(PDF) EAP programme Evaluation: Suggestions from Monolingual Students

EAP Course Evaluations: Suggestions from Monolingual Students Nasrin Pervin, North South University, Bangladesh The European Conference on Language Learning 2020 Official Conference Proceedings Abstract This paper explores the quality and effectiveness of English for Academic Purposes courses offered to the first year monolingual students at a private University in Bangladesh. Since the majority of students come from Bangla medium, these students are required to complete the EAP programme in their first year of university. The study reflects on the feedback of the EAP courses, which are delivered in the university, from the first year undergraduate students and the data collected from the students’ questionnaire and teachers’ interviews to be utilized to cater the specific needs required for students’ success in academic and professional endeavors. A mixed method has been used to find the strengths and weaknesses of the existing EAP programme so that the areas of the current EAP programme can be discovered and developed. The literature of EAP and the data collected from mixed methods show that there is a great deal of importance to modify the current EAP programme considering students' perceptions and suggestions. Keywords: EAP Programme, Needs Analysis, EAP skills iafor The International Academic Forum www.iafor.org Introduction When it comes to the obstacles faced while providing a definition of English for Academic purposes (EAP), Dudley-Evans and St John (1998:34) define EAP as “any English teaching that relates to a study purpose.” Contrastingly, Gillett (2004: 11) has another description of EAP which quotes “the language and associated skills that students need to undertake study in higher education through the medium in English”. Flowerdew and Peacock (2001:8) state that the purpose of EAP is to assist learners in their “study or research in that language”. Gunning (2009:16) opinionates “all tertiary English education should fall under the rubric of ESP [English for Specific Purposes]/ EAP”. After a gap of some years, Hadley (2015:23) defines EAP as “tertiary level English instructional training that enables learners to improve their language proficiency within higher educational institutions, irrespective of the country within which that instruction takes place.” As a large number (or a majority) of students in Bangladesh do their schooling in Bangla medium, private universities offer basic English language teaching courses for academic purposes (EAP) for the tertiary students. An elementary course for English is offered in the first semester, which includes constructing basic composition in their writings. They are then offered an Intermediate composition course on English in their second semester, which includes teaching informative essays, with critical emphasis being given on academic writing and editing. The advanced English course offered in the third semester requires students to undertake a research project focused on persuasive and argumentative writing. Both the first and second semester courses remain as a part of prerequisite to the third and last one. The primary goal of these courses is for students to comprehend, use, and construct academic writing efficiently in order to gain control of the writing process in different steps - prewriting, writing and rewriting through a program which mostly involves reading and writing. All students are required at least two courses, with the first being optional or required only for some based on some criteria, such as test results at their timing of admission in the university. These two or three courses are compulsory for all the students intending on majoring in different departments, aiming to teach the students how English language is to be properly used in an academic environment. Nonetheless, the true picture says something else entirely. Even after completing the elementary and advanced level English courses, my observation of teaching ten years of EAP courses at the university, I learned that they face difficulties with their respective departmental courses, and after their graduation they are clueless as to how these English courses have assisted them both in their academic and professional lives. Even though these courses are created using the English for Academic Purposes (EAP) scheme, they are somehow not working as well as they should. It is becoming clear that the courses are created on the basis of students’ needs ten to twelve years ago. This needs to be rectified, and the perception of the students about the courses reassessed, alongside other variables that should be taken into account, before making them compulsory for the higher-level students. Experiences are considered the cornerstone of learning, and keeping this in mind, this paper has taken a humanistic approach to discover how the learners’ experiences pave the way towards learning. Humanistic theory allows teachers to facilitate the learning process by creating an environment in the classroom based on learners’ experiences and needs (Douglas,2011).In this approach, learners develop self-awareness in their active learning process derived from social worlds( Grollios, 2016). Therefore, the teaching materials should be related to everyday experiences people encounter (yeasmin and Rahman,n.d.). To increase the success of the EAP programme, it is crucial to comprehend how it works effectively for the students, and their views on the programme from their own experiences in learning. This is in