CA-EAP: A Multi-Task Software Package for the teaching of Academic Writing

This paper describes CA-EAP software, which has been developed, and continues to be developed by Jon Mills at the University of Luton. The purpose of CA-EAP is to provide online teaching materials for the Academic English and Study Skills module for first year undergraduate students whose first language is not English. This module attracts approximately 150 students who are taught by three teachers in classes of up to 20 students The students attend one 3 hour lesson per week. CA-EAP provides all the materials for the writing component for this module. CA-EAP aims to explain and provide practice in a number of language functions that are employed in academic discourse: definition, classification, cause and effect, comparison and contrast, illustration and exemplification, generalisation and qualification, analogy, evidence, interpretation of data, argument and thesis. In all, CA-EAP provides approximately 40 hours of writing activities. CA-EAP is for classroom use with a teacher present and lock-step is necessary at various points during each lesson. Each lesson incorporates a variety of tasks and task types including pages of exposition, drills, short essay writing, peer critiquing and use of a concordancer. Peer critiquing of essays takes place over the intra-net with the students adopting pseudonyms. The students like the anonymity that this virtual classroom provides. The role of the teacher is concerned with managing the virtual classroom and of allowing students to sometimes work at their own pace and at other times focussing the entire class in lock-step.