Meeting Student Needs: EAP Course Design for Education Students

One approach to preparing students for English medium instruction is to provide research informed, English for academic purposes (EAP) preparatory courses that aim to facilitate academic acculturation and academic English language skill abilities. A strong case is made for such courses to be subject-specific where possible, thus meeting future disciplinary language and literacy needs, and to engage disciplinary experts to inform course content and design (e.g., Hyland, 2016; Wingate, 2016). To ensure courses are motivating, effective and constructively aligned, needs analysis is fundamental. This talk will present the process of needs analysis underpinning an English for specific academic purposes (ESAP) course for students going on to postgraduate degrees in Education-related subjects. We will provide an overview of the range of data we have gathered through interviews with EAP- and education-specialist lecturers, focus groups with students, observations of academic practices, and from a review of course documents. We will present key findings and show how this has been used to develop course aims, learning outcomes, and inform pedagogy. Examples of practical classroom tasks and materials and assessment tasks will also be introduced. In order to attend to disciplinary needs and provide relatable content for students from a range of educational contexts, we have selected the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education) (United Nations, n.d) as the core content. This provides the basis for academic language and skills development, the knowledge focus and rich ground for students to relate global goals to their local contexts. To illustrate this, we will introduce sample materials to show how specific aims and outcomes are addressed and how we link the global with the local.