Session Titles and Abstracts
English for Academic Purposes - A seminar with the University of Hertfordshire, (UH), UK, at Oslo University College, 14th - 15th June 2007
- Teaching EAP within UH: operational issues. Paul Roberts: This session will provide an overview of how the EAP Teaching Unit fits into the overall University structure and of the ways in which EAP works as ‘stand-alone’ classes and as a fully integrated service.
- EAP as academic imperative: cultural challenges. Jenny Leonard: In this workshop some of the complex issues raised by the globalisation of academic English will be outlined and discussed, including different academic cultures, the concepts of cultural and linguistic imperialism and how these ideas are likely to play out in the Norwegian context.
- An introduction to EAP and its development in UK. Andy Gillett: This session will provide an introduction to EAP as it is seen in the UK, concentrating on needs analysis and integration – engineering & business. It will also look at how EAP has changed during the last 30 years in response to changing needs, making particular reference to EAP developments at the University of Hertfordshire.
- The effect of EAP on staff at the University of Hertfordshire. Mary Martala-Lockett: This session will offer an insight into how academic and front line staff at UH are being affected by EAP whilst also outlining the role of the ELT group in helping staff overcome some of the issues.
- Integrating Web based material into EAP. Andy Gillett: In this session I will talk about the background and development of my uefap.com website, showing examples of exercise types and ways in which it can be used to integrate into classroom teaching.
- What happens in an EAP classroom? Mary Martala-Lockett: Using in-sessional English as the umbrella of an EAP class, this session will focus on the integration of English language and degree subject.
- ‘Dialogging’ with engineers. Nancy Lea Eik-Nes: Norwegian doctoral students in engineering come to a scientific writing course to learn the “how to’s” in writing English scientific articles. However, the course they attend is far from the “fix-it” course they expect. A key part of the course is writing logs as e-mails. My presentation will demonstrate the significance of these e-logs as a medium for students’ development of dialogue – with themselves and with me – in which they develop their English, their doctoral projects, and their place in their discourse communities.
- Focus on Engineering Students. Andy Gillett and Jo Farmer: In this session we will discuss the specific language and language-related needs of students in the Engineering Faculty at UH. We will go on to give some examples of materials and class activities that we have used in order to respond to them.
- Teaching ESP-Business with the Case Study Method. Drew Rodgers: The case study method is based on solving real-life business situations in order to help students develop both communication and business skills. Its relevance was pointed out by a former student who stated, “It’s strange. Fifty percent of being a good manager is being a good communicator and we have to take a business English course to learn these skills.” Skills often lacking in recruits are listed by the Head of Human Resources at Texas Instruments to representatives from European schools of business as costly to employers and include the following: critical/analytical, problem solving, information gathering, team working and interpersonal skills. The case study method is relevant because, while teaching English in an active, hands-on manner, it supplies the above-mentioned skills. This paper will discuss the basic elements of the case study method as applied to Norwegian business students. Both the teacher’s and student’s roles are discussed. The paper concludes with student assessment of the method, as well as an evaluation of their involvement and thus the effectiveness of the method at this college.
- China links. Jenny Leonard: Affiliations between UK and Chinese universities, teacher exchange programmes and the experience of Chinese students in the UK, from the perspective of staff and the students themselves, will be described and discussed in this workshop.
- New Englishes, New challenges. Paul Roberts: In this session I will briefly examine current research into English as a Lingua Franca and English as an International Language and try to draw some conclusions about future directions for EAP.
- EAP and staff development in Norway. Jeanette Rhedding-Jones: The session presents information about how Norwegian higher education lecturers have accessed international conference cultures and begun to publish in English. Various strategies are possible: from mentoring to editing and working together with written texts. Here informal and personal connections have been a useful ways in to new academic literacies and transnational developments. These function to resist English imperialism and the colonising of culturally constructed concepts.
- Think global, speak Globish. Judith Torvik: The focus of this session will be to provide some insights, based on an intercultural, interdisciplinary student project, into the promotion of Globish, an artificial language invented by Jean-Paul Nerrière, as an innovative solution for improved global communication.
- Norwegian students and spoken English in an academic setting. Paul Roberts: I will refer to some original research data comparing the spoken English of students from different countries. The spoken English of Norwegian students is characterised by comparative accuracy, idiomaticity and a sense of ownership.