English for Specific Academic Purposes Student Partnerships Across Borders

Abstract

Students coming to the UK frequently join their chosen university via a pre-sessional English language course, but organisers of such courses often struggle to find staff on campus in the summer months to provide the necessary content input. This paper presents an attempt to overcome this shortfall, describing two parallel English for Specific Academic Purpose telecollaboration projects between universities in Scotland and Gaza, one involving Engineering, the other Biomedical students. We outline how the projects were organised, offer our findings, and provide a set of guidelines that may encourage similar cross-continent link-ups between universities.