The Role of an EAP Teacher - Essay Example

Running Head: The Role of an EAP Teacher Name: Grade Course: Tutor’s Name: 16th June, 2010 Introduction Genre analysis answers the question “why are specific discourse-genres written and used by the specialist communities the way they are?” (Benesch, 2001 p. 17) It aims to explain “why a particular type of conventional codification of meaning is considered appropriate to a particular institutionalized socio-cultural setting” (Benesch, 2001 p. 17). In this case, the analysis will be on the approaches that the EAP teachers take to teach students in the universities. It will depend on a selected specific case, which is writing in different disciplines and the appropriate approach selected based on the analysis of the information provided about two approaches. English for Academic Purpose is one of the branches that emerged from English for Specific Purposes (Jordan, 2002). Since academic purpose is specific, the idea of the role of the EAP teacher is unclear based of two authors’ arguments. Hyland argues that specificity should be taken seriously for effective language teaching (2002) while Spack has a different idea of what specificity is and considers Hyland’s specificity as the responsibility of specific discipline teachers. This is where the controversy is. Writing is an academic activity and a literacy skill. Teaching writing is considered a relevant situation in describing the role of an EAP teacher. English for Specific Purposes English for Specific Purposes is an approach used in the universities to help students understand the language and make use of it in their academic work. Hyland believes that the specificity in the approach should be maintained (2002) while there are different conceptions of what specificity is to different people. According to Hyland, some conceptions about ESP consider generic skills and features as the main ideas of the approach. He does not agree with this and has a different idea of what specificity should represent in ESP as an approach to teaching language. This idea in turn describes what role he expects of EAP teachers (Hyland, 2002). According to Hyland, including specificity in an approach means recognizing the specific communities, disciplines, occupations and activities, determining what language and activities are appropriate for the learners in the specific disciplines, activities or occupations (2002). He therefore argues that “ESP must involve teaching the literacy skills which are appropriate to the purposes and understandings of particular academic and professional communities” (Hyland, 2002 p. 1). From this, a clear defined role of an EAP teacher is produced. The role of an EAP teacher is to find ways to enable students at the university succeed in their studies. Success in this case depends on how well the student can communicate using English language that are used in lectures, how well the student can listen and how well the student can express himself or herself. English for academic purposes aims at helping students succeed in their academic work (Jordan, 1997). In other words, students’ academic work at the university entails a lot. Writing is an academic purpose, listening is an academic purpose and communication as well. Hyland and Spack have different views of what role the EAP teacher should play when it comes to ESP. Hyland has the idea that English for Specific Purposes should involve teaching specific communities the appropriate literacy skills (2002). Literacy skills in academics involve writing, speaking and listening. It is clear therefore that Hyland advocates for teaching writing in a specific discipline as a literacy skill by an English for Academic Purposes teacher. Spack however, believes that EAP teachers should not teach writing in specific disciplines and are justified to teach general academic writing. Writing in the specific disciplines according to Spack, should be left to the teachers of those disciplines (1988). The argument in this discussion is to determine the best approach to teaching considering a specific situation. Both views have arguments against and for them and these will be illustrated before a decision on the appropriate approach to a selected specific situation is made. Hyland is against the idea of using the generic skills while Spack is for the idea of using generic skills in teaching English for Academic Purposes. Teaching Writing in Different Disciplines Arguments against the Use of Generic Skills/ Arguments for subject specific writing Spack argues that this role should be left to the teachers of the specific disciplines while Hyland argues against the use of generic skills and feels it is appropriate for English teachers in such a situation to find out what the students require and teach them. According to Hyland, subject teachers do not have the expertise required to teach literacy skills and so cannot teach writing even in a specific course. Additionally, the subject teachers may not be interested in teaching such skills (2002). There is also an argument that students learn the features of language as they need them and need not to learn them through a step by step process as required in the generic skills teaching approach. This means that with specificity, students can be taught any level of English (LSP) provided the needs of the students have been examined and the teacher has determine what materials are necessary to provide that knowledge (Hyland 2002). This is not practical. For EAP teachers to provide such service, they need training to gain knowledge on the specific subjects. Different disciplines have different writing requirements built over time by the subject teachers. Hyland also argues that the use of generic skills disregards specificity and therefore weakens the academic role of EAP teachers, undermines the pedagogic effectiveness of the teachers and also threatens the EAP/ESP professionalism (2002). The S factor in between the E and P means language use for a specific purpose, so that the specificity also defines the social group (Hyland 2002). In the case selected, the specific purpose is writing in different disciplines. Hyland’s argument requires identification of the writing styles, processes and skills in every discipline studied differently and taught differently (2002). The generic approach however, considers this hectic and a lot of work load to the EAP teachers yet the skills and knowledge required for teaching such skills to the students are already with the specific subject teachers (Spack 1988). Hutchinson and Waters do not also agree with the idea of specificity especially when it comes to