technical language, and communicative skills work. In many contexts this remains the standard practice, but with increasing professionalization and specialization, many students need more than such skills and language. Many students are aiming for a qualification in their field, such as a bachelor’s degree in business studies, a more specialist master’s degree or an MBA (Master of Business Administration). These academic aims are leading to a greater focus on academic skills and language.
While business English continues to thrive professionally in company settings, the phenomenon of academicization has resulted in a major concurrent growth in EAP. With the great popularity of business-related degree programmes, a significant proportion of EAP students are aiming to study a business-related subject; in the past, these business students might have been considered ESP rather than EAP students. In the early days, there was some confusion between English for business study (for example MBAs), which has a primarily academic focus, and English for business, which has a professional rather than an academic focus. By the 1980s, the considerable differences between these two branches of ESP were becoming clearer.
Complexity in the disciplines: the case of business students
A further level of complexity lies in the extremely wide range of subjects which students may be aiming to study. Several broad groupings of disciplines may be identified, although these can be grouped differently depending on the institution and context:
• medical sciences, including nursing
• life sciences, for example pharmacology
• engineering
• computing
• mathematics
• natural sciences, such as physics and chemistry
• professional disciplines, such as law
• social sciences, for example economics
• architecture, the built environment, urban planning
• arts, including art, music, and languages
• humanities, such as history
• education, including teacher training
• business and management
• vocational subjects, such as hospitality management.
These align to some extent with the faculty groupings of universities, although these can vary widely. Each of these broad groupings may be further divided; for example, engineering may include civil engineering, chemical engineering, computer engineering, geomatic engineering, and others, which as an engineer would be keen to point out, are very different from each other. The example of business can have a very large number of related but distinct subjects, any one of which may be what people mean when they talk about ‘business students’: business, management, finance, economics, human resources, logistics, international relations, development, sustainability, politics, government, marketing, training, corporate law, retail, accounting, public policy, gender, global issues, international politics, international business law, communications, organizational structures, social policy, business psychology.
As this chapter goes on to show, EAP is potentially quite broad in scope, but its limitations lie in its aims: EAP is not concerned with teaching subject content. Rather, it aims to develop key academic skills, language, and competences; students subsequently, or concurrently, learn about their specific subject including content and its associated discourse and academic practices.
Myths and realities in EAP
There are a number of myths, misunderstandings, and misconceptions about EAP. These may arise due to differing approaches or levels of experience. There may be differences in views between people working in the EAP sector and those working in other sectors. In the light of the discussion so far in this chapter, this section turns to seven of the more common myths.
Myth 1: To teach EAP is to teach subject knowledge and content
The main focus of EAP is to meet the needs of students wanting to study their discipline in English. As the discussions so far have shown, the number of disciplines is extremely large, and growing. The focus of EAP is not on the subject and the specific language of the subject itself, whether administration or zoology, but on the skills, competences, and language needed to study the subject. It is the job of the academic department, and the teachers on the programme of academic study, to teach specific items and concepts. Even after a lifetime of teaching, EAP teachers cannot possibly ‘know’ all the academic subjects in sufficient depth, although with experience a general sense of familiarity with certain disciplines gradually develops.
The sector primarily concerned with teaching subject knowledge and content as well as the target language is content and language integrated learning (CLIL), also known as content-based instruction (CBI). CLIL is concerned with teaching content through the target second or foreign language; it can involve any language, but is most likely to be in English, particularly in Europe, or other widely spoken languages, such as French (for example in Anglophone parts of Canada) and German. In contrast with EAP, CLIL takes place at quite young ages, in primary and secondary schools.
Myth 2: Vocabulary in EAP means a focus on subject-specific words such as scientific terms
As in the first myth, specific vocabulary learning is not a central concern of most EAP teaching. In earlier incarnations of ESP, technical and scientific vocabulary was a major focus. Vocabulary suitable for an EAP class, on the other hand, may include any core words (starting with the most frequent word, the), plus general academic words, such as analyze, evaluation, conclusion, focus on, homogeneous. These words in themselves are not ‘owned’ by any particular discipline; they occur across disciplines and are therefore essential for students of any discipline.
Myth 3: To study in an English-medium university you must have an extremely high level of English
The vast majority of students do not reach C2 (proficiency) level, in general ELT or EAP. Many students have not reached C1 (advanced) at the start of their English-medium programme. Depending on the context, students typically move from general English to EAP at B1 (pre-intermediate to intermediate) or B2 (upper intermediate), and work their way up towards somewhere in B2 or C1 territory before starting their studies. An increasing trend is to begin EAP at lower levels, for example from A2 (elementary) rather than B1. This is particularly the case in growing education hubs such as Turkey and the Middle East. Many degree programmes, including foundation courses, bridging degrees, and many undergraduate degrees, ask for a level somewhere around B2 or B1. In the UK, science and business often require lower scores than the arts, humanities, and law, though this is not always the case in other regions of the world. A typical target for science students in the UK might be IELTS 6.5 (B2), and 7.0 (B2/C1) for arts and humanities; the most prestigious universities may typically ask for IELTS 7.5 (C1) for law students. In short, English requirements vary quite widely, but are often not as high as might be expected.
To clarify language level descriptors, many familiar descriptors such as ‘intermediate’ map fairly neatly onto the Council of Europe Framework of References for Languages (CEFR) scale, approximately as follows: A1 beginner/starter; A2 elementary; B1 pre-intermediate; B1+ intermediate; B2 upper intermediate; C1 advanced; C2 proficiency.
Myth 4: EAP is dry and dull
EAP should not and need not be so, any more than studying one’s chosen discipline is dry and dull. The academic world is about the study, research, and communication of ideas; EAP
