Publications

One role of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) is to prepare and support students in their academic careers. While EAP may feature at any stage of higher education studies, from undergraduate through to PhD level, the focus of this talk is the early stage of a university student’s career. At this point, EAP not only has a language development role, it also plays a crucial role in developing academic skills and competencies. These may involve academic skills like engaging sophisticated search strategies, being able to evaluate sources and structuring a sound, supported, academic argument. They may also be broader soft or transferable skills.

One of the key skills for 21st century learning is collaboration. Collaboration features at every stage in a students’ university degree across disciplines, whether that is undergraduate novice in Social Sciences taking their first steps into academic discourse by writing a group essay or PhD candidates in Engineering working as part of a research project. Being able to work with others to produce a piece of work is an increasingly important skill, both within academia and beyond. However, successful collaboration does not just happen and collaborative assignments require careful planning and scaffolding. This talk will explore the role of collaborative assignments in EAP and the four stages of preparation, set-up, facilitation and assessment.

The preparation stage relies on developing a clear conception of the collaborative assignment and we will be introducing a definition for collaboration in EAP to help with assignment design. The vital set-up stage considers initial steps that need to be taken to help student groups understand the requirements of collaborative assignments and develop positive working relationships. The facilitation stage looks at ways tutors can monitor and support student collaboration, while the final assessment stage considers approaches for assessing an individual in a group effort.