The move from school to college or university can be a traumatic one – often a new city or even a new country – and it is one that many learners go through every year. Of course, for teachers too the challenge is a huge one. The transition from teaching EFL at secondary level to EAP is not simply a change of level, it is a totally different environment and way of learning. The teacher-centred classroom is left behind and student-centred learning is the norm. As Roy Edwards stresses, in his Keynote article, while there is a need to focus on specialist language skills, the real goals of EAP are focused much more on learning strategies and study skills.
Of course, adapting to new skills isn’t restricted to the move into EAP. It is something which, increasingly rapidly these days, is affecting every classroom, no matter where it is, no matter what the age and level of the learners. I am thinking of technology (we used to call it “new Technology”). Almost gone are the days when mobile phones were forbidden in the classroom and, as Nicky Hockly explains in her article, perhaps the days of BYOD (read on!) are almost here. Students are increasingly bringing their own technology (mobile phones, laptops, tablets) into class so schools no longer need to be put off using technology by the cost of having rooms full of computers that they have to buy and maintain. But work using the technology still has to be planned and carried out. Ania Kamont introduces some more websites for presenting fresh, authentic material and practising language in a collaborative way, Lesley Lanir suggests ways to use the increasingly popular ebook for more than reading, Olga Kozar describes the benefits of videoconferencing and Skype, while Michael Carrier has some suggestions to help schools build their own apps (and maybe even sell them).
Some things, of course, do not change – tests and exams, for example. Charles Januzzi gives us some useful ideas for vocabulary preparation in those classes leading up to a test, and Simon Mumford has some very practical ways to spend your time while you are invigilating exams, making sure that nobody cheats – ideas that you can use in the classroom later.
But what do your students think of all this? How do they see learning a foreign language? Bill Littlewood describes an activity he carried out with his learners, using their knowledge of metaphor to describe how they saw the process of language learning, with some surprising results.
In our Reviews section in this issue, our reviewers cover a wide range of areas. In A Book I’ve Used, Terry Prosser looks at a new course for FCE students which he says “provides an array of learning strategies and fast tracks students to the exam”, and Javad Gholami and Masoumeh Samadi Osalu review a course for IELTS. Jonathan Marks gives us his very trenchant review of a book on spoken grammar, while Terri Edwards shares her views on a new Reading course, Gordon Dobson delves into Writing skills, Le Van Canh sees how you can make the young learner’s classroom more creative and Neil McBeath explores the world of the oil and gas industries. We have only one book in Background Books this time and Roger Barnard sings the praises of a book on the complex detail of classroom discourse. Finally, we have A Book I Like and Simon Andrewes shows his obvious delight at the publication of a new book on English as a Lingua Franca.
If you have an article that you would like us to publish, do get in touch.
