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International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

Abstract

Given the demands of modern working life, university studies should support students’ life-long learning and agency. This article explores the types of agency learners from an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course described in interviews. The interviews were conducted in two groups in 2 consecutive years, in two stages: at the end of the EAP course as well as 6 to 7 months later. Through thematic content analysis, three types of agency were identified: instrumental agency, operational agency, and reflective agency. These types usually differed in terms of the contexts in which the learners placed the agency, the positions the learners took, and their descriptions of whether the agency continued or ended. Furthermore, individual learners often described different types of agency within the same interview. This highlights the messiness, fluidity, and dynamic changes in the ways of speaking as the key aspects when learners were authoring their agency. The findings are used to critically evaluate current higher education language teaching practices and discuss what kind of higher education language teaching challenges the students’ answers reveal, particularly in regards to compulsory language studies for students of other fields.

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