The English for Academic Purposes Toolkit
The English for Academic Purposes Toolkit
The English for Academic Purposes Toolkit is an online resource set of at least 100 learning activities (75+ hours of study). This set aims to support international and non-native speaker students. It can be delivered over the Web or through a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment, such as Blackboard) and consists of:
- Learning skills (11 activities)
- Academic writing (19 activities)
- Reading and critical thinking (10 activities)
- Vocabulary for academic purposes (14 activities)
- Grammar for academic purposes (14 activities)
- Academic listening and note-taking (13 activities)
- Communication skills (14 activities)
- Subject specific needs (5 activities)
List of contents of the English for Academic Purposes Toolkit view | download (Word doc, 98kb)
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Listening practice: setting up a business
This interview with a businesswoman will allow you to practise a range of listening skills and develop your business-related vocabulary.
When do you need to use an article with a noun phrase?
You will analyse the use of articles with nouns in context and learn to recognise when an article is needed or not in front of a noun. You will also test yourself by adding articles where necessary to a short text.
English for Academic Purposes Toolkit - list of contents
Learning to study
1. Managing your study time
2. Identifying the study skills you need
3. The best conditions for learning
4. Planning how to meet your workload
5. Recognising good study skills
6. Using feedback to improve
7. Learning logs and reflective journals
8. Working with other people
9. Prioritising tasks
10. Managing stress
11. Dictionary use and your learning
Academic writing
1. Understanding essay titles
2. Improving paragraphs with topic sentences
3. Structure in writing
4. Using examples to support written statements
5. Expressing fact and opinion in writing
6. Recognising the different functions of language
7. Describing graphs and tables
8. Comparing graphs
9. Finding out about plagiarism
10. Identifying plagiarism and avoiding poor practice
11. Using quotations
12. Using paraphrase in writing
13. The role of the introduction to a report or essay
14. Creating cohesion in your writing
15. Revising your written work
16. Writing an effective conclusion
17. Proofreading a text
18. Compiling a reference list
19. Presenting your written work
Academic reading and critical thinking
1. Introduction to reading skills
2. Reading online and printed texts
3. Prediction strategies for reading
4. Speed reading and scanning practice
5. Good practice in note-taking to avoid plagiarism
6. Reading to identify main points
7. Identifying text types
8. Scanning for specific information
9. Reading and critical thinking
10. Skim-reading practice
Vocabulary for academic purposes
1. Introduction to vocabulary learning
2. Building your vocabulary
3. Language for classifying
4. Forming words with prefixes and suffixes
5. Business vocabulary in wider use
6. Homophones, homonyms, and homographs
7. Introduction to abstract vocabulary
8. Stylistic effects of abstract vocabulary
9. Using online concordances to improve your vocabulary
10. Confusable words
11. The importance of semi-technical vocabulary
12. The structure, meaning and use of phrasal verbs
13. Using idiomatic language
14. Researching specialist vocabulary
Grammar for academic purposes
1. Understanding choice of tense
2. Reviewing verb groups
3. Structures for expressing purpose
4. Impersonal style and passive verb constructions
5. When do you need to use an article with a noun phrase?
6. The meanings of modal verbs
7. Using noun phrases instead of clauses
8. Forming complex noun phrases
9. Reviewing dependent prepositions
10. Expressing causality and sentence structure
11. Verbs followed by gerunds and/or infinitives
12. Changing emphasis in a sentence
13. Using colons and semicolons
14. Hedging or using language cautiously
Academic listening and note-taking
1. How to take good notes while listening
2. Prediction skills for listening
3. Using clues to understand lectures and presentations
4. Listening practice: setting up a business
5. Listening for signpost language
6. Recording data
7. Focusing on the language in a lecture
8. Listening for key points in a science lecture
9. Listening to a complex description
10. Listening for idiomatic phrases
11. Listening closely to follow presentations
12. Recognising different features of spoken English language
13. Listening for and understanding new vocabulary
Academic communication skills
1. Communicating online
2. Contrasting spoken and written language
3. Communicating in seminars
4. Listening and speaking in seminars
5. Checking and clarifying when speaking
6. Unstressed aspects of pronunciation
7. Word and sentence stress
8. Sound linking in speech
9. How to deliver an oral presentation
10. Useful language for oral presentations
11. Contractions in speech
12. Occupational varieties of language
13. Identifying varieties of spoken language
14. Speaking without hesitating
Subject specific needs
1. Biological sciences: producing a lab report
2. Law assignments: answering the problem question
3. Business studies: reading part of a case study
4. Business studies: business jargon
5. Nursing studies: assessing patient-based scenarios