Exploring the Instruction of Academic Functional Phrases in an EAP Pre-Sessional Course

Abstract

Despite being admitted into highly competitive English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) programs, international students often find themselves lacking communicative efficiency in such contexts. Language-related challenges appear to be the foremost barriers to successfully implementing EMI. Considering this situation, teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP) needs to play a crucial role in providing students with the necessary targeted language support. Nevertheless, research into EAP tutor’s instruction of functional phrase use remains rare, particularly when it comes to incorporating an English as a lingua franca in academic settings (ELFA) awareness into functional phrase teaching. To address this gap, this research adopted two qualitative techniques to gain an in-depth insight into the pedagogical practices that EAP pre-sessional tutors implemented to teach functional phrases to improve the effectiveness of academic intercultural communication. Initially, I observed and recorded 24 hours of spoken English sessions of an EAP pre-sessional course run by a UK university, King’s College London. Special attention was paid to how pre-sessional tutors developed pedagogical practices to consolidate students’ pragmatic use of functional phrases for achieving communicative effectiveness. Classroom observation was followed up by retrospective interviews with the observed four pre-sessional tutors. The research results unveiled a preference among pre-sessional tutors for utilizing the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) approach in teaching functional phrases. Presessional tutors also face significant challenges in integrating ELFA pragmatic awareness into their EAP pedagogical approaches when it comes to teaching functional phrases.

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