Chinese teachers’ perception of how TESOL differs from teaching EAP

The last two decades have witnessed a prolific increase in academic activity in the study of English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Many teachers who were trained for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) have been required to teach EAP. TESOL and EAP are two different concepts and teachers transitioning from TESOL to teaching EAP may encounter many difficulties. However, little research has been carried out in this area, particularly beyond the context of the UK. Helping teachers to clarify their perceptions of TESOL and EAP is the first step to facilitate this transition. The present study aims to facilitate Chinese university teachers’ pedagogical transitions from TESOL to teaching EAP by clarifying teachers’ own understanding of these two concepts and by outlining how several different factors contribute to their EAP conceptualisation. By using a multiple case study methodology, the current research has revealed that the investigated teachers’ perceptions of EAP comprised eclectic theories, which overlap with some current EAP literature. Facing a somewhat unethical research culture in China, some teachers added moral rubrics into their EAP concepts as reminders to their students. The teachers reported that TESOL and EAP diverged in discourses and commissions: EAP is more student empowering, but TESOL is more humanistic.


INTRODUCTION
Academic activity in the study of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) has been increasing in the last 20 years (Thompson & Diani, 2015). Consequently, many Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teachers have become teachers of EAP (Ding & Campion, 2016). However, empirical studies of the TESOL teachers' transition to EAP are both limited and UK-centric (Ding & Bruce, 2017). In Chinese academia, due to the increased English proficiency among university students, many scholars have advocated teaching EAP instead of the original TESOL syllabus in tertiary institutions (see Cai, 2017;Zhao & Yu, 2017). These scholars have foregrounded the role of the Shanghai Education Bureau in establishing a first EAP language policy for local universities (Li & Wang, 2018a). Consequently, Chinese TESOL teachers are increasingly being required to transition to EAP teaching. However, few studies have explored these Chinese teachers' perceptions of EAP and its differences with TESOL. According to Alexander (2012), teachers transitioning from TESOL to EAP teaching will benefit from the clarifications of their perception of these two different concepts. Nevertheless, studies regarding the academic world, a world that EAP students aspire to enter, or which they are already trying to navigate their way through. However, it needs to be emphasised that the focus of EAP is not just on language as the linguistic trace of a discourse process, but rather it is the whole discourse process, including the language, that is under consideration in EAP courses. This discourse process will include such influences on language use as context-related practices and expectations (including ideology), disciplinary epistemology and the forms of the conventionalised genres used for public communication, both through writing and speaking.
In contrast to TESOL, EAP aims to develop students' discursive competence (Bhatia, 2004) in academia, particularly reading and writing (Ding & Bruce, 2017). Therefore, TESOL's and EAP's dichotomy generally resides in their unique pedagogical goals and commitments (Ding & Bruce, 2017).
Despite the differences, the concepts of TESOL and EAP also overlap. Canagarajah (2006) even categorised EAP as an approach in TESOL. Some essential methods in EAP, such as contrastive rhetoric and genre analysis, were ascribed by Canagarajah (2016) as TESOL's literacy methods. Even in TESOL, the voice of the practitioners should understand that disciplinary language and meaning-making is still emerging (Dafouz et al., 2018), which is also a call of knowing disciplinary specificity in EAP (Hyland, 2006). What is noteworthy is that there was almost no fixed standard entering the EAP teaching industry, those holding degrees and those holding certificates in TESOL were both allowed to teach EAP (Ding & Campion, 2016).

Lack of studies regarding teachers' transitioning from TESOL to EAP teaching
Despite the possible similarities and differences, some teachers with TESOL background faced challenges in transitioning to EAP teaching. Alexander (2012Alexander ( , 2013 and her colleagues from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh were asked to switch from communicative language teaching (CLT), a method in the field of TESOL, to teaching EAP, without prior teacher training. By using semistructured interviews and online questionnaires, Alexander (2012) found that many teachers felt resistant to change due to their feeling of being deprived of the accumulated expertise and confidence in teaching Oral-English as in CLT.