line with what Rogers (1969:157-164) stated, “When the learners choose their goals, discover learning resources, formulate problems, decide on a course of action, and live with the consequences of each of these choices, then significant learning occurs.” With this in mind, this paper tries to explore the students’ experiences’ of EAP programme and how the programme works for the students to develop them professionally and academically. Statement of the problem Considering that the purpose of this project is to ascertain how monolingual students of a particular English medium university conceive this EAP curriculum, the present research mainly addresses the following two critical questions: ▪ What are the major pros and cons of the current EAP programme? ▪ Based on the current context, what are the possible revisions we can make to improve the existing EAP programme? The role of EAP in an EFL/ESL context A section of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), known as EAP, seeks to advance communication and academic skills that aid learners to analyze, communicate, and direct research in the particular language (Flowerdew & Peacock, 2001). Keeping the non-native circumstances in mind, EAP courses aid EFL (English as Foreign Language) students acquire success in a scholastic domain where English is the instrument of teaching (Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998). EAP is connected with the “communicative skills in English which are required for study purposes in formal educational systems” (Jordan, 1997:1). Its courses are inclined to teach students the formal, scholastic style of the language instead of the traditional and social genres taught by common English courses (Hamp-Lyons, 2001). Based on benchmarking, and learners’ problems in utilizing the language, various important factors are taken into account by most EAP courses. Jordan (1997) declares that multiple variables, like requirements, purpose, method, and other factors or limitations are considered while formulating an EAP curriculum. He (1997:58) posits that an EAP course mainly emphasizes independent study skills consisting of reading cognition, academic writing, cognitive listening and note taking, academic discourse, and reference skills. Looking at the role of EAP, Flowerdew & Peacock (2001:25) state that it is a course “to cover those educational activities in higher education”, its motive being to help teach and learn the English language needed by the tertiary, postgraduate, and/or staff whose major is not the English language, it being more of a ‘carrier’ subject. Either prior to or during their studies, they require English language and communication skills to access subject knowledge or ‘content’. White (2004:35) conceptualized the EAP context as a potential market for the students emphasizing the requirement of a combination of consumer demand and production in terms of the education offered by organizations. Teachers are perceived as the service providers while the students are characterized as the consumer classifying the exchange of education between them as process according to this perspective. According to Hyland (2006), the extent of EAP has far exceeded the limits of curriculum planning, testing and assessing, and data designing. Thus, he notes the evolution of an EAP that may focus on the various ways to comprehend and interest learners in a crucial insight of the progressively diverse circumstances and methods of scholastic information. Accordingly, a comprehensive task of EAP is being indicated by Hyland (2006:2) as he opines that EAP provides a grounded framework based on “an understanding of texts and constructions of academic contexts” to meet the demand of academic and professional situations. Much like nearly all ESL countries, the setting of EAP is analogous in Bangladesh, as English here, despite officially being a foreign language, boasts a position akin to a second language. While the native language plays a major role in daily life, English here is chiefly used in the education system at all levels. The goals of EAP curriculum in this country are to promote students in gaining course expertise and preparing them for their specialized study at the tertiary level. To support the students’ English Language proficiency, the EAP curriculum is designed to facilitate the learning process so that learners develop EAP skills and utilise them in their academic and prefellinal matters. Therefore, the materials used in the curricula should be authentic with an objective to develop communicative skills based on the connection between the language and the context the learners are in (Campbell and Wales, 1970). At the same time, it should be considered that we need to consider “the needs of non-native speakers following an English-medium course and those of native speakers in need of developing communication skills” (Dudley-Evans & St John, 1998: 37). It so happens that the communication skills course with the best results was a mixture of the conventional ideas of EAP and the communication skills of the native speakers (Dudley-Evans & St John, 1998). Moreover, as learning needs differ from one student to another, it is vital to analysis the needs of the students because “the activities involved in gathering information that will serve as the basis for developing a curriculum that will meet the learning needs of a particular group of students” (Brown, 1995, p. 35). Method of study To investigate how far the EAP programme at a particular university meets the needs of the students for