Conclusions

Abstract

Early morning, at the beginning of March. An EAP student is walking briskly towards a bus stop. She has been invited to participate in a focus group about her experience of presentation feedback. The previous summer she completed a preparatory course and she is now enrolled on a postgraduate Interior Architecture course at the same university. Across the city, an EAP tutor is making a similar journey. The student and the tutor know each other, though they have not seen each other since the previous September. The tutor, also a full-time PhD student, is writing a thesis about international students’ engagement with feedback at the university. He teaches on the summer EAP course and focuses on his research the remainder of the time. On the way to his bus stop, he buys a chocolate cake, a multipack of post-it notes (in different colours) and a thank you card. The card is for a very helpful administrator who organised a meeting room for the focus group; the cake and post-its are for the students. On one bus, heading towards the university, the student goes over a feedback sheet from her most recent assignment (a portfolio presentation), thinking back to the summer course, and making a mental note of things she learnt that helped her with her further study. On another, the tutor is going over the focus group prompts on his iPad. When the two journeys converge, the protagonists, who also figured in the vignette which opened this volume, will generate useful insights into the EAP learning and teaching process.