis of Teacher’s Post-performance Feedback to EAP Classroom Presentation

学術目的のための英語 (English for academic purposes: EAP) 授業を担当する教師は、アカデミック・プレゼンテーションなどでの学生のパフォーマンスに対して、どのようなフィードバックを与えることで学習者の学術世界への社会化を促進できるのか。この問いに具体的な回答を行うことでより良いEAP授業の実践に貢献することを本研究の目的とし、日本の２つの大学における185のEAP授業を撮影したビデオデータを対象に、エスノメソドロジー的会話分析を用いて分析を行った。結果、学生たちの不適切なパフォーマンスを再現し、そこからその問題源を体験させるという相互行為手続きを取ることによって、教師のポスト・パフォーマンスフィードバックは学生の学術世界への社会化を促す媒介となる、ということが分かった。EAP授業において教師は、学術世界での専門家として学生のパフォーマンスの問題とその問題を見極めることができる能力、さらにその専門家としての見方を体験させられる相互行為能力が必要である。 In classes such as English for Academic Purposes (EAP) wherein the pedagogical focus is on knowledge and competence required in academic settings such as academic presentation, what kind of feedback should teachers give to students about their performance to socialize them into becoming academics? Studies investigating students’ perceptions about the teacher’s post-performance feedback support the necessity of the dialogical process for students to understand the teacher’s feedback and to utilize it for their next performance. However, very few studies in the context of higher education have been conducted to examine what constitutes effective dialogic feedback, or how teachers and students actually achieve a mutual understanding of the point of feedback in classroom interaction. Meanwhile, ethnomethodological conversation analytic (EMCA) research on instruction from a professional to a novice member of a community explicated the interactional process on how the point of a teacher’s post-performance feedback is understood. The interactional feedback practices performed by the professionals such as a senior archeologist or a master of Japanese calligraphy described in those EMCA studies indicate that a professional’s post-performance feedback can develop a member’s competence necessary for his or her socialization into a particular domain of cultural activity. EAP is aimed at socializing students into the culture of academic research (de Chazal, 2014). So, appropriating the EMCA perspective of instruction from professional to novice in a community to investigate teacher’s post-performance feedback in the EAP classroom will give insight into what and how teachers should give feedback to students about their performance. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explicate teachers’ post-performance feedback practices given for students’ academic presentations in EAP classrooms through the microanalysis of actual EAP classroom feedback practices from an EMCA perspective. The data used for this study were based on the video corpus of 185 post-performance feedback interactions in EAP classrooms of a national university and a private university in Japan. Microanalyses of teacher feedback on student presentations in EAP classes at Japanese universities suggested that making the students personally experience the trouble source of their presentations makes the teacher’s feedback a catalyst in the academic socialization of the students. In the case where the trouble source of a student’s problem in his presentation was his or her lack of understanding of the audience’s perspective, the physical representability of the audience viewpoint allowed the teacher to reenact how she and the audience found the problem and its cause. The teacher’s feedback was composed of replaying the problem, switching the student’s perspective from that of the presenter to the audience, collecting the actual audience’s agreement to her interpretation, and showing the exchange between her and the audience member to the target student. Through the step-by-step feedback practice to make the target student personally experience the trouble-source, the teacher put the student into a sequential position where he or she was normatively required to display how the demonstrated issue was treated. The real challenge is how to make the trouble source of the students’ mistakes evident when it is about an abstract idea, such as a lack of understanding about why a clear statement of the purpose is essential to a presentation. In such a case, the teacher’s feedback practice involves students in a type of puzzle-solution sequence. First, the teacher presents out-of-context talk to the students to make them confused; after the talk, the teacher enacts what the confused students might have thought while they were told an out-of-context talk and this works as a solution to the puzzle. The puzzle-solution sequence is a way of making experientially accessible to the students the importance of abstract norms such as making the aim of the presentation explicit. The lived experience becomes a catalyst for students’ academic socialization by constructing a link between the goal behavior (i.e., correct performance) and the students, who had lacked the insight into the importance of the goal behavior, which was the trouble source of the issue with their presentations. The findings of this study further show that the analytic method used in this study, EMCA, is a promising way of representing the effective interactional feedback practices in detail. Of course, the results of this study do not represent the entirety of post-performance feedback practices used by teachers engaged in EAP classrooms. Future studies should examine a variety of teachers’ post-performance feedback practices in EAP or ESP (English for Specific Purposes) classrooms so that a knowledge base of pedagogically meaningful feedback practices is developed and made available for the language teachers today to rely on when they teach classes where the educational focus is not only the linguistic aspects of the target language, but the content or academic/professional competencies.