texts. In language content, a biology text to a biologist is just as useful as a physics text. There is no difference in grammatical structure, discourse structure or function of texts in different subjects (1987). Arguments in Support of the Use of Generic Skills in Teaching Writing Writing in specific disciplines requires knowledge of and expertise in different styles of writing as developed by different disciplines. The writing style developed by scientists is not the same writing style developed by those doing humanity subjects. In an analysis carried out by Hyland (Lecture 4 Notes), 800 abstracts from eight different disciplines were analyzed and five rhetorical moves identified. These were; introduction, method, product, conclusion and purpose. Each move in each discipline had a purpose and a way of writing which was different from the other disciplines (Lecture 4 Notes). This explains how different the writing styles are between disciplines and how important it is for the specific subject teachers to teach the writing in such disciplines. English for Academic Purposes teachers should therefore just teach the generic skills in writing and leave the specifics required in writing in the different disciplines to the subject teachers. Hyland argues that EAP teachers should teach subject specific writing (2002) while practically, this is impossible. His research on different writing styles in different disciplines is proof enough that EAP teachers cannot get all the specifics of all the writing details alongside the EAP courses and teach them. By teaching the subject specific writing, an EAP teacher will be required to have the knowledge in that subject and the requirements necessary for writing in that subject in order to teach. A previous move by EAP teachers to teach subject specific writing did not go well as expected. A program was developed in which the EAP teacher collaborated with the subject specific teacher to teach writing. This program had its advantages for example, students shared knowledge hence had more informative discussions, they had more time to write since one subject matter covered two courses which meant less reading, and they also learnt new forms of writing. This program however did not prove possible considering its negative outcomes (Spack, 1988). EAP teachers are required to develop course contents which entails what they will teach based on what the students need. Collaboration with a specific subject teacher means incorporation of the contents of the specific course into the English course contents. Since the writing course that the EAP teacher is meant to teach should be based on the requirements of the specific course, the writing course content will be dependent on the course content of the specific course/subject. It means therefore that, the EAP teacher has to form a well planned pedagogical rationale considering the course contents which, according to Spack was not easy (1988). The program raised false expectations among the students and faculty members. The English faculty had very few reasons to deal with the contents of a specific course and so expected to teach just the little they knew, in relation to the contents they had acquired from the specific course teacher. Students on the other hand expected the teachers to know more than they did know. When in a situation where a teacher cannot explain a subject matter, the students can think of the teacher as incompetent. This is what happened in the collaboration program. A case example is in Faigley and Hansen’s observation on collaboration courses where two teachers (the English Teacher and the subject specific course teacher) used different evaluation methods on student papers because the English teacher did not know if a student had the knowledge in the discipline or not or if a student had gained some new knowledge (Spack, 1988). It is quite evident that the expectation of the specific subject teacher of the student is not the same as the expectations of the English teacher of the student. The English teacher has no knowledge of the specific discipline and so cannot know when the student is right or wrong in specific writing cases. This is not a matter of taking away what belongs to the English professionals; rather, it is defining what really belongs to the English professionals. If English for Academic Purposes teachers are to teach the specifics of the courses, it means they will have to determine the necessary requirements in order for them to teach such courses. Hyland argues that the scholarly communication is not only specified by the fact that it is a different course from the other, rather, the difference between the courses is created by well managed strategies and practices (2000). For EAP teachers to teach writing in such courses, they have to know the well managed writing practices that the specific course has developed over time. There are so many courses in a university and all of them are different and have different writing practices that have been developed over time. If EAP teachers are expected to have the knowledge on writing practices of all the courses and include these to the already developed EAP courses, it will be too much work load on the EAP teachers. It would require more time for the teachers to learn all the practices. Another option would be to recruit EAP teachers for specific courses for example, a Sociology EAP teacher, a mathematics EAP teacher, a physics EAP teacher and so on. It is better to leave the teaching of writing to the subject teachers since they are the ones that form and manage the strategies and practices of the courses and so have the knowledge and experience of what is expected of the students in the course. Additionally, practices change with time and again; it is within a specific course that the changes are made, just like the teaching of English evolved until EAP was created (Jordan, 2002). Another reason why EAP teachers should use the generic skill approach is because very few people are ready to learn new disciplines. Irrespective of the lack of knowledge situation that the EAP teachers suffer when given the role of teaching writing in a different discipline, some researchers still believe that teachers should learn how the disciplines create and transmit knowledge. Take a case of mathematics, in order to learn how the disciplines create and transmit knowledge, the EAP teachers have to examine the kinds of issues mathematics considers important, why mathematics has specific methods of inquiry, how the mathematics conventions shape the texts used in mathematics, how the texts influence each other, how the mathematics