After reading many of the discussions on this site I have found that a large number of the responses advocate less taught lessons and more blended or online content . In one discussion one of the commenters suggested that tutors should not actively teach academic writing skills but instead read a list of instructions. Some seem to suggest that the students should learn by doing and not through instruction. In most British universities native English speaking students are not offered EAP courses. The area of academic writing is an area which seems to generate a lot of questions and a wide variety of comments. As a teacher of academic writing and various other skills to international students I have spent years studying the way students learn to read and write for academic purposes. I also think that native English speakers should be taught on the same type of courses international students.
My experience as a supervisor of diploma papers in Media Studies and Discourse Studies (BA and MA level), is that students (at my University) would struggle a lot more and perhaps drop out without EAP instruction (they are Polish writing in English). I even think that EAP should be taught by qualified specialists (who are researchers themselves) not just EFL teachers with some extra training.
I deliberately worded the question to focus on academic writing skills and not to look for recognition for my specialism although thank you @Katarzyna for doing so. @Jane I also wish I had studied academic writing during my undergraduate degree as this would have made writing my essays far less stressful. I would say that I would define EAP teachers as trained teachers of the English language and the style and register needed for academic study but who then study the skills and the methodology needed to teach them. I would not include content teachers who also teach study or presentation skills to help students. I believe that most people who have studied in university have enough experience to give advice but maybe not enough to teach a full course. Many of the researchers on this site want to know more because they want to help their students produce better work but with the steady increase in the number of online courses it is not always possible to do this. I have found through other questions that many of the researchers think that blended instruction is the best method teaching but the increase in fully online courses or Distance Learning as it is often called requires students to learn how to write academically without any real instruction.
Is the quality of the work produced for these courses of the same standard as the work produced for on-campus with the study support available from student services?
@Jane: At our Department Academic Writing courses are also run by MAs with qualifications in English and e.g. Literary/Language Studies. In fact, we have an extensive AW offer streching 4 semesters from the basics to advanced practice. However, some instructors may not be active researchers themselves and some may not have upgraged their EAP knowledge, or base on old textbooks, or simply are not that engaged in the subject because they have dozens of other subjects to teach. Anyway, the situation is still manageable, and we do not have students failing because of the lack of writing skills. But what I fear the most is that with cost-cutting, things could change for worse.
Moving on to more general reflections. It is fine if students are learning EAP through practice and self-study within the context of the subject they are studying (in our case, Literature, Linguistics or Cultural Studies), but it seems to me that it is such a restricted kind of knowledge for most of them (just to produce a few research papers including a diploma paper) that it could be a waste of their time and resources. Instruction by qualified (and engaged) specialists would ease the burden, I guess.
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