This is the last in a three-part series exploring responses from the EAP community following three years of Chat GPT induced mayhem. We talk through adaptations in the classroom, transferability and AI skills in the workplace, how to prepare students for higher education, the lack of consistency both within and among universities, reducing students’ reliance on gen AI, the dangers of confirmation bias, the need for change, the future of assessment, and other topics. Contributing to this conversation is Jim Merry from Nottingham Ningbo University in China and Dr Vic Wilson-Crane from Kaplan. Jim is at the EAP coal face working to adapt his teaching and course design, while Vic’s role in the Centre for Learning Innovation and Quality has given her a bird's eye view of institutional responses from across higher education.

We also manage to get Deanne Cobb-Zygadlo's mic and echo cancellation working to get her view of the response from Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan. Are clear policies and declarations of use enough, or are there more far reaching changes needed for EAP and higher education to stay ahead of the curve?

Jim Merry is an EAP tutor at University of Nottingham Ningbo China. He has worked in EAP and test preparation for over twenty years. Jim is interested in syllabus design, and is currently trying to navigate how to integrate AI more meaningfully into his work.

Dr Victoria Wilson-Crane has worked in education, in a variety of settings, for over 25 years. Vic has worked for Kaplan, one of the world’s largest global educators, for eighteen years. She leads Kaplan International Pathways’ Centre for Learning Innovation and Quality, a team of educational experts and developers, responsible for directing quality assurance and innovative learning and assessment in the Kaplan Pathways colleges in the UK. Vic has a particular interest in employability: her doctoral studies explored transition from school to further education and employment. A keen lifelong learner herself, she is a Senior Fellow of the Staff and Educational Development Association and a Certified Member of the Association for Learning Technology.

00:00 Intro to Vic Wilson-Crane

06:38 Changes brought about since COVID

07:11 Intro to Jim Merry

10:30 Intro to Deanne Cobb-Zygadlo

13:00 Educating students about the risk of AI dependency

17:55 difficulties in merging AI literacies with EAP

19:25 Developing transferable AI skills

22:10 The kindness curriculum

22:33 What do we lose when we modernise academic skills?

26:25 Student awareness of AI limitations

27:27 What do employers want?

33:26 Gen AI tells us what we want to hear.

35:45 The future of assessment

In part two of ‘are we still language teachers?’ I’m joined in the studio by Thuy Thai and Charles Lam from the University of Leeds. Thuy and Charles argue for the continued relevance of language proficiency in education and in the role of EAP. We also examine the broadening scope of ‘academic skills’ that has come to include AI literacy, and raising awareness among students about things like overreliance and ethical use.

We discuss Thuy’s research into green traffic lights, and give thoughts on the precedents and pitfalls of cognitive offloading, revisiting territory from earlier episodes with Danny Liu and Michael Gerlich. Thuy and Charles also give their take on the findings of the notorious MIT study.

Thuy Thai is a lecturer in English for Academic Purposes at the Language Centre, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds. She has a background in academic language instruction, test and assessment development and student support. She previously worked at Leeds Trinity University as a student achievement adviser, where she supported diverse student cohorts in navigating academic challenges and developing effective study strategies. Earlier in her career, she served as a test development researcher at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University-Hanoi. Alongside her research role, she also developed and taught EAP courses, helping students gain the academic language needed for success in Vietnam’s higher education.

Charles Lam is a Lecturer in English for Academic Purposes in the Language Centre, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at University of Leeds. He graduated at Purdue University in the US. Prior to joining Leeds, he taught linguistics and EAP for several years in Hong Kong. His teaching interests lie in academic communications in STEM. Currently he co-leads Academic Literacies for Biological Sciences and Language for Engineering. His research includes corpus linguistics and digital humanities.

Kosmyna, N., Hauptmann, E., Yuan, Y. T., Situ, J., Liao, X. H., Beresnitzky, A. V., and Maes, P. (2025). Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.08872.

Today I’m in conversation with Paul Breen, Senior Digital Learning Developer at UCL to get his take on how EAP and ‘hub’ disciplines should be adapting in the wake of AI. We often hear about the need to ‘embrace’ AI, so we try to unpack what this actually means.

EAP practitioners and learning developers are often looked at as the ones to help students navigate the demands and conventions of academia, so who better than to set students straight on what constitutes appropriate use, what a purple traffic light means on an assignment brief and the myriad capabilities and limitations of Chat GPT. But how many EAP teachers feel qualified to deal with these issues? Paul and I talk about this and a range of other topics, such as how EAP teachers from the past would react to today’s EAP, the need for language proficiency, translanguaging, the relevance of certification, and more.

Paul Breen is Senior Digital Learning Developer and Lecturer in EAP at UCL Centre for Languages and International Education. His research interests are in educational technology, language and identity and social justice. He is the author of Developing Educators in the Digital Age.

Further reading

Breen, P. (2018). Developing Educators for the Digital Age: A Framework for Capturing Knowledge in Action. London: University of Westminster Press.