Speaking in social contexts: Issues for pre-sessional EAP students

A large number of non native speakers (NNS) of English from around the globe attend summer English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses in host countries before going on to further study. Such learners have expectations regarding the improvements that they will make in their speaking skills, not just in an academic context, but also in social contexts. This paper reports on a qualitative study into the kind of contact that such NNS have with native speakers in the community. The findings suggest that expectations aregenerally not met and our discussion focuses on the ways in which arising issues might be better addressed not only by providers in the host country, but in some regards also by providers in the home country, before students actuallyleave. Particularly, we argue that when developing listening and speaking skills in the classroom we need to recognise the importance of English as a local language (ELL) and include tasks which contain examples of suchlanguage if we are going to adequately equip our learners