Motivational strategies in undergraduate EAP courses: student perceptions and suggestions

ABSTRACT Considerable research on university undergraduates’ struggles to master English for academic purposes (EAP) has been undertaken, yet little attention has been paid to the motivational needs of this specific learner group, or the fulfilment of such needs in university EAP courses. This study examines motivational strategies used by teachers of undergraduate EAP classes, student-perceived ineffective characteristics of the strategies, and students’ suggestions for better strategy implementation, together with the relationships between the strategies and the ineffective characteristics/suggestions. Reflective journals were collected from 69 first-year undergraduates who were enrolled in EAP courses offered by a Hong Kong university. The major findings are: 1) The adopted motivational strategies correspond closely to those endorsed in an influential framework; 2) the student participants reported ineffective characteristics pertinent to difficulty, relevance, expected learning outcomes, fairness, and interest; 3) the main suggestions were increased strategy use and provision of more assistance, encouragement, and examples; and 4) most of the suggestions appear to be non-strategy-specific, so they can supposedly be applied to a wide range of motivational strategies. The findings confirm the overall effectiveness of motivational strategies in undergraduate EAP courses, as well as informing university EAP teachers of possible ways to further improve their motivational techniques.

A trajetória da compilação de um corpus de aprendiz: um desafio metodológico compensador

ABSTRACT Corpus compilation is a challenging research endeavor that many researchers decide to pursue. Few learner corpora, however, can be easily accessed (e.g.,the International Corpus of Learner English), and none of them carry a variety of text registers written by English learners at different proficiency levels studying in the Brazilian university context. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to present the compilation of a learner corpus, much needed in our research and teaching context, pointing out the advantages of building this type of corpus for the understanding of learners’ needs as well as for pedagogical decision-making based on sound data. Presenting a detailed rationale of the corpus compilation, this article reveals the various decisions made in order to guarantee that fair comparisons can be made. To exemplify the value of building a carefully designed corpus, results of previous studies are compared. Some of the conclusions reached refer to the need for discipline-specific tasks to propel writing proficiency and for authorship skills to be developed in English for Academic Purposes classes to foster academic success.

Indonesian Learners’ Self-Directed Learning in Online EAP Classes: Its Manifestations and Factors

The present study was conducted to investigate online English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes’ learners’ manifestations of the level of their Self-directed Learning (SDL) in English as well as their views about possible factors influencing their SDL. The study used interviews as the method of data collection. Six EAP learner participants at the university level participated in the study. Through Thematic Analysis of the interview transcripts, the present study found that learners with a high SDL (HSDL) adhered to a carefully planned learning agenda and were eager to learn more. In comparison, learners with a low SDL (LSDL) reported having no deliberate planning for learning and making no or little effort to learn English independently outside English class. The present study further found that perceived relevance of English class increased learners' SDL, and its lack of relevance reduced it. The study also found that LSDL learners' sense of achievement and teachers' support could increase their interest in learning, and so their SDL. Based on the findings, it was suggested that EAP courses increase their relevance to learners' needs and teachers provide the necessary support for LSDL learners to make them more interested in learning and increase their SDL.

L2 learning online: Self-directed learning and gender influence in Indonesian university students

The present study was conducted to investigate Indonesian second language (L2) learners’ Self-Directed Learning (SDL) in English during the online classes due to the Covid-19 pandemic and to investigate whether there was a significant difference in SDL between female and male learners. As online learning is implemented nationwide in Indonesia due to the pandemic, it becomes paramount to investigate learners’ SDL, considered very critical in online learning settings where teachers' ability to check learners' progress is not as extensive as it is in the face-to-face mode of instruction. The participants of the study were 187 undergraduate students taking English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes. Through the data obtained from the online questionnaire, the study found that learners, in general, reported a high level of SDL even though many of them still embraced procrastination behaviours and considered the pragmatic need to pass the EAP class more important than the actual L2 learning. It also found that there was no significant difference between female learners’ SDL and that of male learners. Based on the findings and analysis of the possible factors, possible contributions of the study are presented along with the possible limitations and suggested directions for future research in the field.
 HIGHLIGHTS:
 
 Learners, in general, reported a high level of SDL.
 Despite that, many of them still embraced procrastination behaviours and considered the pragmatic need to pass the English for Academic Purposes class more important than the actual L2 learning.

