“Now I hear what you say” - how short EAP courses can foster successful academic interactional strategies

In globalised higher education, strategies to build academic interactional competence can be key to international students’ success, e.g. in seminars and oral assessments. Linguistically, academic interaction requires meaning-focused, other-oriented oral skills, which can be challenging for international second-language (L2) students to acquire, even with specific training. This study reports on data from 230 postgraduate students of mixed L1s, comparing use of L2 listening and speaking strategies at the start and end of a 5-week English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programme at a UK university. We found a moderate significant improvement over time in meaning-focused listening strategies, and some evidence in increased use of a wider range of speaking strategies. Further factor analysis revealed a subtle but clear shift towards more other-oriented stance in both listening and speaking strategy use, although with much individual variation, and no significant correlation with proficiency. This study, one of the first to use speaker stance analysis in studying L2 academic communication, shows that even short-term EAP courses can have valuable potential in boosting strategies and skills, particularly in listening, which are needed for successful academic interactional competence.