Jenifer Spencer

Jenifer Spencer is the co-author of EAP Essentials, with Olwyn Alexander and Sue Argent. This teacher’s handbook was based on the insights gained from developing and delivering the Heriot-Watt EAP teacher development course and focused on linking classroom practice and course content with current research, particularly in the areas of discourse analysis and the use of corpora.

After graduating in Chemistry and Philosophy and teaching in the school sector, Jenifer was involved in community education provision for ESOL adult learners, teaching courses in EFL, Business English and EAP at Stevenson College Edinburgh.

In 2001, Jenifer joined Heriot-Watt University as part of a team researching and writing a corpus-based EAP distance-learning course for students preparing to study Management degrees. She was later involved in developing a parallel course to prepare students for degrees in Science and Engineering subjects. Other materials development projects have included a research skills module to prepare students for the reading approaches needed for study at masters level.

She now works as a freelance editor, writer and consultant, with a particular interest in academic genre studies and the study of academic vocabulary and was recently involved in editing the discourse analysis volume Arab News and Conflict by Samia Bazzi (John Benjamins, 2009).