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The first term at university:implications forEA P

Stephen Evans and Bruce Morrison

This article examines the findings of a longitudinal study of the learning and use ofEnglish at an English-medium university in Hong Kong. The aim of theinvestigation was to trackthe learning experiences of a group of 28 undergraduates

and to identify the challenges they faced when studying for their degrees ina secondlanguage. This article explores thelanguage-related problems the studentsencountered in the process of adapting to an English-medium learningenvironment during the crucial first term. The data from the interview-based longitudinal study are supplemented by the findings of a large-scalequestionnaire survey of freshmenat thesame university. The evidence suggests thatthe students principalsources of difficulty were comprehending and using specialistvocabulary, understanding their professors academic requirements,and processingand producing key disciplinary genres. The article concludes by discussingthe implications of the studys findings forEA Pcourse and materials design.

Introduction A major consequence of the expansion, internationalization, andmarketization of higher education in the past two decades has beena significant increase in the number ofESL and EFL students undertakingdegree programmes through the medium of English. Such students fallinto four main categories:

1 International students who possess the requisite means to pursue theirstudies in the English-speaking countries of North America, the BritishIsles, and Australasia (Healey 2008).

2 Undergraduates in post-colonial societies in Africa and Asia, where the

English-medium university is often the most enduring institutionallegacy of British or American rule (Altbach 2004).

To these traditionally important categories may be added two more recentgroups, which reflect emerging global trends in higher education:

3 Transnational students who undertake degrees awarded by universitiesin the major Anglophone countries through distance learning, localfranchises, or overseas branch campuses, such as those operated byNottingham University in China and Malaysia (Graddol 2006).

4 Students who take individual subjects or entire programmes in Englishin non-Anglophone territories such as Norway (Ljosland 2007) and

ELT Journal; doi:10.1093/elt/ccq072 1 of 11 The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.

ELT Journal Advance Access published November 25, 2010

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Germany (Erling and Hilgendorf 2006), where the national language isnormally the main medium of instruction and assessment.

In the case of this final category, the growth of English-medium teaching isan inevitable (if often unintended) consequence of policies encouraginggreater student mobility, such as the Bologna Process in Europe (Coleman2006), but, more generally, stems from the current pre-eminence ofEnglish in academic research and publication, particularly in the fields ofscience and technology.

While the difficulties associated with the transition to English-mediumuniversity education vary according to a range of contextual and personalfactors, the fact remains that studying in a second language representsa considerable challenge for many undergraduates worldwide. In responseto these challenges, many institutions offer various kinds of pre- and in-sessional courses in EAP to enable students to adapt to the language-relateddemands of university studies such as listening to lectures, reading journalarticles, and writing term papers. The expansion ofEAP provision in recent

yearshasbeen accompanied by an upsurge in research into a rangeof issuesrelating to the teaching and learning of English at university, particularly inthe United States, where the principal focus has been on academic writing.

An important recent contribution in this area is Lekis (2007) longitudinalinvestigation of the writing experiences of four international students at anAmerican university. Lekis richly detailed study, which was conducted inthe 1990s, is significant because it represents an attempt to gain a profoundunderstanding of the problems that confront ESL students in the process ofadapting to an English-medium learning environment. Although Lekisresearch provides writing teachers with a wealth of valuable insights to

inform their practice, as with any case study, the applicability of itsfindingsto other contexts is limited by the modest number andquestionablerepresentativeness of its participants, and by its relative neglect ofother facets of academic communicative competence, such as reading,listening, and speaking skills, which are crucial to a students smoothtransition to and successful progression through an English-mediumdegree programme.

The study reported in this article builds on and extends Lekis pioneeringlongitudinal research in the area of academic literacy. In particular, it seeksto overcome some of the limitations of scope and scale noted above by

tracking a larger and more representative group of participants and byoffering a broader perspective on the student experience of English-medium higher education. Whereas Lekis study provides insights into theexperiencesof international students in an English-dominantacademicandsocietal environment, the study described below, which was conducted inHong Kong, illuminates our understanding of the student experience inpost-colonial societies, where a disjunction often exists between thelanguage of the home and the medium of the classroom. In the Hong Konguniversity context, the dominant language of out-of-class communication isCantonese, but since the official medium of instruction is English, students

are expected to use their second language when speaking in seminars andwriting assignments. This article explores the language-related problemsencountered by the participants during the crucial first term at university

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and discusses the implications of the findings for the design ofEAP coursesand materials.

