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What do you do with students who need both language and academic skills to cope with an English course at university but don’t have a high level of English? This post will look at some options for teachers facing such questions, and offer some teaching suggestions they might try.
English for Specific Academic Purposes
Students whose first language isn’t English are best prepared for study at an English-speaking university by taking English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) courses. These are courses that have been specifically designed to help English language learners gain the academic skills and specialized vocabulary they need to begin their future careers.
Typically, general English courses lack the skills training necessary for higher education, while English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes don’t have the subject language students need to study law or IT, for example. The good news is that ESAP provides both, so students can follow lectures and talk about the issues in their field.
The snag? ESAP courses can be challenging for lower-level students. These learners simply don’t have the necessary language skills to cope with academic life, like listening to talks, or the writing and editing work that are part and parcel of ESAP courses. If only there was a way to bridge that language gap and still build the key skills and subject-specific terms they need – not all at once, but in bite-size steps.
Well, we have some good news there. Garnet’s Moving Into ESAP series does just this. With titles covering a wide range of academic disciplines, it’s directly aimed at preparing A2 to pre-intermediate learners for study at English-speaking universities.
How to teach ESAP to pre-intermediate students
There are numerous obstacles that might stand in the way of your lower-level learners making the progress they need. These include students lacking the confidence to communicate well; learning the subject terminology that will help them most; being overwhelmed by the skills they need; and, crucially, not practising those skills enough to pick them up properly.
Don’t worry – I’m here to help make molehills out of those mountains. Here are my ESAP teaching tips to help fast-track A2 to pre-intermediate students towards success when used with a series like Moving Into ESAP.
1. Develop their skills step-by-step
Students don’t become academic gurus overnight. Learning skills like taking good lecture notes or describing graphs well takes time. So, don’t present them with everything all at once or they will suffer from overload, which could demotivate them and, as such, hamper their language development.
That’s why Moving Into ESAP cleverly breaks down skills into manageable bites – or sub-skills – that students can handle more easily. Tackling these one at a time lets students make incremental improvements.
Let’s take, for example, lecture listening skills in Moving Into Law. Students first work on understanding slides in law lectures, then recognizing points and signposts in presentations, and later on noticing examples and definitions in longer talks about the legal system, over a series of units. In this graded approach to skills learning, law students are not asked to run before they can walk, but instead they take small and steady steps towards reaching their goals. Students of other disciplines follow a similar path in other Moving Into course books, and by the end of their courses, they put the jigsaw pieces together so that they can shine in any academic setting.
2. Build student confidence
How do these lower-level students become confident communicators? They need the time and space to practise their communication skills in engaging speaking activities and, of course, have ample opportunities to do so. They need communicative activities that are meaningful and reflect real-life speaking and listening in professional and academic life.
In Moving Into Mechanical Engineering, students learn how to introduce an engineering talk or presentation by first listening to good models, and when they are comfortable with the technical language, they prepare their own. Then when they are ready, they deliver their engineering talk introductions in small groups, or to the class if they’re up to it. Similarly, other titles in the Moving Into series help students build their presentation skills in other disciplines using subject-specific terms.
Activities like these are structured to allow constructive feedback from peers that isn’t intimidating, and so builds their confidence at each step. And as their self-belief grows, just watch their communication skills blossom.
3. Grammar with purpose
What grammar do you prioritize when time is short and students require specific academic skills? After all, it’s impossible to cover everything. A good solution is to focus on the language patterns that match the skills they need, for example, using polite forms in formal talks, or adding noun phrases to their report writing. Of course, pre-intermediate language learners still need everything else to further their English.
Moving Into Science covers both; including common structures for general language development and useful grammar for scientific communication. For example, in one unit, students develop their skills for listening to science lectures by noticing how passive forms are used to describe scientific processes, and in another they get to grips with linking words to describe reasons and results that are common in scientific talks, papers and articles.
This focus on grammar with a purpose in specific subjects really helps students cope with the demands of their academic field. What’s also great is that learning isn’t limited to the classroom, as digital workbooks (more on that later) allow extended grammar practice at home, or on the go, so they can truly master the language they need.
4. Recycle & revisit to reinforce learning
At this early stage of the students’ English journey, language recycling is vital. Allowing them to see and use high-frequency words repeatedly leads to better understanding and long-term acquisition. Well-spaced activities targeting a structure or specialized set of words over several lessons mean your students are more likely to ‘get it’. That could be through simple exercises or more involved communicative activities, developing fluency in the language they need.
A good example is the healthcare careers focus in Moving Into Healthcare & Nursing. Students first look at different job types, and then share their opinions and experiences of these roles. In later lessons, they revisit the topic by examining the skills each job needs, and later discussing authentic worker profiles. Each visit to a particular topic deepens the students’ understanding and reinforces their learning.
With Moving Into, they also get to personalize the target language through project work at the end of every unit – always a class favourite! And if that weren’t enough, they can choose to do extended practice using the fun activities offered in the digital workbook. This any time-anywhere resource is a real game changer.
5. Real topics are more meaningful
What motivates students who know where they are going in life? The answer is simple: courses that dive into the subjects and issues they will face every day in their future careers. So, it’s important that their English course reflects the reality of what they are going to do.
Garnet’s Moving Into Tourism & Hospitality does exactly that by looking in-depth at topics like travel, customer service and types of tourism, to name but a few. Just watch how students light up at authentic content because it’s relatable and relevant to their lives.
Each unit in the Moving Into series lets students articulate their ideas and experiences on topics that are pertinent to them. But be warned, they’re hard to stop once they start talking!
What’s next?
If you are preparing A2 to pre-intermediate learners for university, you are going to need some excellent ESAP materials. Ones that will help your students build their skills and confidence, present meaningful language with real purpose, and give students the chance to communicate in relevant contexts.
So, why not have a look at Garnet Education’s Moving Into ESAP series online now, and let your students take the next steps towards achieving their dream career in English?