ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role of Language Awareness (LA) activities in academic writing, reading, and study skills programmes designed for overseas postgraduate students. The LA activities described here exploit both product- and process-oriented approaches to teaching, and they should be seen within the context of an overall programme designed to raise learner consciousness in terms of task, text and purpose. Implicit within this approach is the requirement to estimate and raise the 'learning ego' of students undertaking pre-sessional and concurrent EAP courses. The chapter reports an attempt to combine systematic pre-course assessment of learners with attention to the learners' evolving needs and beliefs, throughout pre-sessional EAP courses. It discusses the development of the research programme thus outlined and focuses on investigative methodology and results to date in the fields of academic writing and reading. The chapter also discusses the lengthy theoretical arguments for and against the use of qualitative data.