In contrast, Campion ( 2016) reported that CLT facilitated the TESOL teachers in their transition. At the University of Nottingham, Campion (2016) used semi-structured interviews inquiring into six EAP teachers' transitions; five of them were TESOL teachers before starting to teach EAP. The study showed that the teachers' TESOL background, particularly their experiences in using CLT, facilitated their transition from TESOL to EAP teaching, while the challenge that they faced came from the students' disciplinary specificities (Campion, 2016). Martin's (2014) found that the teachers' TESOL qualification was less useful than academic qualifications. Martin's colleagues taught EAP at the London campus of the University of East Anglia. To examine how his colleagues overcame any uncertainties about becoming EAP teachers, and their beliefs regarding the TESOL and EAP courses, Martin (2014) conducted a narrative enquiry. Similar to Campion's findings ( 2016), the teachers' experienced a smooth transition from TESOL to EAP teaching, and they reported the relevance and usefulness of their TESOL knowledge and experience in teaching EAP because it is (somewhat) an extension of EFL (TESOL). Furthermore, the research participants referred to their academic experiences more frequently when transitioning to EAP teaching: "EAP teachers drawing more on their academic qualifications rather than their TEFL qualifications" (Martin, 2014, p. 309). However, after teaching EAP, the respondents had "a more negative view of the EFL (TESOL) teachers' role, describing it as vague and having ill-defined targets" (Martin, 2014, p. 310).
These three studies were all conducted in the UK. Therefore, there is a need for more studies in this topic in other contexts to deepen our understanding of the transition from TESOL to EAP teaching and to guide EAP teachers in a similar situation and also to add knowledge input to the EAP field from a heterogeneous community like Bruce (2017) mentions, which, thus, formulates a rationale for the present study.

Teachers under TESOL-EAP pedagogical transition in China
In 2013, the Shanghai Education Bureau published the first regional language policy for the introduction of EAP at Chinese tertiary institutes, which aimed to replace the original TESOL-oriented compulsory English with a new EAP course for non-English major undergraduate students (Cai, 2017). By 2018, 26 universities in Shanghai (or twothirds of the total tertiary institutions in Shanghai) had implemented the new policy (Wang, 2018). Interestingly, this means not every institute chose to follow it. Because the policy was not announced by the Chinese Ministry of Education (MOE), universities can choose whether or not to follow the EAP policy issued by the Shanghai Education Bureau. The MOE required non-English major undergraduate students to attend a compulsory English-language course in the first two years of their study. The course was humanistic and generic, covering topics such as "campus life, personal growth, politeness, appreciation of music, health and hygiene, friendship and human emotions, paths to success, and cultural values" (Cheng, 2016, p. 100).
As an echo of the newly introduced EAP policy, in 26 universities, teachers who used to teach TESOL were asked to transition to EAP teaching (Cheng, 2016). Like many others, Cheng (2016) expressed concern that the TESOL teachers lacked the necessary professionalism to teach EAP. However, Li and Wang (2018a) reported four university TESOL teachers who had successfully transitioned to EAP teaching, claimed that they had realised the necessity to teach EAP even before the policy stipulation was issued. Subsequently, Li and Wang (2018b) demonstrated how some of these TESOL teachers integrated project-based learning (PBL) pedagogy into EAP teaching. Similarly, Yao and Wang (forthcoming) reported another successful case of replacing TESOL with English for General Academic Purposes (EGAP) course. However, these studies did not examine the TESOL teachers' perceptions of EAP One of the most frequent challenges for TESOL teachers in teaching EAP has been shown to be "understanding what EAP involves and how it is different from general ELT" (Alexander, 2010, p. 4). These teachers often refer to their pre-service knowledge and experience (Thompson, 1992), and their TESOL knowledge and experience in the present context, even when they were asked to teach EAP. Just as the teachers in Alexander's (2012, p. 108) research, their belief about CLT performed "potential barriers to [the] successful delivery of EAP materials". Therefore, helping teachers to clarify their perceptions of TESOL and EAP, from Alexander's (2012) perspective, is the first step to facilitate the TESOL teachers' transition.