The study The findings presented below were derived from two sources:

n an interview-based longitudinal study of the experiences of 28undergraduates at Hong Kong Polytechnic University

n a questionnaire survey completed by 3,009 first-year students.

The survey was designed to form a broad-brush picture of the challengesposed by the transition to English-medium university studies, whereas thelongitudinal study sought to paint portraits in miniature of the studentexperience. The questionnaire elicited information about studentsperceived strengthsandweaknesses in academicwriting,reading,listening,and speaking. The Findings section below presents the participantsperceptions of the three most problematic aspects of each area.

Participants The longitudinal study involved tracking a representative sample of students

during their three years at theUniversity throughsemi-structuredinterviewslasting 2040 minutes conducted towards the end of each term. A sizeablesample of participants was formed in order to capture the experiences ofstudents from a range of disciplinary and social backgrounds, to allow forthe attrition in numbers that would inevitably occur over six rounds ofinterviews and to ensure that the generalizability of the findings would notbe undermined by the idiosyncrasies of one or two students, as may happenin case studies involvingonly a handful of participants. The 28 studentswhoembarked on the journey were from ten disciplines and were broadlyrepresentative of Hong Kong tertiary students in that they were mainlymother-tongue speakers of Cantonese and had entered the University aftercompleting a seven-year course of studies in English-medium secondaryschools; i.e. schools where the medium of teaching materials, assessment,and classroom instruction in content subjects is English. Seven of theparticipants were from Chinese-medium schools in Hong Kong (four),China (two), and Malaysia (one). The written medium in these schools isChinese, while the spoken medium is either Cantonese (Hong Kong) orMandarin (China, Malaysia). These participantsthus entered the Universitywithout any experience of studying content subjects in English, theirknowledge of English having been acquired mainly in language classes.

Researchmethodology

Ten of the participants completed all six rounds of the study, althoughoverall the attrition rate was surprisingly low, with 27 students participatingin the final, retrospective interview prior to graduation. The main reasonwhy some of the students had to miss one or two rounds is that they wereengaged in exchange programmes overseas. Each round focused ona particular aspect of the learning and use of English at university. The firstinterview, upon which this article draws, explored the participantsexperiences during their first two months at university; subsequent roundsexamined affective issues, oral communication in English, assignmentwriting processes, out-of-class English use and reflections on the universityexperience. A total of 137 audio-recorded interviews were conducted,yielding around 70 hours of material.

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The interviews were conducted in English by the authors using pre-agreedprotocols outlining the topics to be discussed. The recordings of theinterviews were transcribed for detailed analysis, which initially involveda close reading of the transcripts to identify, classify, and code recurringthemes and sub-themes. For example, a major general theme of the firstround was vocabulary knowledge, an important sub-theme of which wastechnical vocabulary. The software NVivo was subsequently used to

facilitate the cross-referencing of the participants responses and thusenable generalizations to be made from the data. For example, by inputtingkeywords relating to technical vocabulary, which were derived from themanual analysis, the authors were able to quantify and synthesize theparticipants observations about their difficulties in this area.

Findings This section briefly reports the results of the questionnaire survey and thendiscusses thekey issues that emerged from thecomputer-basedand manualanalyses of the interview transcripts. To coherewith thesurveyresults, theseissues are presented under the headings Writing, Reading, Listening, and

Speaking.

