An EAP Program and Students’ Success at a Canadian University

Abstract

Many universities have instituted intensive English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programs to support international students. This qualitative study used interviews to gain insights into the experiences of 8 non-native

Making Sense of Resistance: How Adult Immigrant Students Pursue Agency Through Identity Work in Higher Educational Contexts

“…Even within a more traditional curriculum, instructors could create opportunities for students to foreground their other identities and their academic and professional goals, so as to increase investment and facilitate sense of belonging. ESL and developmental literacy instructors could, for example, build students' institutional knowledge and relationships, through class visits from instructors in other departments (e.g., Tovar, 2015) or assigned interviews with other college personnel about academic expectations and success strategies (e.g., Keefe & Shi, 2017). Perhaps if Labiba had been given instruction in how to make explicit connections between academic texts and her lived experience-e.g., using a text such as They Say, I Say (Graff & Birkenstein, 2018)-she would have been able to foreground her identity as survivor more effectively in her writing.…”

Performance, Interaction, and Satisfaction of Graduate EAP Students in a Face-to-Face and an Online Class: A Comparative Analysis

“…It could be argued that the direct and sustained contact the students had in the summer online course allowed for a deeper engagement, as opposed to the spring semester when students taking the face-to-face EAP class were also enrolled in as many as three courses within their graduate programs. However, as Keefe and Shi (2017) noted in their study focusing on an 8-week EAP course off ered in the summer at a Canadian university, "the process for international students to fully engage with a new university is slow and evolving" (p. 20). Thus, even though our fi ndings indicate that our face-to-face and online participants' GPAs in their fi rst year of study were comparable, more research is needed into how the intensive nature of the EAP online course off ered in the summer aff ects students' experience.…”

Increasing Students’ Willingness to Communicate: Drama-Based Approaches to Language Instruction in English for Academic Purposes Classes

“…Researchers have reported that L2 confidence positively impacts one's WTC (Gallagher, 2013;Khajavy et al, 2016;Peng & Woodrow, 2010). Communicative tasks such as working on group presentations have been found to improve EAP students' L2 confidence (Keefe & Shi, 2017); however, in order to partake in these tasks, learners must be willing to communicate. Edwards and Roger (2015) observed a reciprocal cycle of continuous improvement where a rise in L2 confidence led to an increase in WTC which led to improvements in L2 communication and vice versa.…”

“…Feelings of emotional insecurity can contribute to shyness and withdrawal from communicating in EAP speaking tasks (Fallah, 2014;Girardelli et al, 2017;Hsu, 2015) such as responding to impromptu questions or expressing opinions on novel topics. Instructors may address this insecurity and increase students' willingness to communicate (WTC) in English by providing them with preparation and planning time, and opportunities to become familiar with the topics/contexts of the communication and to interact in a nonthreatening, supportive learning environment (Chichon, 2019;Keefe & Shi, 2017). The use of drama-based approaches (DBAs) in second language (L2) instruction has been found to enhance students' oral fluency (Araki & Raphael, 2018;Galante & Thomson, 2017), comprehensibility (Galante & Thomson, 2017), confidence and motivation (Araki & Raphael, 2018), and to reduce their anxiety (Carson, 2012;Galante, 2018).…”