ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES
Putting it together:
integrated skills in EAP
Nigel A. Caplan argues for meaningful integration of the skills in EAP.
O n a sunny autumn weekend
recently, I was helping my younger
son ride his ‘big boy’ bike, and I was
reminded just how complicated an
activity cycling is. In order to make a
bicycle move forwards without toppling
over, you need to push on the pedals,
manage your speed, steer with the
handlebars, and look ahead for turns
and obstacles, all while maintaining
balance on an oddly shaped seat.
Inevitably, just as soon as my son figured
out which direction the pedals should
rotate, he would forget to steer and
career off onto a neighbor’s lawn.
In this respect at least, learning a
language for academic purposes is
much like riding a bike: a complex
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task requiring coordination of multiple
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28 www.modernenglishteacher.com n Volume 25
senses, skills and body parts with fairly
ed
frequent bumps and scrapes. And that’s
before you add in gears, road signs
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and a bike lock. Without straining the
metaphor too far, as students approach
and enter academic programmes in
English, they can no longer afford to
practise pedalling, steering and road
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safety separately: they have to learn to
do it all together. For this reason, EAP
programmes need to find flexible ways
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to integrate language skills.
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Research into the language needs of ESL
students in English-medium university
degrees supports this position. Writing,
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for instance, rarely occurs in the absence
of reading: summarising, synthesising
and responding to sources are hallmarks
of academic writing (Sullivan and
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Tinberg, 2006). This is consistent with
the progression of written genres in
education from everyday experiences
through abstractions to critical
interpretations and knowledge creation
(Feez, 1998). At the highest levels of
academia, all research writing starts
with literature review (Feak and Swales,
2009). Listening, meanwhile, may be
yoked with speaking in many language
curricula, but in the university lecture
hall, it is most closely integrated with the
challenging writing task of note-taking.
In our needs analysis of the linguistic
skills needed for undergraduate and
MBA students at the University of
Delaware, we found the same pattern.
Class and group discussions, for
example, emerged as among the most
important and challenging activities
for international students. But, unlike
in many EAP classes, discussions in
this context involve more than sharing
opinions, experiences and intercultural
comparisons; they incorporate responses
to reading, planning for group projects
or preparation for writing, drawing on
all linguistic domains. A widespread
teaching technique in MBA programmes
is known as the Harvard case study, in
which students read a description of
a business dilemma, sometimes work
in groups to present the case, always
discuss solutions, listen to classmate’s
opinions, answer the professor’s
questions, and finally (or sometimes
as a preparatory step) write an analysis
(Forman and Rymer, 1999). Discrete
skill instruction simply cannot prepare
students for this complex task chain.
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Our undergraduate needs analysis
revealed one very simple but important
result: everything is important. We
gave both faculty and international
students a list of 22 skills and activities
that we predicted undergraduates
would encounter based on previous
research. More than two-thirds of
students ranked all 22 as important or
very important, and more than half
the faculty ranked all but one skill as
important or very important. There
was no statistical difference between
faculty from different disciplines in their
rating of skills like note-taking, writing
from sources, synthesis and group
discussions. These activities, which draw
on multiple language domains, were
judged to be important by almost all the
students and faculty in our survey.
Although each university is different,
and understanding the needs of the
local context is critical in designing EAP
courses (Hyland and Hamp-Lyons, 2002),
our findings closely mirror those of a
recent large-scale study of almost 30,000
students at 80 US universities (Anderson
et al, 2015). More than 75% of students
reported discussing ideas for writing
assignments before beginning a draft;
eight out of 10 had to write summaries
of their reading; a full 90% were asked
to analyse or evaluate their reading,
research or observations; and around
half had to read and give feedback on
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peers’ writing. Furthermore, these all
ranked high among the practices that
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were found to lead to the most learning
during the college experience. Therefore,
even when the product is something as
individual as a written assignment, the
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process often integrates all the other
skill domains.
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Ideally, perhaps, EAP classes would
approximate the university experience
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by adopting an integrated-skills
instructional model. The revised
EAP Pathways programme that we
will launch at Delaware in 2016
does exactly this by pairing thematic
reading materials with related video
lectures, to which students will
respond in writing, discussion, and
individual and group presentations.
Development in grammar, vocabulary
and oral intelligibility will be stressed
throughout the semester, and students
n Volume 25 n Issue 1 www.modernenglishteacher.com 29
ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES
“... discussions
in this context
involve more than
sharing opinions,
experiences and
intercultural
comparisons;
they incorporate
responses to
ed
reading, planning
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for group projects
or preparation for
writing, drawing
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on all linguistic
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domains.”
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will produce a portfolio of work that
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demonstrates academic readiness.
However, this approach may not be
possible everywhere, so here are some
less radical solutions I’ve tried that
encourage meaningful integration of
skills even within traditionally discrete-
skill curricula:
1. In my reading/writing classes, I hold
a reading seminar. Each student has
to locate an article relevant to the
course theme and lead a class or group
discussion. All students are responsible
for reading the article (I give them
a quick comprehension quiz!), and
they are graded on the quality of their
contributions to the discussion. I tell
my students that at the university
level, they may have understood every
word of their reading, but if they can’t
participate in a discussion about it,
they are missing the most valuable
learning opportunity.
2. In my listening/speaking classes, I
assign a moderated class debate.