texts are read and disseminated within the mathematics discipline and how mathematicians represent themselves in the text (Spack, 1988). The history of English for Academic Purposes indicate that teaching English in the universities was proposed to help international students to whom English was a second language, in their academic work. The teaching of English was meant to help them understand the language for their classes (Jordan, 2002). Even so, this is still the aim of EAP. It is therefore justified to assume that EAP is mostly meant for English as second language students. For EAP teachers to provide their services to the students, they have to acquire the knowledge that will enable them understand what they are to teach the students. This takes years and needs one’s commitment. The same process should be repeated if one is to acquire knowledge in a different discipline (in this case, an example is mathematics). This needs time and commitment which is not easy to obtain (Spack, 1988). Based on the requirements of specific disciplines and the development of practices within disciplines, it is economical and even logical to let the subject teachers with the knowledge on the practices of the discipline teach writing in such disciplines. Another reason why non subject specific writing should be used as an approach in EAP teaching is because of the level of English that the students have when joining the universities. Weaker students cannot be compared to other strong students in English language levels. In academics, there are weaker students not only in language but also in other subjects. The weakness is attributed to the students’ capacity developed from a weaker educational backgrounds and different cultures. Such students are not ready for discipline specific language. They have to be taught the basics of language before the specifics of the disciplines are taught (Spack, 1988). This still goes back to the reason why EAP was developed. First, it was early language for international students, which improved over time to form EAP (Jordan, 2002). International students are still in need of language support and general English can help them understand what the subject teachers will teach them including writing. General English approach is also appropriate in teaching writing because disciplines have the same generic skills. In Candlin and Plum work, a research project on writing in an academy revealed that researchers, students and tutors had a very strong point that there is inter-discursivity between disciplines (1999). The inter-discursivity between the disciplines is described as “a highly variegated and multidimensional world of overlapping communities of practice, where, within what may be more or less discipline specific writing events within longer literacy cycles” (Candlin & Plum, 1999 p. 198) as described in Gollin 1998, “participants through their salient choice and accomplishments of texts, processes and practices, evidence their degree of membership of perhaps several fuzzy-edged orders of discourse, coping with those often unclear norms, multiple purposes and variably explicit conventions constitute a particular challenge” (Candlin & Plum, 1999 p.198). The research compared psychology and computing which provided evidence of the inter-discursivity between the disciplines (Candlin & Plum, 1999). Hutchinson and Waters also indicated that there is no difference in texts, be it in function, grammatical structure or discourse structure, between different disciplines (1987). In academic writing, disciplines are defined by their writing but it is how they write rather than what they write that define the difference between them (Hyland, 2000). Different disciplines have different appeals to background knowledge while writing, have different means of engaging their readers and have different ways of establishing the truth. Scholarly communication is not uniform and monolithic so that it is differentiated only by a specialist topic and vocabulary but is a communication that results from a multitude of practices and strategies that are well managed for a specific audience defining the tone and appropriateness of the an argument (Hyland, 2000). The issue of specific discipline subject teacher lacking the necessary expertise does not therefore apply in this case. How a specific discipline writes its reports, articles and so on is not dependent on what is written but on defined strategies and practices that have been built over time in the discipline. This is not built by the English writing course teacher but by the discipline teachers. Writing in a specific discipline should therefore be left to the subject teachers. Conclusion From the above information, it is evident that the appropriate method to teach writing in different discipline would be to take the generic skills teaching approach. Specificity is important but it is not easy to achieve specificity in a manner described by Hyland when teaching writing in different disciplines. It is also important to consider the origins of ESP and find out if it will lose its meaning or not. Hyland complains about losing professionalism, but with the kind of specificity described, ESP professionalism may be more lost than when generic skills are used. Specificity of that kind may lead to incorporation of English courses into other disciplines courses, requiring subject teachers to study such courses hence eliminating the need for EAP teachers. Reference List Benesch, S. (2001). Critical English for Academic Purposes: Theory, Politics, And Practice. London: Routledge. Candlin, C. N. & Plum, G. A. (1999). “Engaging with the Challenges of Interdiscursivity in Academic Writing: Researchers, Students and Tutors” in C. N. Candlin & K. Hyland (eds.) Writing: Texts, Processes and Practices, London: Longman, 193-217. Hyland, K. (2000). Disciplinary Discourses: Social Interactions in Academic Writing. London: Longman. Hyland, K. (2002) Specificity Revisited: How Far Should We Go Now? English for Specific Purposes 21: 385-395. Hutchinson, T. & Waters, A. (1987). English for Specific Purposes: A Learning-Centered Approach. England: Cambridge University Press. Jordan, R. R. (1997). English for Academic Purposes: A Guide and Resource Book for Teachers. England: Cambridge University Press. Jordan, R. R. (2002). The Growth of EAP in Britain. Journal of English for Academic Purposes. 1, 69-78. Lecture 4 Notes. Inter and Intra-Disciplinary Genre Analysis: Genre Analysis Academic English and ESP. Spack R (1988) Initiating ESL Students Into The Academic Discourse Community: How Far Should We Go? TESOL Quarterly 22(1): 29-51. Read More