Questionnaire survey The questionnaire asked the participants to indicate the degree of difficultythey experienced with key aspects of the four language skills on a scaleranging from 1 (very difficult) to 5 (very easy). The questionnaire contained45 microskills, 15 relating to writing and 10 each to reading, listening, andspeaking. Figure 1 presents the participants perceptions of the three mostdifficult aspects of each skill. In keeping with EAP research conducted inother contexts (Berman and Cheng 2001), the respondents found writing to

2.63

2.64

2.64

2.48

2.59

2.83

2.41

2.68

2.74

2.98

3.04

3.06

2 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3 3.2

Using appropriate style

Linking sentences smoothly

Using grammar correctly

Understanding specialist vocabulary

Working out meaning of difficult words

Reading quickly to find information

Speaking accurately (grammar)

Communicating ideas fluently

Speaking clearly (pronunciation)

Understanding key vocabulary

Taking brief, clear notes

Following a discussiongninetsiL

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figure 1

Most difficult aspects ofwriting, reading,speaking, and listening.Scale: 1 very difficult,5 very easy




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be the most problematic language skill, with academic style, cohesion, andgrammar identified as the three most difficult aspects. Another area ofconcern, which also echoes previous research (Leki and Carson 1994),istherespondents apparent lack of a rich vocabulary. This understandabledeficiency evidently impedes their comprehension of lectures and set textsand may also explain their lack of confidence in their writing style, whichthey perhaps judge to be somewhat unsophisticated. Listening was

perceived to be the least challenging skill, although the means for the tenlistening microskills, which range from 2.98 to 3.23, are hardly indicative ofsupreme confidence.

Survey findings of the kind presented in Figure 1 can be valuable for EAPpractitioners in that they provide an empirically grounded basis forcurriculum and materials design (Nation and Macalister 2010). However,determining course content solely on the basis of conveniently itemizedsurvey results, even those derived from a large and representative sample, isproblematic for two main reasons. First, without other types of data, it isdifficult to understand the constellation of factors that underlie the needs,

wants, or lacks revealed by a survey, which is essential if students andteachers are to devise effective coping strategies. Second, one-off surveys areunable to capture and illuminate the challenging process of disciplinarysocialization that is central to thestudent experience in the academy (Chengand Fox 2008). These limitations underline the value of studies, such as theone reported below, which seek to track students acculturation intodisciplinary norms and practices.

Writing In line with the survey results, the interviews indicated that academic

writing was the participants principal source of difficulty. The computer-based analysis of the transcripts revealed 70 references to writing-relatedissues, 59 of which express various kinds of frustration. A further analysisrevealed that much of this frustration was symptomatic of the studentsfaltering first steps in the process of induction into a new culture. This wasreflected in their

n uncertainty over their professors requirements and expectations inwritten assignments,

n unfamiliarity with disciplinary genres and referencing conventions,n inexperience in planning and writing extended texts requiring the

synthesis of information and ideas from multiple sources,n apparent inability to communicate their understanding of the subject

matter in stylistically appropriate academic prose.

Many of the participants acknowledged that their writing lackedsophistication, which, as the following extract indicates, they attributed inpart to their limited vocabulary knowledge.

We can only use some simple word to express ourselves rather than usea large range of words with the similar meanings to express ourselves.(Management and Marketing student)

Another reason for their somewhat monochrome writing style was theirlimited repertoire of sentence patterns.




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That is one of the problem, vocabularies, and the other problem is thesentence pattern. I dont have much variety so it would be, Ill say mywriting is a little bit dull you know . . . (Applied Biology and ChemicalTechnology student)

While the participants were concerned that the lexical and syntacticsimplicity of their writing might impede their academic development, thereis evidence in the literature (Zhu 2004; Leki 2007) and in the present studythat linguistic features may not be paramount in their professorsassessment of written assignments.

. . . for those subjects, for example Construction Technology and LandDevelopment, that we need to answer the essay or hand in report but thenthe English proficiency is not really that important. Just that you canexplain what is happening because they will not look at your grammar.(Building Surveying student)

Thus, while the need to enrich undergraduates vocabulary and grammar isa recurring theme in EAP research (Hinkel 2003) and a key aim of

university English teachers, it would appear that professors attach moreimportance to content than grammatical accuracy and stylistic refinementwhen assessing written work.