Students work in pairs to research a
controversial topic from the website
www.procon.org. One member of
the pair takes the ‘pro’ side, the
other the ‘con’, and they then hold
to their positions as they engage
their classmates in an informed
debate. Since everyone has read
the summary of key arguments and
watched the videos posted on this
well-researched site, all students have
sufficient background knowledge
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with which to participate. The debate
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thus integrates reading and listening
(to the videos and to each other)
with speaking. It could easily be
followed up with a synthesis writing
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assignment.
3. Online discussion boards represent
an exciting opportunity to integrate
skills, engage in an increasingly
important academic practice, and
learn language. For example, at
the start of each unit in Q: Skills
for Success, a textbook series for
which I am a co-author (Caplan and
Douglas, 2015), students listen to a
recorded discussion, talk together
about the questions and images
they see, and then go online to write
about their opinions, read their
classmates’ ideas and post replies.
Online discussion boards promote
equal participation, give students
time to think deeply about their
ideas and develop digital literacy.
4. The speaking-writing connection
is often under-appreciated in ESL
teaching (Weissberg, 2006). In Q, for
example, after students have read
two texts and watched a video that all
take different perspectives on the unit
question, they discuss questions that
encourage them to synthesise these
three sources. Finally, they reflect
on their discussion in a short writing
task that both wraps up the readings
and also serves as brainstorming
for the major writing assignment to
come. Task chains like these are
good academic preparation since
they start with texts as a source for a
group discussion in which ideas can
be tested, challenged and defended;
the writing that follows is likely to be
more sophisticated and developed.
5. A powerful model for teaching
writing that works precisely because
it extends across multiple domains
is the Teaching/Learning Cycle
ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES
(Caplan, 2014; Rothery, 1996). In this
approach, students first analyse model
texts in the target genre, interrogating
them for organisation, purpose and
language use. Then, students work
together or with the teacher to jointly
construct a new text. This stage of
collaborative writing is critical because
it makes the thinking processes
that underlie writing visible and the
object of discussion. This complex
speaking/listening activity reinforces
the organisation of the genre and
generates highly productive talk about
grammar and vocabulary choices.
Students have shared ownership in
the collaboratively written text, which
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serves as an additional model of the
target genre. Now that they have
analysed sample writing and produced
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a text together, they are ready to write
individually, following a process of
drafting, revising, peer and self review,
and editing. The principle of the
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Teaching/Learning Cycle is ‘guidance
through interaction in the context of
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shared experience’ (Martin, 2009):
that is, writing is best learned not only
through writing, but also through
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focused and guided discussions about
the models students have read and the
one they produce together. You can
see this pedagogy in action in Inside
Writing (e.g. Bixby and Caplan, 2014).
Integrating skills in the EAP classroom
requires some planning, but the
reward is seeing skills reinforce
each other. Reading acquires a new
sense of purpose when students are
30 www.modernenglishteacher.com n Volume 25
References
Anderson P,Anson CM, Gonyea, RM & Paine
C (2015) The contributions of writing to
learning and development: results from a
large-scale multi-institutional study. Research
in the Teaching of English 50 199–235.
Bixby J & Caplan NA (2014. Inside Writing 2.
New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Caplan NA (2014) Beyond the ‘essay’: From
generic writing to writing genres. Oxford
University Press. Retrieved from: https://elt.
oup.com/teachers/insidewriting/essay/?cc=us
d
&selLanguage=en&mode=hub
Lt
Caplan NA & Douglas SR (2015) Q Skills
for Success: Level 5: Reading & Writing (2nd
edition). New York: Oxford University Press.
Feak C & Swales JM (2009) Telling a Research
ia
Story: Writing a Literature Review. Ann Arbor,
MI: University of Michigan Press.
ed
Feez S (1998) Text-Based Syllabus Design.
“The revised Sydney, Australia: National Centre for English
Language Teaching and Research.
dM
programme we Forman J & Rymer J (1999) The genre system
of the Harvard case method. Journal of
will launch in Business and Technical Communication 13
373–400.
2016 does exactly Hyland K & Hamp-Lyons L (2002) EAP:
an
issues and directions. Journal of English for
this by pairing Academic Purposes 1 1–12.
Martin JR (2009) Genre and language
thematic reading learning: A social semiotic perspective.
g
Linguistics and Education, 20 10–21.
materials with
hin
Rothery J (1996) Making changes: Developing
an educational linguistics. In R Hasan & G
related video Williams (Eds) Literacy in Society (pp86–123).
Harlow, England: Longman.
lectures, to which
lis
Weissberg R (2006) Connecting Speaking
& Writing in Second Language Writing
students will Instruction. Ann Arbor, MI: University of
Michigan Press.
respond in writing, Sullivan P & Tinberg HB (Eds) (2006) What
is ‘College-Level’Writing? Urbana, IL: National
discussion, and
Council of Teachers of English.
both individual
and group
presentations.”
accountable to their peers; discussions
are more thoughtful when they draw on Nigel Caplan assistant professor
multiple reading and listening sources; at the University of Delaware English
Language Institute, holds degrees from
and writing benefits from meaningful Cambridge University and the University
interaction such as schema-building of Pennsylvania, and is finishing his PhD
groupwork, collaborative writing and in Education. His research focuses on
peer review. As EAP tasks move closer genre theory and collaborative writing.
He has presented at TESOL as an invited
to the ways in which language skills are speaker, the European Association
integrated in university life, students of Teachers of Academic Writing, and
become more motivated and better the Symposium on Second Language
prepared for the next step in their Writing. He is the co-author of Q: Skills
for Success and Inside Writing (OUP).
academic careers.
n Issue 1