The CATESOL Journal

This case study describes an effective approach for organizing the key elements of an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course: content, skills, and tasks. The suggested approach uses content as the syllabus framework, skills to format the units, and tasks as the building blocks of lessons. This triune approach is illustrated through the curriculum design for an EAP course for graduate students of Translation and Interpretation (T&I). The necessary catalogs of content, skills, and tasks are assembled by a combination of continuous needs assessment of the professional skills and the target learners, as derived from course evaluations, reference materials, and interviews with T&I faculty. The approach is exemplified by the syllabus outline and a sample unit plan, and implications are drawn for EAP course design in general.