Reading As the questionnaire compartmentalized the four skills, it failed to capturethe interdependence of reading, writing, listening, and speaking inuniversity studies and therefore to illuminate the processes by whichwritten and spoken discourses such as reports and presentations areproduced. One of the advantages of the case-study approach is that it enablesresearchers to explore these connections and processes. Reading is crucial

in the process of disciplinary socialization as it is the principal means bywhich an undergraduate acquires the academic knowledge that issubsequently consolidated and represented in written assignments.

As might be expected, the case-study participants experienced considerabledifficulties in adapting to the demands of university-level reading. Many ofthese problems, as indicated by the computer-based analysis, stemmedfrom their lack of a rich technical vocabulary, which prevented them fromquickly and fully comprehending unfamiliar disciplinary genres.

. . . in university they want to use some more professional word. So this

professional word prevent us to learn, to read quickly and so sometimewe cannot catch in the lesson. (Building Surveying student)

A close analysis of the interview data revealed that participants fromChinese-medium schools found the transition particularly testing as theirknowledge of general academic vocabulary (Coxhead 2000) was alsoincomplete, whereas those from English-medium backgrounds alreadypossessed an adequate understanding of such vocabulary. These findingsthus cast doubt on the value of one-size-fits-all generic EAP courses since

1 students receptive and productive vocabularies are likely to varyaccording to their medium-of-instruction backgrounds and

2 their main challenge inthe first term (andbeyond) is to copewith a delugeof unfamiliar subject-specific vocabulary (cf. Hyland and Tse 2007).




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The participants other major source of difficulty during the transitionalperiod was in adjusting to the new demands that university placed on theirresearch and reading skills. Whereas their reading at school was narrowlycircumscribed, being confined in many cases to a single textbook andteacher-produced notes, at university they were not only required to usea much wider range of academic sources, including novel genres such asresearch articles and monographs, but were also expected to access these

texts themselves.The most difficult part is that in secondary school we just, we just read thenotes the teachers [give] to us but in university we always have to finddifferent resources from the library and from the first experiencesometimes the book is very very thick. (Accounting and Finance student)

As the following extract indicates, processing such complex and dense textscan be extremely challenging and time consuming.

. . . when you read you have to really digest because it is not simpleEnglish. Yes they still use some simple English but some academic

writing, they use the word is more formal words so you have to digest thatand also how they express the ideas and the concepts so you have to putmuch effort to understand the ideas. So you have to put much effort andtime compare to past. (Occupational Therapy student)

Listening Like the survey respondents, the case-study participants found listening tobe the least problematic language skill, with only around a half of the 47references to listening in the data indicating some form of frustration. As inthe survey, this frustration stemmed mainly from their inability tounderstand key technical vocabulary, a problem their professors were oftenoblivious to and one that sometimes undermined the value of an entirelecture or seminar because puzzlement over terminology meant that theylost the thread of the explanation or discussion.

In the lecture, I think since we have above maybe sixty or eighty of ussitting together, sometimes the professor will not aware that sometimeswe cannot catch up with that, yes. And she or he still keep on speak and Ithinksometimesthereissometechnicalword,yes,wemaybenotitshardfor us, we dont know, we may not raise up our hand and ask her sosometimes we may not understand what she or he say. (Language andCommunication student)

So for example, in Accountancy, some of the phrases that I never heardbefore then he use this phrases. I have to guess it, if the lecturer withoutany explanations of that word, I have to waste a lot of time guessing andmiss another content of the lecture . . . (Accounting and Finance student)

Apart from their difficulties with specialist vocabulary, students fromEnglish-medium schools adapted reasonably smoothly to the demands ofuniversity-level listening because they had already become attuned tolistening to teachers imparting academic knowledge in English. In contrast,participants from Chinese-medium backgrounds apparently floundered inthe first few weeks because they were unaccustomed to listening to longstretches of academic discourse in English and lacked the requisite general




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and technical vocabulary to process this input. Their disorientation wascompounded if their professors

1 failed to upload notes and associated PowerPoint files on the Universityslearning management system beforehand;

2 delivered their lectures too quickly and without pausing at regularintervals to summarize key points; and

3 neglected to make the purpose and structure of the lecture explicit at theoutset and to signal transitions clearly as they progressed.

