EAP2014 Potsdam, Berlin

Last weekend, I had a great trip to Berlin to attend a one-day EAP conference at the University of Potsdam.  I had a really interesting day, chatting to lots of colleagues teaching in the university sector in Germany and learning more about what EAP entails in their context. It’s always fascinating to get different perspectives and I think I took two main points away from the day about EAP in Germany:

-  a lot of EAP teaching is to single-discipline groups (ESAP) , with an expectation that it will use texts/materials from that discipline (a point I’ll come back to below)

- German students have a tendency to overcomplicate their academic writing, trying to produce structures which would be considered ‘elegant’ in German academic style but which just don’t transfer into English. An interesting angle for the focus of language work in this context.

I was there to lead a workshop on the topic of “Writing your own: How to create effective EAP materials”, with ideas taken from my training module for ELT Teacher 2 Writer (How to Write EAP Materials). We started off by looking at a few general ideas and principles to bear in mind when writing your own EAP materials, especially around thinking carefully about your audience (both students and teachers) and your aims.

Then participants worked in groups to come up with ideas to exploit a short text (an abstract from an academic article).  I wasn’t quite sure how it’d go, but everyone did an admirable job of plunging straight into an academic text on a Saturday morning and came up with lots of good ideas and discussion.

For me, one of the most interesting things was that a lot of the groups were very focused on the topic of the text. As an EAP writer, especially writing for mixed-discipline groups, although I do think about the topic of the texts I choose, I’m generally much more focused on the features of academic writing it illustrates (organization, style, language, academic conventions, etc.) – as they relate to my aims for the lesson.  Many of the teachers in the workshop started from the perspective of how the topic of the text would be relevant (or not) to their students and what discussion it might generate. This seemed to link to many of the comments made about teaching single-discipline groups and how difficult it was to work with law/engineering, etc. texts which they (as English teachers) found difficult to understand. I wonder whether this points to lessons dominated by content (revolving around comprehension questions and discussion) rather than general features of English in an academic context? Food for thought perhaps?

We finished off with a look at a few tips and tools to help with writing your own materials and in particular, to help in selecting language to focus on, such as AWL highlighters and one of my favourites tools, the advanced search facilities available on the CD versions of learner’s dictionaries.

I certainly enjoyed the session and found it very interesting to see which points produced the most discussion and comments both during the workshop and in chatting to people afterwards. Thanks so much to everyone who came along and contributed! It’s certainly a topic I’d really like to do more workshops on … now I just have to find a way of financing some more!

Going solo

Having barely recovered from IATEFL, I’m now preparing my next conference presentation. This time it’s a workshop at an EAP conference at the University of Potsdam on 10 May.

Almost all the conference presentations I’ve given before have been on behalf of publishers, but this time, I’m going solo. The workshop is based on the work I did for How to Write EAP Materials, but as that’s hardly a ‘commercial’ project, it doesn’t really count as a publisher’s product plug.

It seems a bit odd as someone who makes a living out of writing materials for publication to be talking to teachers about how to write their own stuff. But I know that however good published materials are, there are always going to be gaps that need filling. Either the students need something that's not in the book - extra practice or a specific skill/area of language that's not covered - or the teaching context demands something a bit different - specific institutional requirements or just the style and preferences of individual teachers. And if teachers are inevitably going to write materials, be it the odd handout for their own class or a whole course for their institution, then surely there should be some professional development available to point them in the right direction and to help them avoid some of the potential pitfalls. So I'm seeing this as complementary to my other work rather than in competition.

Preparing for the workshop – putting together my slides and a handout – has been a strangely liberating experience. There’s no publisher's PowerPoint template to use, no house style to stick to, nothing’s off-limits. I’ve got one slide which shows a whole range of EAP materials by different publishers, which feels quite wonderfully rebellious!

I did spend more than usual agonizing over what background to use for my slides. I kind of had a design in my head, but couldn’t find anything that quite matched, then realized I was too busy to keep farting around looking, so just plumped for a simple one that appealed. It was only later that I noticed the colour scheme matched the new sofa we’ve just bought!

The organizers have very kindly given me slot for a 90-minute workshop, so I’m planning a bit of proper audience participation, which is not really my usual style either. It should be fun, but I’m just hoping I’ve got the amount of material and timings right  … and that the audience are up for a bit of workshopping.

Anyway, I think I’m more-or-less ready, just got to get my handouts printed and copied, then decide what outfit to pack … Looking forward to seeing everyone in Berlin!

PS I’ll post my slides and handout here afterwards.