Willing, Silent or Forced Participation? Insights from English for Academic Purposes Classrooms

This study explores students’ participation in English for Academic Purposes classrooms from both teachers’ and students’ perspectives. Data were collected from videotaping of 11 English for academic purposes classes, semi-structured interviews with 12 teachers and stimulated-recall interviews with 33 students. The results indicate that three types of participation were identified, including willing, silent and forced participation. The results also show that a range of contextual and individual factors affect students’ participation in class activities and discussions. The contextual factors include class atmosphere, teacher support, peer participation, task, topic and interactional pattern. The individual factors include students’ confidence, personality and their perceived and actual communicative competence. Pedagogical implications and directions for future research are also discussed.

An Investigation of the Motivational Profile of EAP Learners at a Transnational Education English Medium Instruction University

The number of transnational education (TNE) higher education institutions (HEI) around the globe is on the rise. This study attempts to examine the motivational profiles of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) learners at a TNE university in Mainland China that uses English as the medium of instruction (EMI). Participants (N = 300) were primarily first- and second-year students enrolled in EAP classes. The study relied on an adapted version of a motivational questionnaire (Taguchi et al., 2009) to measure some of the most commonly researched motivation constructs. Findings suggest that these students had relatively strong Ideal L2 Selves, were confident in their linguistic abilities, viewed learning EAP as being beneficial for their lives, and desired to integrate with or become like members of their respective academic or professional communities. No meaningful significant differences were found between the motivational profiles of male and female students. This Work-in-Progress study serves as an initial step towards understanding the motivational profiles of EAP learners within the TNE EMI context.

The use of metadiscourse markers in the case of students of political science in L2 English

The use of discipline-specific corpora to determine disciplinary writing norms and rhetorical as well as linguistic features is established practice. Several studies have used discipline-specific corpora to establish such genre features and have testified to the efficiency of using corpora in class or for self-directed learning. Few scholars, however, have investigated the discipline of Political Science in this manner. The present study analyses the use of lexical bundles representing metadiscourse markers in the discipline of Political Science. It builds on a previous study (Bercuci 2020) which investigated lexical bundles in expert writing in the field. As I did in my previous study focusing on metadiscourse markers in the discipline of Political Science, to guide my analyses in this paper I use the definitions offered in Ken Hyland’s early seminal work, Metadiscourse: Exploring Interaction in Writing (2005), as well as his 2008 article, “As can be seen: Lexical bundles and disciplinary variation”. As such, this paper focuses on a learner corpus of undergraduate and graduate student writing in Political Science. I thus reveal the discipline-specific inter-language interference of L1 Romanian into L2 writing in English and indicate the issues on which targeted writing exercises should focus during university-level English for Specific Purposes and English for Academic Purposes classes. Students should be asked to practice register variation through targeted exercises as this appears to be the most prominent case of interference not only of the Romanian language but also of writing norms typical of Romanian research communities in general.

English Instructors’ Experiences of Emergency Remote Teaching in Medical Universities during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Study

Background: English instructors have faced numerous challenges following the COVID-19 outbreak and the sudden shift from inperson to online instruction. This vogue of alternative teaching practices is presently open to rigorous scrutiny. The current study attempted to shed light on the challenges facing the instructors of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at medical universities, and their strategies in handling emergency remote teaching during the pandemic. Methods: A qualitative content analysis was conducted to gather data from self-reflections and semi-structured interviews with 52 EAP instructors working at different Iranian medical universities in the spring and summer of 2020. The contents of the reflections and interviews were coded by the researchers based on the procedures of sequential explanatory strategy, and the major themes were extracted and categorized. Results: The findings point to the lack of required facilities and infrastructure, inadequate technological literacy, and poor internet quality as the major challenges facing the instructors. It was also revealed that the teachers viewed the enhancement of technological literacy and provision of required facilities as the main priorities in addressing the challenges. Conclusion: It was found that the EAP instructors had different perceptions of emergency remote teaching and potential solutions to the associated challenges. The findings offer practical recommendations for enhancing English proficiency among medical students. The results also highlight the necessity of offering EAP teacher training courses focused on developing the technological literacy of the instructors. To continue this line of research, a more in-depth study of students’ perceptions and experiences of online EAP classes is recommended.