Fortunately, this sense of bewilderment gradually diminished over thecourse of the first term, and by the time of the first interview, the Chinese-medium participants felt that they were increasingly coming to terms withEnglish-medium lectures.

Speaking Although students learning is judged primarily through their performancein written assignments, in many English-medium contexts around theworld they are also required to demonstrate their disciplinary knowledge

and understanding in seminars, tutorials, and presentations. The need todevelop effective oral communication skills is particularly important forinternational students in Anglophone territories and students inmultilingual, post-colonial states such as Singapore and India whereEnglish functions both as a campus lingua franca and classroom medium.The need for spoken English is less pronounced in Hong Kong universities,where the ubiquity of Cantonese ensures that the official medium ofinstruction is often restricted to the lecture hall. The present study suggeststhat academic-related communication outside class, such as project andstudy-group discussions, is generally conducted in Cantonese, as, indeed, ismuch seminar, tutorial, and laboratory work.Thus,in Hong Kong and othercontexts where an indigenous language predominates, the need tocommunicate orally in English tends to be confined to presentations. Forthis reason, developing effective presentation skills is a key component ofEAP courses in Hong Kong and elsewhere.

The speaking-related findings of the longitudinal study corroborate those ofthe survey, namely that students apparently lacked confidence in theirability to communicate clearly, fluently, and accurately in English. Thesedoubts originated from their limited opportunities to speak English ina Cantonese-dominant society and institution. As Figure 1 indicates, the

main area of difficulty was grammar: indeed, the mean for this item (2.41)was the lowest of all 45 microskills in the questionnaire. It is perhaps notsurprising, therefore, that many of the references to speaking in thetranscripts reflected concerns about accuracy.

I think I have so many grammatical mistake that make the teacherdifficult to understand what I am talking about. (Accounting and Financestudent)

As with academic writing, many of the participants felt that they lacked thevocabulary needed to express complex ideas:

I think lack of vocabulary so I can only use simple words or somethingsimple English for to express my view or my what my presentation istelling for the people. So maybe its nota good presentation because some




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idea maybe cannot be explained in a simple way. So I know that is I am notdoing a good job in a presentation. (Building Surveying student)

It is revealing that most references to speaking in the transcripts concernissues relatingto language proficiency rather thanproblems associated withdisciplinary acculturation. This may indicate that spoken English was felt tobe somewhat peripheral in the induction process since this was mediatedmainly through Cantonese (for example in group work, seminardiscussions). In contrast, reading and listening are crucial in the process oflearning a new discipline, while writing is the main means by which thislearning is demonstrated and assessed. As noted above, Hong Kongundergraduates are required to display their understanding orally in set-piece presentations and therefore value focused instruction on presentationskills in their EAP classes. However, while their professors doubtlessappreciate presentations delivered in clear, accurate, and appropriateEnglish, the evidence suggests that (as with writing) they may be moreinterested in the content of the message than the quality of the mediumthrough which it is delivered.

Implications The schooluniversity transition can be a daunting and perplexingexperience for any undergraduate, but it is especially so for the millions ofESL and EFL students who enter English-medium institutions every year.This article has examined the challenges that confront such students in oneparticular post-colonial context, but one that may also illuminate theproblems that international, transnational, and exchange studentsencounter when adapting to the demands of English-medium tertiaryeducation. In highlighting these challenges, the article has perhapsinadvertently conveyed the impression that these difficulties were

insurmountable and that the participants were disheartened. This is farfrom the case: like many freshmen, they found the first term a satisfying,stimulating, and even exhilarating experience, and had the sense ofperspective to know that problems of adaptation were inevitable but notinsuperable (as indeed proved to be the case).

This article has presented findings from two sources: a large-scalequestionnaire survey and an interview-based longitudinal study. The surveyresults have clear implications for EAP practitioners; indeed, Figure 1provides a convenient checklist of items that might be incorporated intocourses, materials, and activities for first-year students, although the

emphasis given to the various skills will vary according to context. Thesefindings suggest that freshmen need particular assistance with academicwriting (notably style, grammar, and cohesion) and technical vocabulary (asencountered in lectures and readings). However, EAP courses basedexclusively on survey findings of this kind may overlook what seems to bethe central challenge confronting freshmen and one that requiresqualitative research to uncover fully, namely the need to understand andappropriate the discourse practices of the disciplinary community they havechosen to enter. As the participants final, retrospective interviews revealed,the process of disciplinary acculturation takes much longer than a term to

complete.




