Sessions /
Bridging the Gap: Academic English for Pre-intermediate – Intermediate Learners #1117

These days, many students need to study academic English before they are at an advanced level. Teachers are expected to help develop academic literacy skills in students who have not yet had the chance to build a strong foundation of English proficiency. This presentation will focus on the classroom realities of effectively teaching lower-proficiency students (< CEFR B2) in time-limited, academic contexts and how teachers meet these challenges. To explore what techniques and approaches teachers use for teaching academic English in high-expectation settings, practices backed by research findings (e.g., corpus-determined academic word lists) were gauged by how much impact and acceptance they had among self-reported academic English teachers working with pre-intermediate and intermediate level learners. Quantitative data was used to see what experienced teachers do in the classroom to help learners be academic users of English while a deductive reasoning approach was used to examine why certain classroom techniques pervade.