A THOUGHT FOR ELT/EAP TEACHERS

I’m not sure if this is the right place to post this but I think it’s interesting for researchers in the field of English Language teaching. At the minute I’m going over my literature review and doing a lot of reading on the latest literature in the field of English for Academic Purposes. As some of you may know I’m also presently putting together a collection of book chapters, and this has been a very positive experience. One of those chapters might be of particular interest to our EAP/English Language teachers. It’s written by a colleague of mine, by the name of Phil Martin, who is doing a study on teachers’ transition from General English to English for Academic Purposes.

One of the most interesting developments within this is that the participants in his research, a group of EAP teachers, mostly speak in terms of having ‘progressed’ from General English to EAP.  I even used similar language myself yesterday when speaking to colleagues about a group of students with low IELTS scores, and limited communicative competence, on a Pre-Masters course. I suggested that I needed to ‘revert’ to General English approaches in order to get these students speaking and using the passive voice because the pre-planned task of having them write three paragraphs on products made in their countries could have been too demanding and demotivating at this stage of a course. Thus I created a role-play speaking situation which was a lot more fun and was designed to bring the learners out of their shells so to speak; in the hope that in their subject-specific classes they will develop the same confidence when it comes to taking part in discussion and questioning/answering.

What’s interesting about this is the apparent currency and value afforded to content and context over pedagogy. The reason I say this is that the pedagogy and the skills required of English teachers can be just as demanding in the GE classroom as in the EAP classroom, if the classes are taught properly. Yet we seem to exist in a contemporary ELT world where General English courses are taught mainly by those with qualifications such as the CELTA alone, or those who hold a DELTA but not a Masters. I know there are economic reasons for this, and there’s a logistical imperative to have the best possible teachers in EAP, as opposed to GE classrooms, but there’s also something about the situation that makes me think of Etienne Wenger’s (1998) claims’ processors and their managers. When we, as teachers, climb up the ladder, perhaps we have too much of a tendency to throw out everything associated with our early experiences of English Language teaching, as if it’s something we’d rather forget. It’s part of our personal biography, and the biography of our profession so maybe as we ‘transition’ we should also look at ways in which our own increased knowledge and experience can be used to help others make the same transition, and in transitioning we shouldn’t talk of ‘progress’ but of adaptation.