their academic and professional purposes, both qualitative and quantitative data were gathered. In order to collect data, a structured questionnaire with a likert scale was used because studies can be evaluated more objectively with greater consistency with quantitative research (Mackey & Gass, 2005). A survey questionnaire was designed for the students who have either graduated from the institution or have already done the courses. The students and alumni are in a closed Facebook group where the Google link of the questionnaire was provided to generate the data. As qualitative data represents the participants’ perceptions and their deep involvement into the research process, (Rao &Woolcock, 2003: 167), I interviewed ten teachers from the same institution, who teach the EAP program. The subjects for the interview were carefully chosen because as either they were the EAP programme coordinators at one point of their teaching careers or they have developed teaching contents/texts books for the EAP programme; therefore, it was thought that they would be able to provide a balanced representation of participants in certain EAP aspects. The interview questions were semi structured. Each of participants was interviewed separately and the responses from the interviews were qualitatively interpreted. The teachers were asked to give their views on pedagogic as well as other organizational aspects of the EAP courses. Participants’ characteristics The participants for quantitative study are both male and female, aged between 19-23 years. They all are either studying at a specific university or have graduated from the institution. The chosen teachers for qualitative study are both male and female, aged between 30 to 58 years old, working at the same tertiary institution. I have chosen two different groups of participants because the EAP programme requires direct involvement of teachers and students and avoiding any of these would have resulted in incomplete findings. Research Findings: Quantitative Analysis: findings from students' survey (a)EAP Course Content 1-Strongly disagree 2- Disagree Marking Options 3-Neutral 4- Agree 5- Strongly agree This section of data is concerned with the students’ opinions specifically on the EAP course content as a whole. The quantitative amount of student opinions per statement tells us that, on average, about 54% of them agreed and/or strongly agreed with the given statements on different topics. The exceptional cases are where academic writing improvement and practice opportunities for writing were concerned. The data shows that most students specifically agreed with those statements (almost 67%), which shows that the current EAP programme at least has an acceptable level for teaching those aspects. Moving on to the next group, we have approximately 18% of the students who are decidedly ambivalent in their opinion. This raises the implication that they are either not sure whether they learnt something in their classes, or they decided to stay silent since their level did not increase. Again, analysis of the graphs shows that, in the case of speaking and vocabulary the number of people neutral on topic increased. Finally, the statements were disagreed with by around 28% of the respondents, with an increase in academic speaking and vocabulary being of import. Overall, the analysis of the compiled data indicates that there are a lot of areas to improve in this section of EAP course content since the positives are only a very slight majority. However, the main focus should be on the academic speaking and vocabulary practice since those are the areas in which the flaws really grab attention. (b) Learner’s Autonomy 1-Strongly disagree 2- Disagree Marking Options 3-Neutral 4- Agree 5- Strongly agree After studying all the graphs in this section, one can see that, on a mean, approximately 57% of the students who responded were positive in their opinions regarding the statements concerning their own autonomy in studying and learning. While this indicates that these students are well on their way to studying independently using the methods EAP lessons have taught them, there is a group that remains conflicted when identifying with the statements. This neutral group consists of around 19% of the sample population, and the interesting part is that they mostly felt conflicted on the topic of planning to learn and study their lessons independently, whereas they were more inclined to either agree or disagree on the others. In conclusion, after analysing the data from this section, we can say that a slight majority of the sample population consider the EAP programme to be affective in teaching a learner how to study and learn independently, using the different techniques taught in EAP lessons. The rest of the participants' opinions on this matter are in contrast, however, and the amount of students in this group is significant enough to warrant a thorough update of the existing curriculum. ( c) Course Materials and Resources 1-Strongly disagree 2- Disagree Marking Options 3-Neutral 4- Agree 5- Strongly agree The graphs in this section, after being analysed, tells us that, firstly, an average of 57.9% learners responded in a positive way to the statements involving the course materials and resources used in the EAP programme. It also shows the skewed distribution of student opinions on these statements. For example, the statement instructional materials' relevancy was positively agreed by about 82% of the students, but in cases of library resources being available and audio-visual aids being