The Future of EAP: Reflections from EAP Day 2025 in Berlin
İlkem Kayıcan Dipcin
EAP Day 2025 at Arden University Berlin brought together educators, researchers, and practitioners in a hybrid format to address some of the most pressing questions in English for Academic Purposes today. From AI integration to multimodal learning approaches, the day offered rich insights into how our field is adapting to meet the needs of the increasingly diverse student populations.
Bridging Academic Gaps Through Multimodal Approaches
Louise Skeet, who is the head of the English Hub at Arden University, opened the day with compelling evidence from hundreds of EAP students across Arden University campuses, highlighting the vital role of English for Academic Purposes in student success. Her research demonstrated how well-designed academic English provision doesn't just improve language skills—it changes both the student experience and academic outcomes. Skeet's findings underscored that EAP is far more than language instruction; it's a bridge that enables students to fully participate in their academic communities.
AI-mazing Materials: From Prompt to Published in 15 Minutes Presented by Ciarán Lynch
This session addressed practical AI integration for educational materials design, focusing on common EAP teacher challenges with AI tools.
Key Challenges Identified:
• Tool fatigue (100+ AI tools - which actually save time?)
• Quality vs. speed (AI outputs need heavy editing)
• Lost creativity (lack of personal teaching voice)
• Tech overload
The "3C" Workflow Solution:
1. Create: Use AI for brainstorming and raw content generation
2. Curate: Apply professional expertise to filter and refine outputs
3. Customise: Add branding, local context, and learner-specific elements
Recommended Tools:
• Text: ChatGPT, Claude, Deepseek, Gemini
• Media: KLING AI, Midjourney, Suno, ElevenLabs
• Development: Replit for interactive materials
Key Takeaway: AI should amplify, not replace, teacher expertise. The most effective approach combines AI's speed with human curation, enabling teachers to create publication-ready materials in 15 minutes while maintaining pedagogical quality and personal teaching voice.
Fostering Autonomy Through Open Learning Spaces
Joy Reid from Leibniz University Hannover shared insights from her "Open Class" experiment, inspired by Montessori principles. This ungraded course revealed that when given freedom to direct their own learning, students valued conversation above all else, followed by teacher guidance and peer interaction. Reid's findings suggest that creating spaces for autonomous learning can revitalize student engagement with English and foster lifelong learning skills.
AI as an Equalizer: Rethinking Writing Instruction
In my own contribution to the day, I presented the outcomes of my PURE research project entitled "AI-Enhanced Self-Regulated Learning for Academic Writing: A Comparative Study" that I conducted last fall, investigating how AI writing tools impact self-regulated learning in ESL academic writing. The results were surprising: AI tools acted as an "equalizer" rather than an enhancer. The highest-scoring essay came from a traditional student, while AI users clustered around consistent but not exceptional performance.
The key insight for EAP practitioners: AI helps students achieve consistent competency but may not develop the critical thinking skills underlying truly effective academic communication. This suggests we need to shift from asking "Should we allow AI?" to "How do we prepare students for thoughtful human-AI collaboration?"
As we navigate technological change, EAP Day 2025 reminded us that our field's strength lies not just in thoughtfully integrating new tools, but also in staying true to our core mission: empowering students to communicate effectively and think critically in academic contexts.
You can follow the past and coming highlights of the conference from their Linkedin group page: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13244120/