Research in English for Academic Purposes(2)

Study skills

Study skills, as Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics defines, is:abilities, techniques, and strategies which are used when reading, writing or listening for study purposes. For example, study skills needed by university students studying from English-language textbooks include: adjusting reading speed according to the type of material being read, using dictionary, guessing word meanings from context, interpreting graphs, diagrams and symbols, note-taking and summarizing.

(Richards, Platt and Platt, 2002, p.451)

Jordan (1997) gave us a comprehensive list of study skills in his book and classified study skills into eight groups, each of which is matching a certain study situation / activity. The eight study situations are: lectures/talks, seminars / tutorials / discussions / supervisions, practicals / laboratory work / field work, private study / reading (journal and books), reference material / library use, essay /reports / projects / case studies / dissertations / theses / research papers / articles, research, examinations (written or oral) (Jordan, 1997). Take lectures/talks, the most frequently used study activity, for example, the needed study skills are listening and understanding, note-taking and asking questions.

Besides, Jordan (1997) also introduced the two concepts of study skills from another angle: productive skills and receptive skills. Productive skills include speaking in seminar/tutorial and writing in essay/report/dissertation/thesis/exam/private study. Receptive skills refer to listening (and note-taking) in lecture/seminar/tutorial as well as reading (and note-taking) in private study. He interpreted the relationship between these two types of skills as “ the receptive skills are seen as necessary inputs to the productive skills, with each receptive skills having its place with each productive skill, depending on the appropriate study situation or activity” (Jordan, 1997, pp.6-7).

Since students may come from different learning and cultural backgrounds, their needs of study vary widely. For this reason, the study skills are usually adopted and developed in accordance with inpidual situations and specific study levels (Jordan, 1997).

Approaches to teaching EAP

According to the viewpoints of Paltridge (2001), today’s EAP teaching practice employs a number of approaches to highlight the language and discourse of particular academic genres rather than that in academic text. Meanwhile, the process of academic writing and the context of production and interpretation of academic text are getting much valued, too. The following is the glance at several approaches (mainly to EAP writing).

Content-based approach, as the term suggested, involves teaching the subject and language based on the teaching material at the same time.

The approach of collaboration between subject specialist and EAP teacher, as discussed above, requires the language and subject teachers’ working together, either in classroom or outside classroom.

Controlled composition is one of the approaches to EAP writing and had been playing the dominant role from mid-1940s to mid-1960s (Paltridge, 2001). It focused on speaker or writer’s accuracy and viewed the learner’s native language as the hurdle in their second language acquisition (Paltridge, 2001). Substitution tables, written expansions and completion-types are model classroom tasks that adopt this approach.

The approach of teaching ‘rhetorical functions’ refers to teaching descriptions, narratives, definitions, exemplifications, classifications, comparison and contrast, cause and effect, and generalizations. As a development following controlled composition, this approach focuses on the particular rhetorical patterns rather than grammatical correctness only (Paltridge, 2001).

Compared with above two approaches to EAP writing, the process approach put the emphasis on learners’ autonomy in writing. In other words, the teacher is more like a guide than a controller. What’s more, Paltridge (2001) pointed out that this approach started with the writer and the writing process itself, not the linguistic and rhetorical form. The stages of brainstorming, planning, drafting, revising, editing and proofreading the text are characteristic of relevant classroom activities (Paltridge, 2001).

The genre approach to EAP writing focuses on the teaching of particular academic genres like essays, research reports, theses and dissertations (Paltridge, 2001).

Training students as researchers was promoted by Johns (1988, cited in Paltridge, 2001) as an effective approach to help students enrich and develop their knowledge and skills in writing texts. According to Paltridge (2001), the role of learners, tutors, supervisors and examiners should be taken into account. To identify key topics and concepts of the specific area and to explore the corresponding writing convention are also involved in this approach (Paltridge, 2001). By adopting it, we can enhance the autonomy of students’ learning and help them explore further in their area.

Conclusion

By examining the definition and the development of EAP, we can get a clear point of what teaching goals EAP courses tend to achieve. The settings of EAP include brief introductions of several key issues and factors that may affect the EAP teaching practice in specific situation. The last two parts, study skills and approaches to teaching EAP, involves concrete teaching content and several ways of how to arrange EAP courses as well as their respective features.

EAP work is no doubt playing a more and more important part in a world-wide range due to the increasing demand for study skills training. As a language teaching approach, it has been proved a necessary and effective sector contributing to the English language education.

【References】

[1]Dudley-Evans, T., & St John, M. (1998). Development in English for specific purposes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[2]Hamp-Lyons, L. (2001). English for academic purposes. In R. Cater & D. Nunan (Eds.), The Cambridge guide to teaching English to speakers of other languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[3]Jordan, R.R. (1997). English for academic purposes: A guide and resource book for teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[4]Paltridge, B. (2001). Linguistic research and EAP pedagogy. In J. Flowerdew & M. Peacock (Eds.), Research perspectives on English for academic purposes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[5]Richards, J. C., Platt J., Platt H. (2002). Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics Beijing: Longman & Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press