used to supplement them, the agreement rate suddenly drops down to roughly 54.1% and 31.1% respectively. The neutral parties were, on a mean, about 17.5% of the whole population, and here we notice a rather intriguing phenomena. It seems that almost 31.1% of the students were on the fence about the statement regarding resources in the library. This points to the possibility that they might not even have been aware that the library had these tools in the first place, so their confusion caused them to be neutral. Third, the group that disagreed and/or strongly disagreed with statements are the remaining average 24.6%. The number of students disagreeing in general fluctuates wildly as shown in the graphs. Case in point, the graph regarding relevance of instructional materials has the lowest disagreement rate of 3.2%, whereas the EAP books due to being unengaging, received a large increase in disagreeing votes, 29.5%, and this peaked at the statement regarding the usage of audio-visual aids to supplement the lessons, a majority of 60.6%. This directly indicates that the EAP curriculum currently in use is not using any supplementary audio-visual guides to aid students in learning. In conclusion, the data in this section has several skews that point out a few strong, and several weak points of the EAP programme. The flaws of uninteresting books should be addressed, alongside making sure to make the students aware of the library resources, and the use of multimedia aids should be increased to rectify the problems in this section. (d) Evaluation & Assessment 1-Strongly disagree 2- Disagree Marking Options 3-Neutral 4- Agree 5- Strongly agree Using the average values of these graphs show that approximately 71.5% of the learners voted positively regarding the statements given. While this is a clear majority there are some noticeable variations between agreements of each statement, such as when the subject of ample feedback is concerned, the data reveals a positive vote of 60.6%, while on the other hand, it jumps to 83.6% when the question of timely assessment results were concerned. The neutral group quantitatively stayed low in this section, with an approximate of 14.4% of the students’ decision hanging in the balance, though it should be of minor note that this amount has a peak of 21.3% when sufficient feedback of student exam is concerned. Finally, the group of disagreeing students, remained within a small range, averaging around 14.1%, and slightly peaking on the statement of exam time duration to 23%. It remained its lowest in this section at 4.9% when timely assessment results were handed out. To summarize, the data in this section had a more positive skew in that it had more positive opinions to the statements provided. However, it should be noted that some more time management lessons could be included and a more patient one on one feedback on exam papers could help students in this part of the EAP programme. (e) Learning Process in Classroom 1-Strongly disagree 2- Disagree Marking Options 3-Neutral 4- Agree 5- Strongly agree In this section, by analysing all the graphs, it is clearly observed that the majority of the respondents, roughly 69% on an average, are positive about how the instructor conducted and facilitated the learning process in their respective classroom. These students seem to have a clear idea about the learning progress and the development they experienced in their respective classes. However, it is highly interesting to notice that only an average of 14.6% of the total population opted to disagree and/or strongly disagree that their learning experiences say otherwise which means they were not happy with how they had been catered to through the journey of their EAP programme when they were facilitated by their instructors. To sum up, it can be said from this quantitative data analysis, a major percentage of total participants believe that the mentors gave their best while facilitating the EAP programme with its aims and objectives to fulfill the learning agenda to serve the learning goals the students aspired, although some revisions to include the remaining students would not go amiss. Qualitative data: findings from the interview (a) How EAP courses improve students’ academic English Among the 10 participants, five of them, or around 50% said the EAP programme helps students’ academic skill, basic writing skill, prewriting, post writing, planning, fundamental basics, vocabulary and grammar, receptive skills and productive skills to some extent. The rest 50% argued just the other way around. They said it only helps to some extent as teachers are unable to give significant time in one to one case. In addition to that, though the students improve marginally in cases of fluency and coherence in academic writing, the EAP courses are not designed to improve grammar, reading, listening and speaking skills. Besides, most students also lack reading habits, which is necessary to improve academic writing, so their academic English do not improve as much as expected through the programme. (b) Students’ communication in English with the instructor 70% of the total number of teachers said that most of the students are not able to communicate via English effectively with their teachers, mostly because of the students’ language barrier. In addition to that, the students feel shy and reluctant, hence they mostly resort to using Bengali to communicate. However, even when they try to use English, they struggle to communicate. As a matter of fact, 30% of the teachers said a few students can