With these concerns in mind, the present study aimed to facilitate Chinese university TESOL teachers' pedagogical transition to EAP teaching by clarifying their understandings of EAP and TESOL. Therefore, the following research questions were designed to achieve the research aim: 1. How do the participant teachers define EAP? 2. What are the factors contributing to the formation of the teachers' definition of EAP? 3. How do the teachers perceive the difference between TESOL and EAP?

METHOD
The current study is a multiple case study that uses semi-structured interviews and classroom observations to explore the four teachers of EAP (the pseudonyms of the teachers are: F, L, B, and R) from three different universities in China and who used to be TESOL teachers. The interviews and observations were intermittently conducted consecutively over two months. In the first three rounds of the semi-structured interviews, the researchers prepared interview questions and sent the interview guide to the participant teachers via email or the social media app -WeChat. The initial interviews were carried out to collect information about the teachers' TESOL background, engaging them to reflect on their existing belief in TESOL and their perception of EAP. However, sometimes what the research participants say may not represent what they act (Cohen et al., 2010). Therefore, the researchers used classroom observations to verify the participants' claims and to discover what they failed to cover. The researchers spent approximately two months observing EAP classes taught by each of the four teachers, except for R, who quit the research after the first three interviews due to her pregnancy. When the researchers observed some teaching behaviors that did not match the participants' claimed EAP perception, as identified through the preliminary interviews, the researchers asked the research participants about these cases in the follow-up interviews. This enabled the teachers to reflect on and refine their perception of EAP.

Sampling and case specifications
The researchers' sampling of the participants followed the norms of purposive and snowball sampling because they tried to recruit teachers who claimed to be able to teach EAP successfully and who may have a clear binary concept between TESOL and EAP. By that time, both researchers were outsiders to the Shanghai EAP community, relying on personal contacts to recommend the participants. Teachers F and L were recommended by their faculty director to the researchers, while teachers L and R were commended by their university colleagues.
Lecturer F, male, was a pioneer EAP teacher. He was the EAP course coordinator in Commercial University (pseudonym). Before teaching EAP, he had ten years TESOL experience. He completed his Master's and Bachelor's degrees in top-tier universities in China. After graduation, he joined Commercial University. During the time of the present research, F was completing his part-time PhD. He helped to design PBL EAP pedagogy in Commercial University. His faculty director highly valued his teaching, and he was recommended by the officials of the Shanghai Education Bureau to demonstrate EAP teaching to other teachers from different institutions.
Professor L, female, studied English literature and philosophy as an undergraduate and focused on applied linguistics when studying for her Master's degree. She commenced her TESOL career in Commercial University 15 years ago. L went to Avon University (pseudonym) in the UK to study corpus linguistics as a visiting scholar for a year before joining the EAP reform at Commercial University. When L returned to China, she joined the PBL EAP team as a senior member. L had to overcome adversities in publishing in peer-reviewed international journals during her study at Avon University.
Professor B, female, holds a Master's degree in TESOL. She was innovative in implementing her TESOL pedagogy. Since teaching at Nail University (pseudonym), all of her attention was given to improving her students' motivation in learning English. She constantly changed her TESOL pedagogy in line with her students' needs and new developments in education. After B studied in Peninsula University (pseudonym) in the United States, she returned with a new idea of teaching multiple literacies to her students. She later developed an EAP pedagogy centred on multiple literacies and establishing the students' academic identities. Many other teachers had adopted her mode of EAP pedagogy.
