Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Series editors' preface
- Preface
- I ISSUES IN ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES
- II THE ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES CURRICULUM
- Introduction to Part II
- 11 The EAP curriculum: Issues, methods, and challenges
- 12 Twenty years of needs analyses: Reflections on a personal journey
- 13 The curriculum renewal process in English for academic purposes programmes
- 14 Team-teaching in EAP: Changes and adaptations in the Birmingham approach
- 15 Does the emperor have no clothes? A re-examination of grammar in content-based instruction
- 16 The specialised vocabulary of English for academic purposes
- 17 Language learning strategies and EAP proficiency: Teacher views, student views, and test results
- 18 Issues in EAP test development: What one institution and its history tell us
- 19 Teaching writing for academic purposes
- 20 Reading academic English: Carrying learners across the lexical threshold
- 21 Incorporating reading into EAP writing courses
- 22 The development of EAP oral discussion ability
- 23 Second language lecture comprehension research in naturalistic controlled conditions
- 24 Designing tasks for developing study competence and study skills in English
- 25 Promoting EAP learner autonomy in a second language university context
- References
- Index
18 - Issues in EAP test development: What one institution and its history tell us
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Series editors' preface
- Preface
- I ISSUES IN ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES
- II THE ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES CURRICULUM
- Introduction to Part II
- 11 The EAP curriculum: Issues, methods, and challenges
- 12 Twenty years of needs analyses: Reflections on a personal journey
- 13 The curriculum renewal process in English for academic purposes programmes
- 14 Team-teaching in EAP: Changes and adaptations in the Birmingham approach
- 15 Does the emperor have no clothes? A re-examination of grammar in content-based instruction
- 16 The specialised vocabulary of English for academic purposes
- 17 Language learning strategies and EAP proficiency: Teacher views, student views, and test results
- 18 Issues in EAP test development: What one institution and its history tell us
- 19 Teaching writing for academic purposes
- 20 Reading academic English: Carrying learners across the lexical threshold
- 21 Incorporating reading into EAP writing courses
- 22 The development of EAP oral discussion ability
- 23 Second language lecture comprehension research in naturalistic controlled conditions
- 24 Designing tasks for developing study competence and study skills in English
- 25 Promoting EAP learner autonomy in a second language university context
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction: contexts and mandates in EAP testing
The testing of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) is a special case of a more general phenomenon in education: assessments which answer educational mandates within given instructional contexts. A mandate is the justification for a test, and the context is the environment or setting in which a test operates. There may be (and often are) many test mandates within a given context. In a typical EAP test setting, the context is usually an institution of tertiary education at which there are a number of students for whom the institution's lingua franca is a foreign language. This triggers a number of reactions by the institution, including (typically) an array of EAP instructional courses and some sort of EAP assessment. If more than one EAP test evolves, it is likely that each addresses a different mandate. Our home institution is a case-in-point. We have three mandates for EAP assessment: assessment of written mode ability of newly-matriculated non-English speaking students (which is the focus of this paper), the assessment of speaking of the same newly-matriculated students, and additional oral testing of non-English speaking students who will serve as instructors at the university during their post-graduate career. All three mandates function within the context of our campus: each is shaped by the unique mix of political, social, curricular and logistical constraints at our university.
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- Information
- Research Perspectives on English for Academic Purposes , pp. 286 - 297Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001
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