Different disciplines to some extent communicate in different ways, so specialists have tried to accommodate that academic english by getting students to think about how things are done specifically in their discipline

Different disciplines to some extent communicate in different ways, so specialists have tried to accommodate that academic english by getting students to think about how things are done specifically in their discipline. So a very simple example, different disciplines have different attitudes to the use of “I” in their writing. Some subject areas like education tend to allow the use of “I”, whereas other subjects like engineering tend to avoid the use of “I”. EAP courses usually try to get students to find out about what happens in their own studying discipline is very much feature of the course.


If you think about skills for EAP, I suppose we could say that the most important skill is writing because that is where most of the assessment is of students’ work. But obviously a lot of other skills go into being able to write successfully: reading, listening and interacting with tutors and fellow students as well. Most of the information we write about is we gather from reading so reading skills like skimming, scanning, guessing the meaning of unknown words and so on are important skills. Lectures too, we gather information from lectures that feeds into our writing so, having skills for understanding lectures is important.


The differences of Academic English and General English are based on these followings: formality, language choice, topic and audience. In formality, Academic English is usually formal than General English, students usually approach to their lecturers with keeping professional way of attitudes. In language choice, technical and specific words are used in academic English, while in General English daily conversation phrases are used. In terms of topic, Academic English focuses on areas of subject studying; in General English everyday conversation is preferred. In an audience matter, lecturers, specific subject experts and students are target audience in an Academic English, while in General English audiences are consisted of family members and friends.
I think only focusing on teaching key terminologies of one particular area, you can help your students to learn Academic English. Other methods, I would say note taking, skimming and scanning, guessing the words meanings may help you to teach AE n your classes.
There is difference obviously in frequency between Academic English and General English, if we take words like procedure, process and system, they occur much more frequently in academic language than in general language and that becomes the focus of academic language because they are used frequently and therefore frequency is important. If we look at it another way though we could say that Academic English is quite different from General English because there are certain contexts, texts that are special to academic communication so lectures, seminars occur in academic life but not so much outside. Texts as well essays, dissertations occur in an academic context but not in general context so it is the features of those contexts, lectures, seminars and the texts like essays, dissertations that become the material for teaching English for academic purposes.

Academic English mostly look at reading, speaking, writing, listening and academic culture, working in an academic environment, whereas a lot of other previous material has tended to focus on skill reading or writing. Also, authenticity of the material is really important, so in academic English there are more authentic materials, texts and I think it is required. Because when students are going into their academic programs and they are not going to be encountering material which has been filtered for vocabulary. They are going to get the full material that native speakers have to read, so to help them to prepare for that moment, academic English tries to focus on authentic material. Current thinking in research and reflecting this current thinking does matter in academic English and this is of the main distinguishing features of academic English from general English. Areas, like genre analysis and phraseology, helps students sorting out of the academic socialization for students to become members of an academic community. 

Totally agree with you, AE is mainly used for academic spheres or contexts, whereas GE is used in daily situations. But both of them are connected with each other as one requires the other one. You cannot build up your AE without GE, as it helps you to get into the AE sphere, the same happens in GE, in order to improve your GE, you need to refer to AE.