communicate, but it takes time for them to learn English for communication because most of the students come from Bangla medium background. The classrooms are an amalgam of different students’ ability to communicate in English, where the level of ability fluctuates from student to student. (c) Students facing difficulties in their academic and professional life after doing their EAP programme Here, only 20% of the total population said majority of the students don’t have difficulties. The rest of the teachers said that the learners face difficulties in their academic and professional lives, which means the programme does not serve its intended purpose. The reasons are varied and critical to look at. One of the crucial reasons, a participant opined, is that the current students’ standard of the particular university is not fit for the EAP courses, and in return they lose their CGPA for it. As the weak students continue to face difficulties, two classes per week are not nearly enough to improve their language skills. They need to continue practicing outside the classroom, which requires intrinsic motivation from their side. Time is too little to address all the issues in class and most students do not register what is taught. Besides this, their receptive and productive skills are weak due to lack of practice. Surprisingly enough, one of the respondents stated that he expects majority of the students have difficulties in terms of using English because most students are fundamentally disinclined to actually take part in the real effort to learn and develop the skills, therefore, students are responsible as they forget what they have learned. (d) Students’ benefits from the strategies taught in the EAP classes All of the participants agreed that the students are benefited from the strategies used in the programme. Students develop their vocabulary that has some transfer value, pair work and group work train the learners to communicate effectively, alongside which they are also taught how to use different techniques to approach reading texts and learn how to comprehend various writing prompts in a more organized way. The students develop brainstorming strategies which help them to reduce time in exam hall and in writing essays. Among the ten teachers, two of them said that the students benefit to a certain degree because they are limited by a tendency to mimic value than try to understand what is taught and discussed in the classroom. To some extent, they benefit since they get exposure to structural components of academic writing, and some practice in the classroom through the means of various exercises. As an example, they learn the basics of how to write a research paper in English. (e) Constructive and beneficial feedback given by the teachers Around 70% of the teachers said the feedback given by the teachers help students to re-evaluate their own work as it involves using practical strategies, thus, students learn from constructive feedback and then they get to know themselves better based on the flaws pointed out by the teachers. 30% said to some extent the students do benefit from this, but said it depends on them because the students will only be benefited if they take the feedback seriously. However, it is difficult for the instructor to identify each student’s strengths and weaknesses due to the large number of students in each class. The students’ reluctance to learn is also a major barrier, according to these teachers. (f)The strengths of EAP programme The findings of my research indicate multi-layered strengths of EAP programme which I believe the majority of the teachers in my field would agree on. Primarily, it familiarizes students with the errors made by them. Not only is EAP a great method for teaching writing structures but also an effective one to improve the reading strategies of students. Structural components of several kinds of Academic Writing becomes easy for students to acquire as it exposes them to the basics of writing a Research paper. It enforces students to explore various areas of the programmes which inserts a fair chance of students adhering to those. The programme stays relevant to the objectives which keeps the writing aligned with the topic. Even, skill related to editing are also taught in the programme. Being a well-organized and structured programme, it helps students to improve individual writing and speaking skills. (g)The weaknesses of the EAP courses Reading skills are predominantly ignored in the programme. There is a lack of appropriate reading materials. There is a very short period of time which does not suffice to practice reading skills in class which results in low or in most cases no improvement of reading skills which are essential to develop writing skills. There is no systematic way of teaching vocabulary in this programme. Time duration proves to be insufficient to cover such a big syllabus. There can be fluctuation in the number of students in same class, sometimes the class size is relatively big and sometimes it is relatively small. Therefore, there can be a lack in students’ motivation to offer effort and learn. Since, there are too many topics to cover, there appears mental fatigue. Additionally, the syllabus of the programme is not up to the current standard and does not address all issues. (h)Modification of EAP programme The programme can work a lot better if a few suggestions could be incorporated. For example, inclusion of tense exercises would work well. A vocabulary learning of handy words is highly recommended. Course length should