Abstract
In the Japanese educational context, commercially available textbooks often have a number of problems which impose limitations on their usefulness for EAP programmes. Internationally marketed books are often produced for different cultural and academic contexts, resulting in Japanese students often lacking the requisite background knowledge to use them effectively. Furthermore, the level and emphases of lessons may be ill-suited for the particular linguistic needs of Japanese learners of English. Texts published and marketed within Japan, while much more culturally accessible, are all too often similarly of limited practical use, as commercially available materials tend to aim at fluency levels far below the needs of university-level EAP programmes. Additionally, as such locally produced texts often make extensive use of Japanese language for explaining grammar and other high-level topics, this limits their usefulness for English-medium institutions or programmes where Japanese-language materials are consciously avoided in text selection. In short, due to a small market, there are pitifully few textbooks which focus on the acquisition of advanced-level academic English language skills in the domains of reading, writing or oral communication and are also relevant to the Japanese cultural and academic context. This absence of appropriate materials all too often forces EAP programmes to have to sacrifice either cultural relevancy or level of instructional content, and either choice will ultimately negatively impact students’ acquisition of academic English skills.
This chapter will describe a project, undertaken in an effort to alleviate this issue, in which the authors were involved in commissioning and editing a collection of essays of various lengths on an assortment of topics written by the faculty throughout their university. These pieces of writing were ultimately published as a textbook wherein they serve as model essays to exemplify the rhetorical modes and styles of every major writing assignment in every writing class offered at the university. In addition to their direct pedagogical purpose in teaching academic writing, the writing exemplars also serve to introduce many of the subjects and courses taught throughout the undergraduate programme. As such, they help to introduce students to key concepts underpinning future content classes, while also piquing their interest in the subjects. This chapter provides a detailed rationale for English for Academic Purposes departments to consider publishing their own textbooks, as well as outlining the publication process in detail in order to facilitate replication by other EAP providers in Japan. In addition to sharing the process of publishing in-house texts for EAP, the chapter will also report on survey data taken from both the faculty and students using the textbook in EAP advanced writing classes, to measure and give account of the relative effectiveness of the text for the goal of teaching and learning academic writing, as well as to investigate the perceived advantages and disadvantages of using such in-house publications as required texts.
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Appendices
Appendices
1.1 Appendix A: Feedback Questionnaire for Students
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1.
Which articles did you use in your writing class?
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2.
Did you read any other articles from the book? If so, please state which articles you used and why you read them.
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3.
How interesting was each article?
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(a).
Not interesting at all
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(b).
Slightly interesting
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(c).
Somewhat interesting
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(d).
Very interesting
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(a).
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4.
How useful was each article for your writing?
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(a).
Not useful at all
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(b).
Slightly useful
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(c).
Somewhat useful
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(d).
Very useful
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(a).
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5.
How easy was it to understand the contents of each article?
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(a).
Very difficult
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(b).
Difficult
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(c).
Neutral
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(d).
Easy
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(e).
Very Easy
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(a).
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6.
If you have any other comments about any of the articles, please write them below.
1.2 Appendix B: Feedback Questionnaire for Teachers
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1.
Which articles did you make use of while teaching EAP 3 writing?
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2.
Why did you use the articles that you did? (Please specify the reason for using each of the articles you used and the reason for not using each of the articles you didn’t use.)
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3.
What issues/problems did you encounter in the articles you used?
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4.
What were the advantages and disadvantages of each of the articles you used?
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5.
Did you use any other readings for this class? If so, which ones? Why did you decide to use them?
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6.
How useful was each article for teaching the rhetorical mode?
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(a).
Not useful at all
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(b).
Slightly useful
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(c).
Neutral
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(d).
Useful
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(e).
Very useful
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(a).
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7.
How comprehensible was the structure of the writing?
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(a).
Very difficult
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(b).
Difficult
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(c).
Average
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(d).
Easy
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(e).
Very easy
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(a).
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8.
How comprehensible was the topic matter for the students?
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(a).
Very difficult
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(b).
Difficult
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(c).
Average
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(d).
Easy
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(e).
Very easy
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(a).
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9.
How representative was the structure of the writing of the rhetorical mode?
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(a).
Not at all
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(b).
A little
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(c).
Moderately
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(d).
Very much
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(e).
Extremely
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(a).
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Ruegg, R., Williams, C., Araki, N. (2018). Developing EAP Materials: Transforming Learning Through In-House Textbooks. In: Ruegg, R., Williams, C. (eds) Teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in Japan. English Language Education, vol 14. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8264-1_9
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