EAP Task Force, Table 5
Scott Duarte, Wendy Bulkowski, Emily Thayer, Toni Maclaughlin, Rachael Lapp, Carrie Neely, Dan Murray, Patrick
- Blank Slate
Length of time in sessions would need to be longer and time spent in the EAP track would need to be longer. It is unreasonable to ask students to complete EAP V and EAP VI in 2, 8 week sessions.
Students might still repeat even if we extend the session to a semester. They might still need the second session in a level as a wake-up call for slacking off. There is discussion here: students will not necessarily learn more by repeating the same class twice. However, by extending the class and taking our time with it, they might still fail—problem to consider. Another suggestion: we shouldn’t make students who would move through the system quickly take a longer class the first time. For those who fail, they will THEN take the longer 12-16 week class. The problem with this is that the timeframe is not meeting up with UD’s schedule, meaning they might not get into the spring or fall session. Another option: if a student doesn’t want to risk taking the extra class after failing, and thus add to their study time, they can simply take the longer class first and hopefully take it only once.
Students like the integrated classes, like Anne’s American Voices, where all skills are combined. Ultimately it would be beneficial to have a longer, integrated class where we do not have to divide the grammar, reading, writing, listening and speaking into separate grades.
It would be better to do more critical thinking and fewer presentations. We talked about the classes that students would take in the University—how many actual presentations versus critical thinking, synthesizing of information, etc. is required? We asked Dan about the MBA classes and compared our own college experiences, and found that there was less need to learn presentations for classes and more of a need for more integrated skills.
So, in essence, we would like a more integrated class where all skills are studied together with a more reasonable expectation of time to complete the course work—both for the instructors and for the students. Some of us already do this, but the structure for grading (with the separate reading, writing, grammar skills, etc.) would need to change in order for true integration to occur.
By the time students reach the upper level EAP classes, students should be able to work on more academic skills and fewer language skills, but we’ve found that this can’t be the case– as we continue to work on remedial skills. While it might look like a failure on the part of lower level teachers, it isn’t. There is a huge gap between writing a paragraph and writing an essay with sources.
- Progress:
As far as progress goes, those of us who have taught EAP for several years do not necessarily see much progress—not that it is a bad thing, just that it’s the same. One area we do agree with is that they have gotten much better at taking notes. As far as what we are doing differently, we are teacher higher and challenging them more to succeed, so that by the time they take their assessments it should be easy.
****teaching “discussion” is difficult because it isn’t authentic until we can get some native speakers who aren’t afraid to jump in and challenge them. Response: as a teacher, you do it then. Not the same as a group of students, though. What to do?
Can we bring American students in to sit and challenge during class?