Lecturer R, female, held a BA in media and communication, and an MA in English literature. She had been reading extensively in the field of English literature and philosophy. She was initially a TESOL teacher at Countryside University (pseudonym) before transitioning to EAP teaching. She integrated what she had learnt from English literature and philosophy into EAP teaching to improve the students' critical thinking skills. She was proud of establishing a very close relationship with the students. R was the champion of an EAP teaching competition in Shanghai in 2015.

Data analysis and ethical issues
The interview data were voice recorded by the researchers upon the consent of the participants. The interviews were conducted and transcribed in Chinese, which was selectively translated into English by the two bilingual researchers. The reason Chinese is used in the interviews is because that the fieldwork researcher and the research participants are Chinese as first language speakers, and using Chinese can obtain more information and in-depth mutual understanding in conversations. Both authors are also proficient in English, so they can translate Chinese interviews into English accurately.
Classroom observations were recorded through field notes. The data attained from both methods were open coded, thematised, and streamlined under the three research questions. All of the participants were given the right to participate and withdraw from the study at any time, and this was why R chose to withdraw after the third interview. The possible benefits of participating in this study were also informed to the teachers; in particular, they could improve their self-awareness of the EAP theories and pedagogies through reflecting on their EAP teaching practices. All of the names of the people and institutions were coded. The data were stored on the researchers' password protected hard disks and were not given to anyone else.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS How do the participant teachers define EAP?
The current study to some extent helped the teachers to understand their teaching better. In the first interview with F, when he was asked how he defined EAP, the definition he gave to the researchers was as follows: "EAP is a teaching pedagogy, a curriculum, focusing on using English in a particular discourse, a context. Because it is English for academic purposes, it is used more frequently in academia and higher education", (F interview 1). However, during the classroom observation, the researchers found that F was not merely teaching students the specifics of English academic writing but he also guided the students to search for literature, to design questionnaires, and to carry out social research projects as tasks in PBL. The instruction and aim of using PBL in EAP teaching seemed more focused on students experiencing research procedures rather than just teachers teaching English in an academic context, as mentioned in F's first definition of EAP. Therefore, in a follow-up interview, the researchers raised their concerns and sought explanations from F, who reported that: "EAP is based on English teaching, aiming to transfer students' awareness and identity as academics, helping them to act as a member of the academic community to solve problems in reality", (F follow-up interview 1).
F mentioned that he used to have a feeling that the PBL EAP that he had been teaching was related to forging students into new identities but he had failed to merge it as a part of his EAP definition until the researchers' follow-up interview. In the interview with L, she said: "EAP is a kind of logic, at a lower level, it is about critical thinking, while at a higher level it is about the logic researchers use to do research", (L interview 1). She also emphasised that "How to create a research aim, how to experiment with the aim, and how to analyze it all depended on such logic", (ibid.).
However, L failed to theorise the part she used to teach her students genres and registers in academic English because the researchers found that L gave her students samples of different registers in English, leading students to deduct differences from the samples and letting students write their compositions accordingly. Therefore, in a follow-up interview, when the researchers reminded L of her missing an essential part of the EAP definition in terms of teaching academic genre and register, she jokingly replied that EAP is also teaching students to disguise their daily use of English, putting on "the patterns used in published work", or, in her words, "pretending to write as an academic" (L follow-up interview 1). As the study proceeded, in the last session of the classroom observation, L showed a video clip to her students which discussed the goals of academic research and its contribution to humankind and society. In a follow-up interview after class, L gave another of her perspective on EAP, which she had not covered in earlier interviews: This [the information the video clips conveyed] is what people failed to see in EAP, and it is what the policymakers of Shanghai EAP reform failed to see. They merely focused on how to improve students' academic writing, but if we dig deeper into the concept, there is a profound meaning for students to learn EAP as an indirect incentive of research for the society. (L follow-up interview 2) Meanwhile, B told the researchers of her conceived EAP definition: "EAP is an educational concept, consisting of language learning, thinking skills training and students' learning behaviour management. My students are fresh undergraduates in the university, so EAP should aim at correcting their previous learning behaviours, as they used to learn just for exams", (B interview 1).
