Thursday, March 26, 2009

Journal 2

EAP students every week gain knowledge about their subjects, in fact, week by week they demonstrate their appetite for learning in an enthusiastic way.

In terms of discovering the points of view in academic writing, the students made great improvement. Apparently, when they write an academic essay, they feel confident now and more at the end of the course, in spite of some differences in academic culture in comparison with the way of thinking and approach between overseas and Australia.

Students probably have got an idea of how to take notes, do discussion and some strategies in reading passages such as: scanning, skimming, looking for key words and overview. Then they learnt more appropriate vocabulary, while noticing structures and features in academic writing. For instance, most academic writing is based on deductive argument rather than inductive. They also learnt how to borrow books from the library, its rules and also the types of text books which can benefit them for doing assignments. Moreover they obtained more skills in the computer class which can be handy for writing, reading and listening. After that more on computers` mechanism, theory and configuration.

Finally, most students in EAP have different attitudes in terms of studying and future plans. On the contrary, the process of learning English language takes longer; the best way to learn English is to do practice and to have conversations between students themselves. As a result all items and subjects in this course are interacted and integrated to each other in order to support and develop students’ abilities.

Journal 1

EAP is one of the most important courses which is able to help students to go to university and improve their English proficiency especially writing skills. In my case the long term goal is to achieve bachelor’s degree in Architecture and become an architect in Australia.

In my opinion, what I learnt last week was very useful and helpful. Firstly, the lessons addressed the differences between academic and non-academic writing and context in detail; also it gave us more chance to speak and give opinions on the subject matters. Secondly, it is clear that the practice of essay writing in class is an outstanding idea to assist students to be more familiar and faster in writing and other skills. Besides, there are several techniques that were described such as: planning, brainstorm and logical order.

On the other hand, I have done an IELTS preparation course last semester which is different from EAP in terms of time management and techniques for the test. Another point is IELTS can be similar with that in principles and goals.

Finally, it would be better if there are schedules and agendas for the whole week till the final day which is on 26 June 2009, the time table should contain the assessment date, theme and topics.

Thursday, March 19, 2009