be reduced and the number of assignments should be lessened also. Adding multiple resources can be a great idea. For reference, it can be a course similar to IELTS training with modules on grammar, vocabulary, listening, reading, speaking etc., On the whole, the course content and the books used for EAP need to be revised. (i)Skills that are not developed in this programme 80% of the teachers felt that reading, speaking and listening skills are not developed in the existing EAP programme. These skills are as equally important as writing skills but there is too much content and too many writing components in the EAP programme which adversely affects the reading, speaking and listening parts by causing them to be left out in class. There are many assignments and class works involved in the programme outline that does not help learners to develop lexical/lexicon semantic skills, and critical and analytical skills. 20% of the total number of teachers feel that teachers’ incompetency and laziness in using methodology are the sole reasons that become constraints in helping the learners to develop skills productively. Along with that, they also believe that, though attempts are made to develop all the skills, their experience says the students are reluctant and not willing to learn. Research implications and conclusion The purpose of this study was to analyze the quality of the present EAP program from the students’ perspective, using both qualitative and quantitative strategies of data collection methods. From the research problem discussed above, we can conclude that the main focus of the EAP programme is to develop the educational skills and learning strategies that enable learners to use English competently in different academic settings. Learners’ needs and styles should be taken into consideration while working on the teaching framework. Our study outcome suggests that good amount of time and reinforcement is not usually given to develop these academic skills and techniques. The curriculum should target practicing academic and study skills by emphasizing related abilities and techniques that are more synchronized with the students’ department. The results here indicate that there's a good need for the development of listening comprehension skills and note taking approaches, which leads us to the resolution that learners should be supplied with opportunities to prepare these aspects not only in classroom setting but outside as well. The results however depict that in the context of reading skills, the students require to develop reading tactics that will help them understand academic texts more easily and both extensive and intensive reading tasks are designed to develop these approaches. I tried to remain transparent during the study. About feedback and originality, one of the participants emailed me while conducting this research: [ I haven't had the opportunity to take your classes, but I hope and pray that this survey will be used to enhance both engagement in class as well as improve how the classes are conducted. I can confidently say that there was a lack of feedback on my mistakes in EAP programme and how I may improve or an explanation of my grades, especially for my (ENG) 103 grade. It'd also be nice to see a change in the (ENG) 105 curriculum requirements where the current students just ask their seniors to provide them with their researches instead of making an effort by themselves, which then leads to insufficient skills of researching and presenting in major courses]. The outcome of this study reveals the need for strategy training, and gives emphasis on study and reflection skills. Learners are encouraged to take the hold of their own learning within the academic environment. Results also imply that learners discourage textbooks. The academic materials for this course should be consistent with the students’ requirements. The creation and adaptation of the learning materials must reflect students’ needs and discard traditional methods. Materials which “affect the learners by attracting their attention, interest and curiosity; and engage students in ‘learner-centered’ discovery activities” (Tomlinson, 1998: 11) should be developed. To motivate students’ intrinsically in the teaching and learning process, authentic teaching materials should be adapted and altered (Richards & Renandya, 2002). The suggestions and implications of this study remains varied and critical, which make dealing with the process more time-consuming. Since research methodologies differ depending on the teaching and learning contexts, courses should be taken by the respective departments on methodology to avoid discrepancy. The emphasis should be given for improving the students' English as a whole, rather than making the learning process all about exams. A revised version of 24-week courses could be implemented instead of 12-week courses. The EAP programme needs further discussion and planning, it is essential that some of the redundant and backdated materials must be removed from the existing curriculum. Inclusion of optimum exposure to academic content and tasks (Grabe & Stoller, 2001) in the classroom activities is of great importance to successfully design a proper EAP course for the EFL students. Extensive listening and reading materials, online learning, independent learning tasks, and scopes for applying learning strategies outside the class should be included in the curriculum rather than keeping it only a classroom based programme. Appendix 1 EAP Course Evaluation Student Questionnaire (EAPCESQ) This questionnaire aims to find out some information about the efficiency and effectiveness of the existing EAP courses. There are 5 sections and you are kindly requested to circle the number that reflects your opinion. It will take you about 10 minutes to complete the questionnaire. Thank you! Student Name: Strongl Agree No Disagre Strongl Class: y agree ide e y Date: a disagre e Course 1 I improved my academic 5 4 3 2 1 Content listening and note-taking skills in English in the EAP classes. 