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Conclusion These findings present EAP course and materials designers witha considerablechallenge. Although thesurvey findings in particularpoint tothe need for English classes to focus on general language proficiency andeven remediation, such an emphasisthough perhaps harmonizing withthe wishes of university administratorsis unlikely to be especiallymotivating for students as it would be regarded as a repetition of secondary-school work. More important, though, such an approach, even one

contextualized within a general EAP course, would fail to prepare studentsfor the variety and complexity of the demands that their departments placeon their English skills, particularly in the crucial area of academic writing.Most freshmen will have received little formal instruction in specialistacademic genres before entering university; nor will they have had muchexperience of the researchand planning process that precedes thewriting ofsuch texts. The challenge for EAP practitioners is therefore to ensure thatduring the course of their studies at university, students are offered Englishcourses that sensitizethem to the salient rhetorical and linguistic features ofkey disciplinary genres and, within the context of such instruction, are

encouraged to develop a more sophisticated command of grammar andvocabulary.

Final revised version received June 2010

References

Altbach, P. G. 2004. Globalisation and theuniversity: myths and realities in an unequal world.Tertiary Education and Management10: 325.Berman, R. and L. Cheng. 2001. English academiclanguage skills: perceived difficulties by

undergraduate and graduate students, and theiracademic achievement. Canadian Journal of AppliedLinguistics4/12: 2539.Cheng, L. and J. Fox. 2008. Towards a betterunderstanding of academic acculturation:second language students in Canadianuniversities. Canadian Modern Language Review65/2: 30733.Coleman, J. A. 2006. English-medium teaching inEuropean higher education. Language Teaching39/1: 114.

Coxhead, A. 2000. A new academic word list.TE S O L Quarterly34/2: 21338.Erling, E. J. and S. K. Hilgendorf. 2006. Languagepolicies in the context of German higher education.Language Policy5/3: 26792.Graddol, D. 2006. English Next. London:British Council.Healey, N. M. 2008. Is higher education reallyinternationalising? Higher Education 55/3: 33355.Hinkel, E. 2003. Simplicity without elegance:features of sentences in L1 and L2 academic texts.TE S O L Quarterly37/2: 275301.

Hyland, K. and P. Tse. 2007. Is there an academicvocabulary? TE S O L Quarterly41/2: 23553.Leki, I. 2007. Undergraduates in a Second Language:Challenges and Complexities of Academic LiteracyDevelopment. New York: LawrenceErlbaum Associates.

Leki, I. and J. G. Carson. 1994. Studentsperceptions ofEAP writing instruction and writingneeds across disciplines. TE S O L Quarterly28/1: 81101.Ljosland, R. 2007. English in Norwegian academia:a step towards diglossia?. World Englishes26/4: 395410.Nation, I. S. P. and J. Macalister. 2010. LanguageCurriculum Design. New York: Routledge.Zhu, W. 2004. Faculty views on the importance ofwriting, the nature of academic writing, and

teaching and responding to writing in thedisciplines. Journal of Second Language Writing13/1: 2948.

The authors

Stephen Evans is an associate professor in theDepartment of English at The Hong KongPolytechnic University, where he teachesundergraduate and postgraduate courses insociolinguistics, English as an internationallanguage, ELT syllabus and materials design, and

English for academicand professional purposes. Hisresearch interests include colonial language policy,language planning, world Englishes,




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advanced academic literacy, and professionalcommunication.Email: [email protected] Morrison is Director of the English LanguageCentre at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Inaddition to having taught in Egypt, Spain, England,Malaysia, China, South Korea, and Hong Kong, he

has extensive experience as course and

curriculum developer, teacher trainer, andpedagogic administrator. His research interestsfocus primarily on the non-native speaker tertiarylearning experience, independent and self-accesslanguage learning, and language programmeevaluation.Email: [email protected].




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