English for Academic Purposes and the Enhancement of French Trainee Content Teachers' Professional Skills

Abstract : This paper explores the issue of syllabus design for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes by presenting a case study carried out at the Grenoble Faculty of Economics and the Grenoble Initial Teacher Training College (France). The study had two objectives: develop prospective and newly recruited content teachers’ professional skills, notably the ability to teach their subject in English on an occasional basis, and help them reflect on their professional practice. In order to do so, mandatory EAP modules for all trainee content teachers (TCT) of disciplines other than language studies were implemented to provide TCTs with an introduction to content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and to train them to teach in a CLIL format. In this paper two types of data are analyzed: the assessment of TCTs’ final assignment and the responses to a questionnaire aiming at gathering TCTs’ feedback on the EAP modules.