Understanding and Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries: Pedagogical Insights from an Interdisciplinary Graduate-Level EAP Course Sequence

Abstract

Over the past 30 years, the popularity of interdisciplinary approaches to academic study has grown. At the same time, there is a growing consensus that English for academic purposes (EAP) courses should move away from teaching ‘general’ study skills and instead teach discipline-specific academic literacies. For instructors of graduate-level EAP courses, these seemingly contradictory trends can pose challenges for curriculum design and instruction. This chapter presents an interdisciplinary pedagogical model for a two-course EAP sequence taught at a newly formed Sino-foreign joint venture university. While both EAP courses are designed to help students develop interdisciplinary awareness, they do so in different ways depending on whether the focus is on academic oral or written communication skills. Faculty and student feedback on the course sequence is discussed, leading to several recommendations that could be easily adapted in other teaching contexts and for other student populations.