Multilinguismo, CLIL e innovazione didattica - Libera Università di ...

Integrating global citizenship
- 12 pm Students answer second question (on group task)
- 1 pm examination finishes
3.2.4 Task 1: Individual Assignment
Essay Topic: Do you think that Britain will overcome the current economic
and financial crisis?
The 12-week course included an introductory course in economics but the
majority of students had already taken courses up to degree level in this
subject. Nevertheless, an analysis of student scripts revealed that students had
not responded well to the task. The majority (n=9) reproduced verbatim
lecture notes which they had learned by heart, several (n=7) used inappropriate
essay genres (SPSS instead of argumentation) which they had mis-applied
from academic writing class, there were large incidences of plagiarism, significant
inappropriate use of vocabulary items which had been learned by heart
and mis-applied to the task. Finally, only a few students (n=5) were able to
successfully draw on the theories which were explored in class and on the
Virtual Learning Environment.
Many of the problems identified above are not untypical in English for Academic
Purposes learning environments and often do carry over to degreelevel
study. For example, Evans and Morrison’s (2011) recent longitudinal
study of Hong Kong students found that the students continue to have difficulties
producing appropriate disciplinary genres and fulfilling the academic
requirements of tasks.
However, there is a danger that such outcomes become self-fulfilling prophecies
and both teachers and students suffer from a form of EAP-itis, that is that
they become conversant with a new genre that is only recognised and reified
in the sheltered workshop that is an EAP classroom.
Therefore, it is not only important that our pedagogic practices are authentic
and modelled on the real world but as practitioners, we ought to constantly
question our pedagogic practices and to challenge pre-ordained learning
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