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felt that this increased their understanding of areas they defined as ‘western culture’, ‘university life’ and ‘western way of thinking’. However, it seems equally significant that even those students who saw the benefits of this did not seem to feel part of their disciplinary community within the everyday world (Question 2), despite seeing the importance of studies having greater relevance to the everyday world outside of university (Question 3). Linked to this, students appeared to feel that that they had developed key skills (Question 5) through their EAP courses, rather than acquiring the greater disciplinary awareness that those such as Gimenez and Thomas (2015) advocate. Some of the skills that students spoke of developing included ‘creativity’, ‘logical thinking’, ‘teamwork’, ‘learning how to write essays’, ‘communicating and interpersonal skills’, ‘critical thinking about the mass media’, ‘reading skills’, ‘making elaborate questions for research’ and then those which focused on grammar such as the slightly ambiguous ‘past making’. Through the majority of responses, it was clear that students have an awareness of skills needed to study in their disciplines but might sometimes lack the opportunity to put these into practice in authentic situations. References to such areas as formulating research questions and students speaking critically about aspects of their own disciplines they wished to explore support this claim. What seemed to be lacking though was a feeling of being part of their disciplines at the point of preparation on pre-sessional courses in particular, or knowing what exactly to expect when they progress to those disciplines. Pre-sessional students sometimes appear not to be reaching the level of disciplinary integration that those such as


Paul Breen


Gimenez and Thomas (2015) have written about. Instead, they appear to be posited somewhere on a spectrum between the ‘academic socialisation’ and ‘study skills’ phases that Lea & Street (1998, p. 158) spoke of needing to get beyond for true literacy to occur.


Despite that, there was some reference to teachers helping students build disciplinary knowledge through ‘giving real examples from our subjects’ and ‘making us interested in our subjects’. Questions 5 and 8 particularly generated a lot of feedback about the work that teachers were doing and the skills that they were helping students to develop. Generally these had more a study skills than an academic literacies focus, with examples such as ‘brainstorming’, ‘working in groups’, being ‘supportive’ and a recurring emphasis on the development of ‘writing skills’. Although all of these are important and positive features of EAP pedagogy, there was a sense of the discipline- specific aspect being somehow absent at times. That raised questions then for further exploration in areas of teacher development and teacher knowledge that goes beyond the initial platform of this paper and the exploratory study that has informed it.


Solutions offered by the students themselves


In a paper like this it would be easy to focus on a ‘pathology of problems’ (Lea & Street, 1998, p. 159), but the goal here is to find solutions that will help and empower students, even if in some small way that makes their studies on EAP courses easier. Question 9 asked ‘What real-world examples or issues would you like to see taught or discussed in the classroom or what sort of visits and activities would you like to do outside of class time?’ and


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