EAP: English for any purpose?.

Abstract

EAP (English for Academic Purposes) explicitly aims to support students’learning tasks in other English-medium academic courses-from writing papers in Anthropology to giving presentations in Zoology. Are EAP courses in fact serving these goals? What, if any, benefit do college students believe they are getting from their English courses? Do instructors in the other disciplines, like Anthropology, perceive students using skills, whether grammar or referencing, they have learnt in the English class? This paper reports on a pilot questionnaire, conducted in an international college in Thailand, for a full study that will attempt to answer these questions. The presentation focuses on preliminary findings as to students’ perceptions of what kind of transfer occurs and how it occurs. It raises some concerns that the full study will need to take into account, such as the role of the learner in a transfer framework.