1. Esther Daborn, Anneli Williams & Louis Harrison
EAP in the North University of Glasgow, February 8th The Language of Academic English
Esther Daborn, Anneli Williams & Louis Harrison

2. Preliminaries
Writing a 10 page Academic Grammar supplement for Collins, August 2010
How did the project come about?
Who was involved?
What was the context?

3. Our approach to EAP provision
Skills based syllabus
Focus on discourse and lexis
Limited formal grammar instruction
Grammar issues addressed ad hoc via feedback

4. The ‘problem’ Inaccurate & apparently meaningless prose
Academic word salad
Sentence grammar appears to collapse

6. Our response Surrender! – “Stop trying to sound ‘academic’!”
Hasty retreat! – Go back to basics, e.g. EFL grammar-focussed material
Build a better defensive wall – tighten up entry requirements
Soldier on

7. The real problem Limited understanding of academic grammar among:
students
teachers
course designers
EAP grammar = the ‘missing resource’?

8. TEAP competency framework 3. Academic Discourse
‘An EAP teacher will have a high level of systemic language knowledge including knowledge of discourse analysis.’
This includes:
‘Knowledge and understanding of grammar and syntax at the level of phrase, clause and sentence.’

9. Limitations
Page length
Time/resources
Style/approach
Corpus

10. Finding a model Needs analysis based on Links to Hallidayan approach
Experience,
Other books (‘Profile’, ‘Ox ford EAP’),
Other people (everyone writes a grammar !)
Links to Hallidayan approach
Used by Cobuild
‘Discourse orientation’ already found in text level EAP descriptions
Gap is at the level of sentence structure
Bring Halliday down to sentence level?

11. 3 sentence functions in institutional discourse
be clear about what you want to say
connect and sequence your message
establish your relationship with the reader appropriately.
ideational
textual
Interpersonal...

12. Publisher feedback on style
‘You’ is appropriate, interspersed with the passive and the occasional mention of ‘the writer’.
The style is too academic...needs to hold the reader’s hand a little more and avoid nominalisation (i.e., the use of lots of abstract nouns to express entire ideas that could be paraphrased in a clause)
‘Stick your neck out where possible since this is a pedagogic grammar’

13. Applying that model to sentence structures
Being clear about what you want to say: noun and verb phrases
60% NPs in academic English have a modifier
c.25% - premodifier;
c.20% postmodifier;
c.12% both (Moore 2012).

14. The Noun Phrase Nominalization:
The noun phrase (1) pre-modifying noun phrases:
The noun phrase (2) post modifying noun phrases:
Reducing the relative clause:
Non-defining relative clauses

15. The Verb Phrase The present simple The present perfect The past simple
Will
Linking verbs

16. Ordering & connecting your message
Using grammatical structures and vocabulary to signpost your intention
Referring back and referring forward
Providing connectors to hold sections together

17. The style of your message
Distancing
Reporting
Expressing degrees of certainty

18. What next? Course designers/materials writers Teachers? PS Induction
Students? WAC course

19. references Lynch & Anderson Profile: EAP grammar.
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., Finnegan, E.(1999)The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English.
Coffin, C., Donohue, J., North,S. (2009) Exploring English Grammar: from formal to functional. Routledge.
Collins COBUILD (2011) English Grammar (3rd Edition. Collins.
Guariento, W & Daborn, E (2010) Putting ‘I’ in its place: using academic texts to help students learn how to give opinions. In Developing Academic Literacy, G.M.Blue (ed). Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. pp