A Study of the Role of English Language for General, Specific and Academic Purposes

The EAP (English for Academic Purposes) students are not passive recipients to absorb subject-specific materials through exposure to merely reading skill. The dominant misleading conception surrounding the EAP courses is that exposing learners to field-specific texts creates a shortcut which consequently contributes to enhancing their language knowledge. However, discipline-specific reading materials are like one-way street which hardly develop the learners’ grammatical and communicative competence. The EAP learners need more general text types, tasks, activities and exercises in order to learn language and use it. This article argues that the EAP students can master language through the common-core materials and the integration of the four language skills. The data for the study were collected through a qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews, class observations and field notes. Participants included 60 students and 16 language teachers. The results were analyzed based on the five curriculum structures presented by Brown (1995: 20): objectives, needs analysis, teaching, curriculum and test. This paper endeavors to shed some fresh light on the following topics: the role of English for General Purposes (EGP), EAP goal and syllabus, ESP, content-based instruction (CBI), common core hypothesis, needs analysis, EAP materials, and EAP teaching and learning activities. This paper can have significant implications for ESP and EAP teachers, graduate students, syllabus designers, materials developers, and researchers in the field of ESP.