Hello, all things EAP listeners. We are here in a slightly windy Plymouth to bring you all the highlights and action from this year's BALEAP  Conference.  

After a quick catch up with friends, old and new, the day kicked off with a panel discussion from staff and students at the University of Plymouth, showcasing the brilliant range of collaborative work they've been undertaking to support students using academic English.

I think that is like the most beautiful thing that we can take out on a project like this is both students from Plymouth and from  different state unis in Ukraine learn about each other and so get closer and bridge like that between the two countries.

The student digital champions are really supporting students when they first arrive in perhaps ways that, well, for me personally, I haven't really appreciated how challenging it might be to access our digital environments.  If we've been doing something long enough ourselves, we tend to forget. How difficult it was to learn that system um, and here at Plymouth,  we've got  a large range of digital systems.

The transition from high school to higher education is a big step. And you can all imagine being given an academic essay for the first time is really quite difficult and the invaluable support she gave me, motivated me to want to join the writing cafe and is the best decision I've made for myself being able to meet international students home students who are also in that same position that I was in, trying to figure it out, trying to navigate it,  I wanted to be able to pull back into a scheme that poured so much into me and enriched my university experience.

I hope you've enjoyed listening to our students talk about these schemes .

Many of us are fortunate enough to have funding from our institutions, which allows us to attend conferences such as this, but that's not the case for everyone. So we wanted to hear from someone who had chosen to self-fund their place at the conference. Here is one of the delegates telling us why she chose to come here and what she hopes to get from the experience.

Hi, I am teaching academic English school course in study group at Leeds.  I feel that I need to  improve my teaching pedagogy and also stay informed about the popular topics in EAP field and I'm going to attend the stem and also the academic literacy SIG meeting tomorrow. And , of course, I would like to stay  in touch with my  old friends and make new friends. 

At the end of a successful first day, it was time for the first poster session. We also wanted to hear from some of the poster presenters about their experience so far. 

Hi Will.  How you doing? 
I'm doing really well, thank you. Yeah, it's been a bit of a rollercoaster so far,  quite intense 'cause I was doing a  session with EAP for Social Justice SIG, and then now I've got my poster so it's been  an intense start  to the conference.

Are you enjoying it other than the rollercoaster of the last few hours?  Absolutely. I really  I thought that  the keynote was really different, having  the student panel. I thought that was quite inspirational. I'd love to take that back to Liverpool actually, and, and share some of suggestions  from that.

Are you enjoying the conference so far? 
Yes, absolutely. So this is your poster? 
Yes, it's my poster.  I  talked to some of the people that create the policy about generative AI in the institutions.  I'm looking forward to  see some talks about the use of gene AI in  today's era and I would like to see the implications of  people's perspective about using AI within  their classroom or with within their institutions; how it will affect  the students and the teachers as well.

Hi, Tash.  Are you enjoying the day? 
Yes, I am. 
Is this your first BALEAP conference? 
It's not, no. I went to Warwick,  two years ago and I attended Glasgow Online.  What have you enjoyed  in the first day of the conference? 
I went to Anna McKenna's one about taking the next step, sharing thoughts on EAP related doctoral research, and that was really good, talking about different ways of potentially getting into doctoral research and hearing other people's views, and I've just presented my poster and I, I just feel like I've had a really full day.

What are you looking forward to tomorrow?  
I'm really looking forward to EAP in the lab experiments in writing physics because I work in the school of physics in my institution. I'm really looking forward to that one. 

Thanks for listening to this All Things EAP Conference Snapshot. Whether you are attending the conference in person online, or you're simply an all things EAP listener, we want to hear from you. So please get in touch at podcast@baleap.org. Thank you for listening and take care.