From non-integrated language support
to CLIL: five approaches to EAP
support
Dan Jones
ELTU
Perspectives
The student
The academic
department
The
institution
The EAP
department
Nonintegrated
EGAP
ESAP
ESAP
PLUS
CLIL
decontextualised
contextualised
inauthentic
authentic
atomised
complex
general
ELT
specific
EAP
The student
Nonintegrated
What students want…
The question of writing requirements and needs, however, must also take into
account the perceptions that writing students have about those requirements
and needs.
The heavy concern with language skills indicates that these students clearly regard
English classes as places where they expect to learn English, and at a time when
many writing teachers are expanding the content of EP writing courses to include
critical thinking as well as a focus on the heuristic functions of writings.
There is a mismatch between his own and his teacher's agenda
Leki, I., & Carson, J. G.. (1994).
Firstly, the title of the course (English Language Bridging
Course) seems to have misled many into thinking that
they would be provided with the more mechanical skills of
the language, such as vocabulary and grammar.
Dooey (2010)
The student
What can be done:
Pre-sessionals
Inductions
Explicitly state where the language work is
The academic
department
Nonintegrated
What academic staff want
The problem of problematising
Casanave & Hubbard (1992)
Casanave & Hubbard (1992)
Casanave & Hubbard (1992)
When Sue (Distance Learning University) talked about sample marked
assignments in interviews, she appeared to draw consistently on a
‘transparent’ model of writing, focusing frequently on ‘errors’; she
also often framed student writing in terms of individual deficits,
both intellectual and moral. For example, she refers to some
students’ writing skills as ‘non-existent’ and in other cases to
poor writing being the result of ‘laziness’ and frequently refers to
student plagiarism.
Tuck (2015, my emphasis)
Sue spends considerably more time engaging with what she calls ‘poor
writing skills’. For example, she highlights errors; makes changes to
students’ sentences and paragraphs to improve the ‘written
expression’ at the level of grammar, vocabulary or formatting;
composes and types her own exemplar text into student’s text; or
cuts and paste sample wordings from other sources. The
overwhelming impression emerging in interviews is that Sue
experiences this work as a time-consuming distraction from
what she believes is her core task: helping students
‘understand the science’.
Tuck (2015, my emphasis)
Across the study, while participants sometimes sought visibility for
some of this work within their disciplines – for example, if it chimed with
institutional agendas such as employability – they also saw risks to
professional identity in taking an interest in student writing. For
example, one participant, Dan (Geography, Russell Group), remarked:
‘You wouldn’t [want to] be seen to devote too much attention to
writing skills, that ain’t going to get you a professorship, you
know what I mean?’
Tuck (2015, my emphasis)
The academic
department
What can be done:
New staff inductions
Staff development
Peer observations
Explicitly state where the
language work is
The institution
CBLT (CLIL)
The increasing popularity of CLIL is partly due to the European-level
political support that it receives for being a useful means with which to
increase the degree of multilingualism in Europe, partly its motivating
forces arise out of current processes of globalization and
internationalization with their challenges for language education (e.g.
Cameron & Block 2002; Luke, Luke & Graham 2007).
Dalton-Puffer et al (2010)
But perhaps the main issues is that it is political conceived. The political
issues often seem to be beyond us, if it seems a little futile to ask the
question what would you do if you were starting from scratch – of
course we would say we wouldn’t start from here.
Bruton (2013)
CBLT
• is politically conceived and
ideological
• is guided by top-down objective
contains within it:
– An epistemological approach
– A methodology (of sorts)
If CLIL is to be successful in the long run, it
has to be based on a fair partnership that
must take full account of the needs and
learning outcomes of the content area.
Georgiou. (2012)
EAP
Does EAP in the UK HE
context have this?
Or is EAP is bottom up?
EAP is an economic
and intellectual short cut
Turner 2004
The fall in dropouts may be due to a combination of
better selection of universities, or courses, and better
support for international students once enrolled. That is
supported by figures showing that UK universities now
have the highest satisfaction ratings of any anglophone
nation among international students.
The EAP
department
EGAP
ESAP
EGAP vs ESAP
Blue
(1988)
EGAP Issues
• EGAP course not EGAP students
• Motivation
• Different subjects - different requirements
• Transferability – the common core.
ESAP: Needs analysis
What can students do?
The gap is the
rationale for
the course
What do students need to do?
Module specification
• Who is the student?
– Biographical details
– Language clearance: pre-sessional, IELTS
– Prior learning: academic culture
• What do they do?
– College, department, programme, course
– Academic activities involved in: lectures, seminars,
tutorials, labs
– Reading: texts, genres, length, purpose for reading
– Listening: length, expected outcome
– Speaking: task, preparation
– Writing: task, criteria, genre specific
• How well do they do it?
The benefits of specs
• Curriculum development
• Administration of class
• Teacher development
The faultline
• Who’s job is it?
• Who’s paying for this?
• Who’s toes are you stepping on?
Finding the
balance
ESAP
PLUS
Language socialization is a dynamic, socially and
culturally situated, multimodal, and often multilingual
process with unpredictable uptake, intentions, behindthe-scenes power plays, investment on the part of
learners, and outcomes. Such dynamics are particularly
visible in academic communities.
Duff (2010, my emphasis)
• Reverse or contest marginalisation
• Gives students authentic tasks
• Gives recognition to the work of our students
• Allow room for students to explore academic identity
Support and development for Postgraduate
Research students
ESAP
PLUS
•22 weeks of EAP PGR
support courses.
•Specific to the level of
college.
•Specific to common task
requirements
•Sequenced to fit the
academic cycle
Simulated events supported
by workshops
Nonintegrated
EGAP
ESAP
ESAP
PLUS
CLIL
EAP may have moved on, but have we left anyone behind?
Does anyone have a vision of where we are going?
How do we know what we do is what they need?
What more can we be doing?
•
Blue G M (1988) “Individualising academic writing tuition”. In PC Robinson (ed) Academic Writing. Process and product, Oxford: Modern
English Publications
•
Bruton, Anthony. "CLIL: Some of the reasons why… and why not." System 41.3 (2013): 587-597.
•
Casanave, Christine Pearson, and Philip Hubbard. "The writing assignments and writing problems of doctoral students: Faculty
perceptions, pedagogical issues, and needed research." English for Specific Purposes 11.1 (1992): 33-49.
•
Dalton-Puffer, Christiane, Tarja Nikula, and Ute Smit, eds. Language use and language learning in CLIL classrooms. Vol. 7. John
Benjamins Publishing, 2010.
•
Dooey, Patricia. "Students' perspectives of an EAP pathway program." Journal of English for Academic Purposes 9.3 (2010): 184-197.
•
Duff, Patricia A. "Language socialization into academic discourse communities." Annual review of applied linguistics 30 (2010): 169-192.
•
Glendinning, Eric H., and Hellen Mantell. Write Ideas: An intermediate course in writing skills. Longman, 1983.
•
Georgiou, Sophie Ioannou. "Reviewing the puzzle of CLIL." ELT journal 66.4 (2012): 495-504.
•
Leki, Ilona, and Joan G. Carson. "Students' perceptions of EAP writing instruction and writing needs across the disciplines." Tesol Quarterly
28.1 (1994): 81-101.
•
Tuck, Jackie. "‘That ain't going to get you a professorship’: discourses of writing and the positioning of academics’ work with student writers
in UK higher education." Studies in Higher Education (2015): 1-15.