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[nomad soul]

(EAP) ineffective even in an academic context
By Angela Snelgrove, EL Gazette | October 2015
Source: www.elgazette.com

Teaching English for academic purposes has become a key area in English language teaching over the last decade. However there are those outside the ELT industry who believe that academic English is promoting an outmoded form of expression and that EAP teachers are wasting a valuable opportunity to teach a more updated and relevant form of English – namely plain English.

‘Unfortunately, the university sector in general is way behind in understanding recent developments in plain English, and universities often promote a style that is ineffective even in an academic context,’ says Dr Neil James, executive director of the Plain English Foundation, Sydney. James believes that EAP teachers are well placed to reverse the trend. ‘EAP teachers should teach students how to vary features of language for different audiences rather than authorise the academic style as the correct approach in all contexts,’ he says.

James points out that the focus on academic English in university writing tasks has resulted in both local and international graduates whose writing skills ‘are poorly aligned with business requirements, which is costly and frustrating for employees and employers alike’.

In addition to EAP courses, James believes that ESL teaching has also failed to address the needs of employees from non-English speaking backgrounds who may be an IELTS band 6 or above and need to develop more sophisticated forms of workplace communication. ‘They often have subject matter expertise that is highly valued in their workplaces,’ he says, ‘but struggle to write at the level of fluency that their workplace requires. Yet they find that most business English or EAP courses are useless to help them because the training is pitched at too low a level or is not relevant for the workplace context.’

James believes that ESL teachers should be teaching both ‘workplace standard and a more formal academic style’, but finds that most ESL teachers lack this knowledge. ‘Many ESL teachers have limited knowledge even of workplace writing genres such as letters, submissions, business cases, reports, policies, minutes,’ he says, ‘let alone current plain English developments. ESL teachers need more knowledge of how English is used in the workplace because ESL students needing to prepare for the workforce will increasingly have to use plain English techniques.’

(End of article)

[Dedicated]

My initial comment would be that Dr Neil James does not seem to know the difference between EAP / EFL/ ESL and English for Business. He has just lumped them all together!

He is the Managing Director of Plain English Foundation in Sydney which runs training courses for workplace communication in businesses and government. This is totally different from EAP at university.

Here in the UK, EAP is alive and thriving at just about every university.

[johnslat]

Dear nomad soul,

The "Transitions" course which I created and teach is not EAP; I designed it to include areas that would benefit both ESL students who intend to take college credit courses and ESL students who need English to advance in their careers/jobs.

It seems that I kind of anticipated WIOA by a few years:


Programs and services designed to help an individual
acquire a combination of basic academic, critical
thinking, digital literacy, and self-management skills
 Using resources and information
 Working with others
 Understanding systems
 Obtaining skills necessary to successfully transition
to and complete post-secondary education, training and employment,.

https://www.casas.org/docs/default-source/institute/c8-what-wioa-means-to-you.pdf?sfvrsn=2?Status=Master

But that was prescience, just common sense and knowing the differing goals of the students in the program.

And it's not really hard to find or make materials and find guidelines that can help any ESL teacher accomplish the target of helping students both in "real life" and in "academic life."

http://www.collegetransition.org/docs/CAELA-Guide.pdf

Regards,
John

[buravirgil]

Preach it, brother.

Articles about educational topics that promote market niches are part and parcel of our trade and registering "Getting to the point" reveals a commercial priority. Of James' books named in the link above, Writing at Work and Modern Manglish, the former looks constructive and process oriented, while the latter proceeds by negative example, humorous or not. I prefer the former.

I agree with James' concerns, given my background, but this sort of thing:

In 2008, Neil was elected to chair the International Plain Language Working Group that is developing international standards and certification for practitioners.

despite having its rationalizations of market, innovation has its costs, etc., is likely a proprietary set of standards and are rarely as applicable as promoted and tend to be tailored to what enterprises have cooperated with, or directly sponsored, their development. Not innately bad, but disadvantaged by a lack of transparency, i.e., not academic. Pay to play, but such is the world, even (and often especially) academe. Perhaps the cost of becoming a certified practitioner of Plain English is minimal, though such is not the goal of commercial endeavors.

[santi84]

Cool. I'll tell my boss "to hell with the curriculum!" and begin a memo lesson instead. Maybe he should try and connect with the bureaucrats who make the decisions about degree requirements.

[buravirgil]

[johnslat]

Well, in my case, it''s probably different. My classes aren't made up only of students who plan to take college credit courses. there are also the ones who are taking the class to advance in their jobs.careers. It's more like a 50/50 split.

So, using only EAP materials just wouldn't make sense.

Regards,
John

[nomad soul]