English for academic purposes

Harwood, N. and Petrić, Bojana (2023) English for academic purposes. In: Wei, L. and Hua, Zhu and Simpson, J. (eds.) Handbook of Applied Linguistics 2nd Edition. Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics. London, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9780367536220.

Abstract

English for academic purposes (EAP) ‘is usually defined as teaching English with the aim of assisting learners’ study or research in that language’ but is also a ‘theoretically grounded and research informed enterprise’ (Hyland 2006: 1). This chapter provides an overview of EAP as a dynamic interdisciplinary field of applied linguistics research. The emergence of EAP in the 1960s and its foundations are first outlined, which is followed by a discussion of the major themes explored within EAP research, ranging from the well-established topics, such as approaches to needs analysis and genre analysis, to more recent ones, such as lexical bundles, English for research publication purposes (ERPP), and social justice in EAP. The chapter then moves on to outline the diversity of research methods commonly employed in current EAP research, including corpus-based approaches, genre analysis, interview-based studies, talk-around-text and discourse-based interviews, and ethnographically oriented studies. Pedagogical applications of EAP research are also discussed in areas such as materials development, EAP teacher training, and language assessment, and practical recommendations are made for institutions, EAP programme directors, teacher trainers, and practitioners

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