Setting and agenda for English for academic and professional purposes in Spain

Abstract

This paper outlines the practical implications of the use of the term English for Academic and Professional Purposes (EAPP), a position originally taken by Alcaraz (2000). The article proposes an agenda for EAPP within tertiary level education in Spain. Firstly, we propose a methodological and theoretical linguistic framework for our EAPP classes in our engineering and business degrees, which takes the form of Personalized Learning and Continuous Evaluation and links our ideas about the nature of language issues in EAPP with a rigorous theoretical framework based on Hallidayan Systemic Linguistics. Secondly, we describe a methodology for Academic English based on corpus linguistic techniques, which involves the building and processing of a corpus rapidly so as to extract lexico-grammatical information that has direct application in the classroom. Thirdly, we suggest that English for Professional Purposes consists of interpersonal activities such as being able to negotiate effectively; conduct interviews and surveys; listen and take notes during meetings and presentations; communicate effectively on the telephone as well as with video conferencing technology; carry out oral presentations etc. Finally, we conclude this paper outlining the specific skills that would be needed by a teacher of EAPP.