This paper offers a reconceptualisation of international students' transitions into and through UK higher education. We present two case studies of students which explore their transitions in terms of their academic speaking skills from pre-sessional courses into their disciplinary studies. Students describe how the development of their confidence…

The aim of the Foundation Year of university is to prepare students for their undergraduate study. Part of this preparation is enculturation into ways of speaking. Undergraduate study involves small group interaction in which students are expected to use educational dialogue to co-construct conceptual understanding and engage in critical thinking.…

A key purpose of the Foundation Year provision is to prepare students, often from a widening participation background, for their undergraduate study. Research has established that access to academic discourse and disciplinary knowledge is, to a large extent, dependent on students' academic language and literacy skills, including oracy skills.…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore how experienced teachers use classroom talk to support their pedagogic goals in pre-sessional and in-sessional EAP lessons. Design: Data were gathered by video recording four teachers' EAP lessons. Two lessons were pre-sessional and two lessons were in-sessional. A framework which identified…