ABSTRACT
The motivation for this edited collection is clear: worldwide, populations of L2 and multilingual students who wish or need to learn to write in English for academic and professional purposes, from secondary to doctoral levels, are soaring. For better or for worse, English has become the global language of spoken and written international communication within disciplines and professions. Specialized writing of different kinds is central to the success of such students, given that some kind of writing is often the only or the main form of assessment. Some programs and instructors seem ready for this influx, and have well-developed support systems in place for students who need to learn more about the norms and discourses of academic English as they enter and then pursue specialized work in their subject-matter areas. Others have been caught off guard, either because the demand for English language support services and writing instruction has increased too rapidly for schools and universities to respond quickly, or because of underdeveloped perceptions and assumptions about what it means to learn the norms, values and specialized languages of the disciplines and the professions. Hence the need for this very practically oriented book on EAP practices in different parts of the world.
