English for academic purposes

Although various approaches have been implemented in academic education, the genre-based approach has become the mainstream since 1990s (Hocking, 2010). In the meanwhile, the critical EAP and the academic literacies approach emerged in the late 1990s (Hocking, 2010). They not only criticize the lack of creativity of the genre-based approach, but also examine three aspects in academic education; as students bilities, student-tutor interaction and the institution (Lea & Street, 1998).

I focus on the first two aspects of these which strongly relate to the following two approaches for learning support, and it seems to be very important for a tutor if they adopt any approaches of English teaching.

According to Wingate (2006), there are two main approaches for learning support in academic education. The one is the ‘bolt-on’ approach (Wingate, 2006). This approach focuses on students themselves and concentrates on issues of surface forms of grammar and skills for structure and argument (Lea & Street, 1998). Although it is expected that students acquire ‘appropriate’ skills for successful writing, skills are divorced from the process and content of learning, and subject knowledge (Wingate, 2006).

The other is the ‘built-in’ approach in which skills are developed in a progressive and holistic manner through student-tutor interaction (Wingate, 2006). Students are given experience and feedback on the experience that encourages reflection for developing strategies to deal with similar situations (Wingate, 2006). However, Lea and Street (1998) point out that most tutors cannot make explicit what constitutes successful writing, and then, they are likely to use familiar descriptive categories as in ‘structure’ and ‘argument’ and do little for experience and reflection.

As a result, the predominant approach is the ‘bolt-on’ approach, although an effective approach for academic education would be to adopt the ‘built-in’ approach (Wingate, 2006).

Again, the meta-language which I focused on in the previous posting about systemic functional grammar seems to be the suitable resource for providing tutors with descriptive categories for making explicit what constitute successful writing. ‘The meta-language provides a common language which teachers and students can use to talk to each other about language and how it works’ (Butt, Fahey, Feez, Spinks & Yallop, 2000, p.18), although Butt, Fahey, Feez, Spinks, and Yallop (2000) state that tutors are required to take ‘considerable professional judgement‘ (p.18) for the appropriate use of it…

Oh, I cannot forget to say this. I have noticed an answer for my one of questions in my previous posting about the genre-based approach that Figure 4 in ‘English for academic purposes and academic literacies' (Hocking, 2010) is one of real genre approach’s model texts as prototypes for learners’ individual variations. Although the table is presented in iResearch, which I am also taking in this semester, I have not considered it in this paper. I feel much better now.


List of References

Butt, D., Fahey, R., Feez, S., Spinks, S., & Yallop, C. (2000). Using functional grammar: An explorer’s guide (2nd ed.). Sydney: NCELTR.

Hocking, D. (2010). English for academic purposes and academic literacies [Lecture]. Auckland：AUT university.

Lea, M. R., & Street, B. V. (1988). Student writing in higher education: An academic literacies model. Studies in Higher Education, 23(2), 157-172.

Wingate, U. (2006). Doing away with study skills. Teaching in Higher Education, 11(4), 457-469.