In the second interview, in which B narrated her TESOL and publication experience, she expressed her disappointment with some scholars in China: "they are not academics, they are politicians." Thus, she claimed that the EAP course she had been teaching possessed an academic spirit: "Trustworthy, knowledge-seeking, truth-pursuing, willing to share!" (B interview 2). Ingraining such spirit into her students, as B believed, is the primary task of EAP teaching: Establishing a scholarly identity among students is the everlasting mission of EAP teaching; if they consider themselves as academics and are proud of such an identity, my EAP teaching is successful. An identity is permanent, and they may be motivated to learn to strengthen such an identity further. (B interview 2) As for R, after sharing her opinions about EAP in three interviews, she decided to withdraw from the research due to her pregnancy. In one of the interviews, she stated: "When teaching EAP, I believe the most critical issue is to teach a kind of thinking; another aspect is to engage students with academic language simultaneously," (R interview 3).

Factors contributing to the formation of the teachers' definition of EAP
From the collected data, the researchers observed that the TESOL teachers' EAP knowledge was not entirely acquired from academic journals or books nor did it originate from EAP teacher training because there was not much formal training: "No guideline or document was telling us how we should teach EAP", (F interview 1). The investigated teachers' knowledge of EAP was from their own experience of academic research, judgement of their students' needs, and teachers' education theories.
Regarding the experiences of academic research in influencing the TESOL teachers' EAP definition formation, when F was told that he would be teaching EAP, he reported that the first thing that sprang into his mind was to refer to his own postgraduate learning experience. L shared her experience of studying in Birmingham as a visiting scholar where she had submitted her papers to some academic journals, but they were rejected by the journal editors many times due to her ignorance of academic English conventions. Later, she finally succeeded after improving her submission by consulting some mature researchers' work. L concluded that the experience of publications gave her opportunities to "learn the patterns used in published work", letting her have a perception that students learning EAP is actually "pretending to be academic" (L interview 1). She added: "I feel many teachers nowadays, including some of my colleagues in our department, may not have a deep understanding of those academic conventions, unless they have some publication experience", (L interview 1).
Academic research experience means so much to L. In contrast, the academic experience of B was related to her research being snatched and published by her supervisor without her permission, which caused her to suspect the academic spirits of many scholars. This incident influenced B's EAP definition: the EAP core spirit is "Trustworthy, knowledge-seeking, truth-pursuing, willing to share!" and establishing a scholarly identity among students is the critical mission of EAP teaching (B interview 2). F commented on how the Chinese culture of learning misled his EAP students and how he expected his students to progress through learning EAP: I want them to become proactive learners rather than only accepting whatever the authority offers, like what they used to do in their foundation education years, which is a residue of the habit of education in China. In China, students were made passive learners; they also considered themselves as receivers, accustomed to being treated as containers of knowledge. (F interview 2) Based on this reflection, in the PBL EAP pedagogy which F designed, he meant to involve his students in research, to give them self-initiative and let them feel more of an academic. This became an attribute to F's definition of EAP: "EAP is based on English teaching, aiming to transfer students' identity [as a researcher], helping them to act as a member of the academic community to solve problems in reality", (F interview 2). R also oriented her EAP perception by her students' needs: "I remembered a professor who once said that students in China were not skillful in thinking, so I hope I can deal with this in the EAP course", (R interview 3).
Meanwhile, R claimed that she used masterpieces of great thinkers such as Bertrand Russell as teaching materials for her EAP students and she adopted a Socratic questioning method to warm-up her students to think critically in her EAP lessons. Consequently, R's definition of EAP included the following concept: "When teaching EAP, I believe the most important issue is to teach a kind of thinking", (R interview 3).