The flipped classroom: Improving critical thinking for critical reading of EFL learners in higher education

The immersion of the flipped classroom teaching model in blended and online language learning is indispensable. The purpose of this study was to propose improvement in critical thinking in reading through the flipped classroom teaching model of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners in higher education. A quasi-experimental design was used to improve reading skills based on the framework of critical thinking for critical reading with a paired t-test of pre-test and post-test. The participants were 37 second-semester students in the English for Academic Purposes class. The results show that the flipped classroom teaching model enhanced students’ critical thinking for critical reading in the aspects of accuracy, clarity, precision, depth, relevance, and logic from the mean score of the pre-tests (12.4865) to the post-tests (18.3243). Students had a positive perception of the implementation of this model in terms of self-directed learning. This study implies that critical thinking for critical reading skills needs supportive teaching and learning environment that can allow students to have self-study prior to the class so that online learning can be effective to synergize the application of flipped classrooms with critical thinking skills in reading.

Can anybody hear me?

Student evaluations of online classes are frequently lower than their face-to-face counterparts, and one of the most common explanations students provide for poor online class evaluations is a lack of communication. One phenomenon that has been shown to improve communication as well as learning outcomes is positive interdependence, the collaborative – not competitive – reliance of student group members on each other in order to achieve mutual group success. Not only does collaborative learning encourage better participation and learning outcomes, but it offers a more natural learning style for students from collectivist cultures than the independent learning environment that online courses often provide. This makes the community of inquiry framework, which values social, teaching, and cognitive presences, appropriate when designing online teaching and learning environments for English learners. However, in a synchronous chat-based online class, social presence may manifest differently than in asynchronous text-based online classes. This paper presents a single qualitative case study of a synchronous online English for Academic Purposes class for Chinese high school students. The study introduces and evaluates the presence of indicators of social presence among the students in an especially non-communicative group. Findings and implications for future research and practice of social presence in collaborative learning environments in online English for Academic Purposes classes are discussed.
 Keywords: intercultural communication, learner motivation, online courses, social presence

Disciplinary differences in the language needs of engineering students in Iran: a cross-disciplinary analysis

PurposeAlthough English for academic purposes (EAP) courses are vital components of engineering disciplines in the universities of Iran, studies investigating engineering students' English language needs are infrequent, and even more infrequent are studies comparing how the students of different engineering disciplines vary in their English language needs. Research demonstrates that students of different disciplines have different language needs, which requires competency in different language skills (Soruç et al., 2018). However, in the majority of Iranian universities, students of different engineering disciplines are taught similar subskills, through similar teaching methodologies and textbooks. With the twofold purpose of identification and comparison of the students' language needs and weaknesses, this study focuses on the perceptions of Iranian students of electrical, mechanical and chemical engineering at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels of their present language abilities and target-situation language needs.Design/methodology/approachOnline surveys regarding language needs and self-assessments were completed by 194 undergraduate students and 189 postgraduate students studying at Sharif University.FindingsWhile only educational level was found to have a significant effect on the perceptions of the respondents of their target needs, both educational level and discipline had a significant effect on the perceptions of the students of their present level of language proficiency. Furthermore, almost equal attention to the four language skills were considered necessary by the respondents, who also held that the number of credits devoted to the EAP courses was insufficient. A further finding was that the majority of the undergraduates required that the EAP courses be oriented toward English for specific purposes (ESP), whereas almost half of the postgraduates preferred that the EAP classes be geared toward general English.Originality/valueResearchers have so far analyzed the language needs of students of a number of academic disciplines. This study adds to the existing literature of needs-analysis by comparing the engineering students' present abilities and target language needs. This study is different from the existing publications on language needs-analysis in two ways. First, through a comparative perspective, a profile of engineering students' language needs is obtained, which can serve as a new database for curriculum developers and material designers of engineering programs. Second, investigating whether the students' perceptions of their language needs are affected by their educational levels and disciplines is a topic for which there is little information at present.

