ABSTRACT
This history of English for academic purposes (EAP), like all overviews, is subjective. Choices of which citations to include and leave out depend on the aims and predispositions of the overview’s author. Yet, while acknowledging my subjectivity, in this chapter I try to present the history of EAP from the perspective of specialists who have shaped the field over the last 30 years and to honor their contributions. Further on, I highlight concerns raised about EAP from outside the field (see chap. 3). This is not to say that EAP has developed without criticism from within. On the contrary, theoretical and pedagogical differences, many of which I discuss in this chapter, are prevalent in the EAP literature as they are in all academic fields. Indeed, discussion of these conflicts has contributed to shifts in EAP’s research and teaching methods over the years.