2 I was provided with 5 4 3 2 1 sufficient opportunities to practice my academic listening and note-taking skills inside the classroom. 3 I improved my academic 5 4 3 2 1 speaking skills in the EAP classes. 4 I improved my academic 5 4 3 2 1 reading skills in the EAP classes. 5 I was provided with 5 4 3 2 1 sufficient opportunities to practice my academic reading skills inside and outside the classroom. 6 I improved my academic 5 4 3 2 1 writing skills in the EAP classes. 7 I was provided with 5 4 3 2 1 sufficient opportunities to practice my academic writing inside and outside the classroom. 8 I improved my academic 5 4 3 2 1 vocabulary in EAP classes. 9 The EAP classes have met 5 4 3 2 1 my education expectations in general. Independent 1 I learned how to plan my 5 4 3 2 1 Learning 0 learning and study my lessons independently 1 I have improved my study 5 4 3 2 1 1 skills which I use in my academic studies. 1 I was provided with enough 5 4 3 2 1 2 opportunities to reflect on my learning. 1 The EAP lessons have raised 5 4 3 2 1 3 my awareness of skills and strategies that I can use for my language development. Course 1 The instructional materials 5 4 3 2 1 materials 4 were relevant to the course and content. resources 1 The instructional materials 5 4 3 2 1 5 were sufficient. 1 The topics and materials 5 4 3 2 1 6 used in the EAP classes were engaging and interesting. 1 The EAP book used in the 5 4 3 2 1 7 EAP classes was engaging and interesting. 1 The library has enough 5 4 3 2 1 8 sources for studying Academic English 1 A variety of audio-visual 5 4 3 2 1 9 aids (OHP, multimedia, flashcards, video, realia and so on) were used. Testing and 2 The content of the test tasks 5 4 3 2 1 assessment 0 is directly linked to the course content and instruction. 2 I had enough time to 5 4 3 2 1 1 complete the test tasks in the exams. 2 I was provided with 5 4 3 2 1 2 sufficient feedback regarding the achievement at the exams 2 Assessment results were 5 4 3 2 1 3 announced in a reasonable time. 2 Assignments and tests were 5 4 3 2 1 4 graded fairly and thoroughly. Academic 2 The instructor facilitated the 5 4 3 2 1 instruction 5 learning process following different learner centred activities in class. 2 The instructor’s discussion 5 4 3 2 1 6 was organized in a clear and engaging way. 2 The instructor encouraged 5 4 3 2 1 7 and ensured full student participation in class. 2 The instructor enhanced the 5 4 3 2 1 8 learning process though the experience of the students. 2 The instructor conducted the 5 4 3 2 1 9 classes in an effective and interesting way. 3 The instructor treated the 5 4 3 2 1 0 students fairly, impartially, and with respect. 3 The instructor facilitated 5 4 3 2 1 1 individual and group needs. 3 The instructor gave 5 4 3 2 1 2 summative and formative feedback to the students about the progress. 3 The instructor encouraged 5 4 3 2 1 3 research activities in the classroom. 3 The classes were well paced 5 4 3 2 1 4 with questions and answers session. 3 The classes were smooth, 5 4 3 2 1 5 sequenced and logical. Adapted from: Jordan, 1997 and Richards, 2001 Appendix 2 Semi-structured Focus Group Interviews (SFGIs) Participants: Teachers who are teaching EAP courses GROUP SIZE: 10 DATE: Questions Notes 1. Do you believe that the EAP (Eng 102/103/105) course improves students’ academic English? If yes, how? If not, Why? 2. Can the students easily communicate with you in English? 3. Do you think students have difficulties in their academic and professional life after doing their EAP programme? If yes, why? 4. Do your students benefit from the strategies taught in the EAP classes while doing assignments and exams? How? 5. Do you think that the feedback given by the teachers is beneficial and constructive, and helped students to discover their strengths and weaknesses? If not, Why not? If yes, How? 6. What are the strengths of the EAP courses? 7. What are the weaknesses of the EAP courses? 8. If you are asked to change anything about the EAP programme what would you change? 9. Which skills, do you think, are not developed in this course? What were the constraints? (time, pace, lack of AVA, class size, teaching methodology, teacher incompetence, too much content, a lot of exams) 1 Do you want to add something else? 0 References Brown, J. D. (1995). The elements of language curriculum: A systematic approach to program development. Boston: Heinle&Heinle. Campbell, R. & Wales, R. (1970). The Study of Language Acquisition in J. Lyons ( ed.) ( pp. 242-260), New Horizons in Linguistics, Penguin books. Dudley-Evans, T., & St John, M. J. (1998). Developments in English for specific purposes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Douglas, A. 2011. Essentials of Psychology , USA: Wadsworth, 443 Flowerdew, J., & Peacock, M. (2001). Issues in EAP: A preliminary perspective. In J. Flowerdew & M. Peacock (Eds.), Research perspectives on English for academic purposes (pp. 8-25). Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Grabe, W. & Stoller, F.L. (2001). 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