Inspired by the Teaching EAP blog post discussing the requirements of teaching English for Academic Purposes, I realized that many teachers who teach EAP come from different backgrounds and have different teaching experiences. I asked EAP teachers from around the world to tell me their stories about how they got into EAP and the requirements they had to fulfill.
I would like to thank each and every one of them for sharing their stories. So, here are their stories. I first started teaching English in with young learners in a Hagwon in South Korea. At 22 years old, I was armed only with my degree in Psychology, a sense of adventure, and no clue about classroom management, lesson planning or teaching methodology. After a few more travelling adventures, the reality of paying the bills set in, and I decided to give English teaching another go and headed back to Korea in As well as teaching, I had opportunities to work on developing lessons, materials and workbooks, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Gradually, I started to feel like teaching was something I was good at, and I suppose I learned on the job, and by observing more experienced colleagues. I stayed there for 3. Looking back, it seems like a very back-to-front way of doing things, but it happened that way as I had never planned on teaching English long-term. During that time, I also tutored a couple of university students, which I really enjoyed. Working with university students just felt like the best fit to my teaching style, and I decided to pursue a career in this area.
It was a real struggle to find anything suitable, and I spent about a year applying for jobs and teaching business English part-time. During my time there, I had the opportunity to teach on a range of courses, and became the Strand Leader for the ESAP for Architecture component, which involved curriculum planning and materials development. I absolutely loved working there, especially being surrounded by experienced EAP professionals.
I think they were particularly interested in the curriculum design work I had done for UNNC as my current role involves similar aspects. EAP — a course officially called Academic Writing at the institution where I work — is compulsory for undergrads in their first semester of university. I first taught the course at the University of Zagreb in It was entirely unplanned; as I recall they had an extra group of students they needed an instructor for, and a colleague asked if I was interested.
