What Professors Actually Require: Academic Tasks for the ESL Classroom

TLDR

Academic writing surveys provide a broader view than process approaches, yet they have failed to identify the typical types of tasks, leaving EAP classrooms to design tasks largely by guesswork. This study aims to identify typical academic writing tasks by analyzing actual university handouts. Tasks were categorized into seven distinct types, which are outlined in the study. The study discusses how many tasks are overly controlled and offers strategies for applying these insights in EAP classrooms.

Abstract

Surveys of academic writing have an important role to play in providing a more complete picture of writing than the “process” approach has given us. However, previous academic writing surveys have not satisfactorily answered the question of just what kinds of academic writing tasks are typical. Without such information, creating realistic writing tasks in the English-for-academic-purposes (EAP) classroom remains largely a matter of guesswork. The present study attempts to fill this gap, taking as its data the actual handouts in university classes. The tasks were classified into seven categories, which are described. The implications of the controlled nature of many of the writing tasks are discussed, and ways to put these findings into use in the EAP classroom are suggested.