Increasing Students’ Willingness to Communicate: Drama-Based Approaches to Language Instruction in English for Academic Purposes Classes

A strong willingness to communicate (WTC) in a second language is associated with successful language learning. ESL learners with high levels of WTC will seek opportunities to interact in meaningful communication in English. Engagement in meaningful communication is necessary for language learning as it increases access to comprehensible input, promotes negotiation of meaning, and pushes the learner to produce accurate output. By enhancing instructors’ understanding of factors that impact students’ WTC (e.g., confidence, affect, motivation, and the context of communication), instructors may be better prepared to nurture their students’ WTC and expedite their English language acquisition. Because drama-based approaches (DBAs) for teaching English have been found to cultivate a safe learning environment and increase learners’ confidence, positive affect, and motivation, these approaches also have considerable potential to improve learners’ WTC. Although DBAs may be underutilized in English for academic purposes programs, they are particularly beneficial for students who are hesitant to participate in communicative classroom activities. We review literature on WTC and DBAs, and then incorporate key findings from the literature to guide the development of dramatized role-plays that can foster students’ WTC and lead to improvements in students’ linguistic and general academic skills. 
 Une forte volonté de communiquer (VDC) dans une seconde langue est associée à un apprentissage réussi de la langue. Les apprenants d’ALS qui montrent de hauts niveaux de VDC vont rechercher des occasions d’interagir dans des communications utiles en anglais. L’implication dans une communication utile est nécessaire pour l’apprentissage des langues puisqu’elle augmente l’accès à un apport compréhensible, favorise la négociation du sens et pousse l’apprenant à fournir une production précise. En augmentant la compréhension des facteurs qui influencent la VDC des étudiants (par ex. la confiance, l’affect, la motivation et le contexte de la communication) chez les instructeurs, ceux-ci peuvent être mieux préparés pour entretenir la VDC de leurs étudiants et accélérer l’acquisition de l’anglais. On a trouvé que les approches basées sur le théâtre pour l’apprentissage de l’anglais étaient propices à l’entretien d’un environnement d’apprentissage sécurisant et augmentaient la confiance des apprenants, leur affect positif, ainsi que leur motivation et qu’elles présentent un potentiel considérable pour améliorer la VDC des apprenants. Bien que ces approches ne soient pas beaucoup utilisées dans les programmes de cours d’anglais académique, elles sont particulièrement bénéfiques chez les étudiants qui hésitent à participer aux activités de communication en classe. Nous examinons la recherche et l’approche basée sur le théâtre et incorporons les résultats-clés de la recherche pour guider le développement de jeux de rôles mis en scène qui peuvent favoriser la VDC et améliorer les compétences linguistiques et universitaires des étudiants.

Data-driven learning in English for academic purposes class

Abstract This paper will present a translation project with second-year bachelor students together with some observational data. The students firstly translated an academic abstract from Italian (their first language) to English by using the language resources they were acquainted with. Then they translated a second abstract by using a pre-compiled offline corpus of academic articles. The paper findings highlight that the second translations were better as regards grammar and word choices, while sentence structures still showed influences of the students’ first language. The students learnt that a corpus is a useful supplement to a dictionary, as a corpus may corroborate what the dictionary suggests. The report also highlights the importance of corpus analysis training in order to help users process corpus information, which otherwise might be perceived as “distracting”.

EAP Students’ Perceptions of Extensive Listening

<p>Compared to other language skills, listening is a language skill that may be ignored and forgotten in English for academic purposes (EAP) classes. Thus, there should be more room for teaching listening in EAP classes. Extensive listening (EL) could be one alternative that English teachers can do to give more room for teaching listening. This paper shares 19 EAP students' perceptions of an EL program. Research data showed that most students have positive perceptions of EL. EL provides a fun but meaningful activity for students. Most of the students agree that EL can improve their listening fluency and vocabulary and exposes them to various English accents. In addition, they stated that EL helped them become more confident to talk to other people in English and they want to do EL in the future although nobody asks them. Therefore, EL is a promising program to be implemented in EAP classes.</p>

Communication dimension of a Facebook group: first-hand experience from an EAP class

The paper analyses student-teacher and student-student interactions in a Facebook group that was created as an alternative learning management system (LMS) for an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course. Our case study is based on students’ perceptions and opinions reconstructed from interviews and diaries and uses traceable objective data from the Facebook group as a complement. The research sample includes thirty-four undergraduates. Our results indicate that Facebook group is perceived as an effective communication channel due to various reasons such as immediacy of feedback or peer interactions outside the language class. Based on our findings, we formulate recommendations for practice. / Keywords: Facebook group, student-teacher/student-student communication, teaching/learning English as a foreign language, university student, case study