What is English for Academic Purposes (EAP)?

A provisional, rather general, working definition of EAP, which we shall enlarge upon shortly, is that ‘EAP is concerned with those communication skills in English which are required for study purposes in formal education systems’ (ETIC 1975).

Background

The first recorded use of the term ‘English for Academic Purposes’ appears to be in 1974 (Johns, T. F. 1981); by 1975 it was in more general use. The published proceedings of the joint SELMOUS-BAAL Seminar at Birmingham University in 1975 on ‘The English Language Problems of Overseas Students in Higher Education in the UK’ were entitled ‘English for Academic Purposes’ (Cowie and Heaton 1977). ‘English for Academic Study’ was used by the British Council (ETIC 1975) as the title of its collection of papers, mostly on English for Science and Technology. One of the papers was ‘Developing Study Skills in English’ (Candlin et al. 1975).

Study skills were coming increasingly to the fore in the 1970s in practice material for students of English. An early book in the USA was Study Skills for Students of English by R. C. Yorkey (1970). In the UK, J. B. Heaton wrote Studying in English: A practical approach to study skills in English as a second language (1975). In 1979, the first title in the Collins Study Skills in English series appeared (James et al. 1979).