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      The second, powerful external force, is the relative hegemony of the IELTS exam as an indicator of language proficiency for international EAL student entry into UK education. Although in some contexts, Universities are beginning to accept other measures of language and academic literacy skills, EAP practitioners frequently find themselves having to build their teaching around the impact of this exam – whether it be moving students away from habits developed as a result of studying for the test (which, for example, requires students to write only 250 words of unreferenced argument in response to a generic ‘essay’ question), or helping students prepare for the test itself. EAP teaching and IELTS teaching are often wrongly conflated. Outside the EAP and language teaching community, there is only a vague understanding of what the different IELTS levels mean (Benzie, 2010; Murray, 2016a). Thus, academics and students alike can often work on the assumption that the stated entry level for TPG study (typically in the United Kingdom 6.5 overall with no less than 6.0 in any of the four skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening) equates to a level that will enable access to the study content with no further need for language development. In fact, contrary to this belief, IELTS itself suggests that at 6.5, for a ‘linguistically demanding academic course’ that ‘English study is needed’; for ‘linguistically less demanding academic courses’, the student’s level of English is ‘probably acceptable’ (IELTS, 2017). This does beg the question as to what kind of TPG programme could be classified as linguistically less demanding, particularly if it is one studied in the United Kingdom, alongside a global community of peers for whom English is the only common language for knowledge and social exchange.

      This conflation between IELTS and EAP places EAP practitioners in a difficult position because, arguably, it devalues the complexity of the work involved in de-coding disciplinary knowledge communication discourse and in working with students to enable them to access the academy. Critically, it is often the EAP unit that becomes the target of blame when students on a programme are deemed to be struggling due to language proficiency. Thus IELTS and concurrently language is viewed as the ‘catch-all term for problems with unmet standards, and the need for remediation’ (Turner, 2004: 99) which Turner also argues results in the denial of academic respect to EAP teachers and their students. ‘The dilemma for the academic literacy pedagogies is that they are only tolerated while they remain remedial … the remedial positioning of language work is necessary in order to maintain the culturally embedded and socially embodied “habitus” of being academic’ (Turner, 2011: 37), in other words language is seen as part of the physical embodiment of an academic; it is ‘who they are’ or ‘who you become’ implicitly rather than something that can be analysed, de- and then re-constructed explicitly and expertly. I argue that it is part of the role of EAP practitioners to change this perspective amongst their academic colleagues that few are, as yet, fulfilling.

      Thus, while many international students, are struggling to access their own academic ‘community of practice’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991) because the current apprenticeship does not explicitly acknowledge its shared language as something to be learned and are thus facing perceptions of being in deficit linguistically and feeling culturally excluded, their first point of contact is often with EAP teachers who are also relative outsiders to the academy. Many of these practitioners, particularly over the summer pre-sessional period, are employed with little experience, little time to equip themselves and occasionally dubious credentials. This does, then, raise the question as to how well EAP does the job it is tasked with doing, of giving ‘students access to ways of knowing’ (Hyland, 2018: 390). If EAP units, and language learning and teaching, are disconnected from and undervalued by, the rest of the academy, how do students, EAP teachers and content teachers understand where language and content knowledge connect and disconnect? How does this view of language and its place in knowledge communication impact on their teaching and learning practices and their identity as members of an academic community? And how can teaching and learning be truly inclusive and international if a focus on the (globally dominant English) language used to communicate the knowledge being gained is outwith the written curriculum? Within this book, I aim to draw out these complex themes and questions, demonstrating how they overlap, intersect and, at times, contradict. In doing so, the narratives and experiences I present feed into a global conversation and hopefully present some clear suggestions as to how to think differently and work more collaboratively to ensure that language becomes more visible across the higher education curriculum and that all students are better supported in accessing and demonstrating their own emerging knowledge.