In Sections I and II of this book, we considered general issues regarding

TASK 3 Texts and contexts for teaching
academic discourse
Here are some types of texts that have been used to teach written academic 
discourse.
• 
A report from a newspaper on the discovery of a new cancer drug
• An essay that gained a good grade, written by an undergraduate for a 
geography course
• 
A set of research article abstracts in economics
• A text on university life, specially written by the teacher to illustrate 
stance features
1 In each case, can you think of a teaching context in which this type of 
material would be suitable? Consider the type of students who could use 
it and the features it could be used to teach.
2 If you do not think the text could be used successfully, explain why it 
would be unsuitable.
Profiles of Practice
Read the following descriptions by four EAP teachers who use either top-
down or bottom-up approaches for teaching features of academic discourse 
and then respond to the questions below.

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Academic discourse 105
Karin
My students know a lot about academic discourse in theory, but they often 
don’t link it to their own practice, so I try to use their writing as the basis 
for work. After they’ve done an essay, I collect examples of the feature 
I want them to focus on, for example nominalization, and compile them 
on a handout. I choose short extracts which are either successful or unsuc-
cessful. I give this out and the students have to work in groups to discuss 
the examples and, if necessary, improve them. We then discuss their ideas in 
the whole class; students have to choose the best version and explain why it 
works well. It’s not enough for them to say, ‘It sounds better!’
Igor
All my students share the same first language, so they tend to have the same 
problems. They take a test at the beginning of the term and I use the results 
as the basis for prioritizing what to teach. Each week, we focus on one 
grammar point, for example conjunction, and I ask the students to read the 
relevant section in the grammar book. In class, I go over the explanation 
and we do the practice sentences from the book. For homework I ask them 
to write a paragraph using the point they have been practising and we have 
a test on it in class the next week. This way I can keep a good check on what 
they’ve done and we manage to cover all the material for the end-of-term 
exam. The students also know where they are and what they are supposed 
to have learned.
Jaemin
I like using MICUSP. So at the beginning of the term I show students how to 
access it and use the examples to help with their writing. They really like this 
because it’s something new and they can do it by themselves. When I want 
to teach a specific feature, say the use of first person pronouns in written 
reports, I take some relevant examples from the corpus, get them to look at 
the data in groups and come up with some generalizations. We discuss their 
ideas and they have to use what they’ve learned in writing their own report.
Pilar
I want my students to see how certain linguistic features are linked to genre 
moves and steps. Sometimes they seem to think that choosing, for example, 
a modal verb is quite arbitrary. If they can understand the reason behind 
the language choices, I think that helps them later when they write on their 
own. For example, when we focus on writing a discussion section, I revise 
the use of modal expressions. I get them to underline all the examples they 
can find in the text we’re using and we discuss why they’re used, linking 

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106 Teaching and assessing EAP
their function to the moves of the discussion. Then they have to write a 
discussion section for homework and again I get them to underline all the 
modal expressions they’ve used.
1 Have you used any of these methods?
2 If so, were they successful? Why or why not?
3 Are there any new approaches that could be useful or any that would 
not be suitable in your teaching context? Why or why not?