EAP Learners' Perpective on On-line Presentation of Academic Texts

Abstract

This study aims at investigating EAP learners' views on electronic presentation of academic texts. A survey of the literature indicates a rise of interest in the research into academic discourse (Swales, 2004, Hyland, 2000) and the influence of electronic environment on academic writing and its pedagogical implications (Broady, 2000; Herring, 2001; Warschauer, 2002 ) . This paper will present the results obtained in large-scale cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary research into EAP learners' perspective on academic discourse and pragmatic effectiveness of the structure of electronic academic texts, conducted in Vitautas Magnus University in Lithuania and in the University of Latvia. The authors will present the evidence that organisation of many academic texts published on the Internet does not satisfy EAP learners' needs and expectations, which may support the view that in the modern inter-cultural and inter-disciplinary European research settings, to suit the needs of the participants of disciplinary discourses, academic texts should change for the benefit of the readers rather than make the readers conform to the standards for paper-format academic texts applied to electronic texts (Bolter, 1991; Zamel, 1993).