How do the EAP teachers in pedagogic transitioning define the differences between TESOL and EAP? Some teachers mentioned that the difference between TESOL and EAP resided in their discursive features. As F argued: The distinction in their literal meaning, from my point of the review, is the most direct distinction. EAP stresses some different linguistic features, perhaps from the perspective of systematic functional linguistics. They are discursively different. (F interview 1) L's comment also revealed this difference: EAP means teaching students to disguise their everyday English, by using "the patterns used in published work" (L follow-up interview 1). The teachers also reported that EAP is more macro than TESOL regarding the missions. For example, B described the difference between TESOL and EAP as a shift from general language proficiency training to enhancing students' academic capabilities (B interview 2) because her goal of teaching EAP is to nurture students' scholarly identity.
Another example is from F and R, in which F claimed that "When I design a TESOL course, I stress the linguistic training, but in EAP I am more or less taking the role as their research method teacher", (F interview 1). Moreover, R argued that "In the first year of my TESOL career, I spent much time teaching language, sometimes a little about the culture, but I never taught beyond them," (R interview 1). Thanks to L's background in English literature and philosophy, she believed that in comparison with more functional EAP, TESOL is real education because it contains English literature classics, which, to her, help to immerse students in humanity: "I used to read English novels with students in TESOL courses, and now I do not think I can do it in EAP. Teaching classics to students is the real education, which is missing in EAP," (L interview 1). To L, merging contents shrined with literature and humanity into the EAP teaching is ideal, so she did her best to select materials to inspire the students.
Based on the data, the participant teachers did not receive formal training to obtain the knowledge of EAP. Meanwhile, their formation of EAP concepts was influenced by their experience of research, education backgrounds and their judgement of students' needs. In other words, their EAP knowledge was eclectic. Here, the word "eclectic" derives from the word eclecticism, meaning choosing the most appropriate "theories, styles, and ideas in order to gain a thorough insight about the subject and draws upon different theories in different cases" (Alizadeh & Hashim, 2016, p. 12). Although an eclectic approach in TESOL has already been encouraged to meet the ever-changing needs of the classroom context (Bax, 2003), teachers use an eclectic approach to conceptualise and to teach EAP was less heard. Hyland and Shaw (2016, p. 3) explained eclecticism as one of the key attributes to EAP and argued that EAP employed "an eclectic range of theories and methods".
The EAP definitions produced by the respective investigated teachers, although inferred from their own experience and ideology, somewhat overlapped with the definitions in the mainstream literature of EAP. For example, F, L, and R all stressed the importance of teaching academic English and skills to the students, reflecting a popular skill-based EAP strand (Dudley-Evan & St John, 1998). F and B engaged students in academic activities and helped them to become a member of research communities, which is similar to the disciplinary socialisation EAP strand (Hyland, 2006). Furthermore, F's and L's reflection on the function of EAP was to socialise students and to let them devote themselves to human well-being. This echoes Chun's (2015) critical EAP approach, who expected his EAP students not to be passive recipients of knowledge but instead to connect with broader social realities through meaning-making. R's understanding of EAP, except for the session of teaching writing, merely looked at critical thinking. None of the participants produced a holistic definition of EAP, and instead, they demonstrated a fragmented understanding of the jargon. What is noteworthy is that the teachers in the current research were pioneer EAP teachers in their contexts. In this vein, the current study partially supported Gao and Bartlett's (2014) report that Chinese EAP teachers are nebulous about EAP knowledge.
The teachers in the present study found that the differences between TESOL and EAP are their distinctive forms of language. For example, L said that TESOL stresses social discourse, while EAP stresses academic discourse, which is consistent with Martin's (2014) division of EAP and TESOL with the former focusing on academic genre while the latter on a generic genre. The teachers also reported the different commitments of TESOL and EAP. For example, F claimed that EAP was suitable for students to communicate in higher education and academia. This result is similar to Ding and Bruce's (2017) summary of the differences between TESOL and EAP, about which TESOL is for daily conversation and EAP for academic communications. Another difference was discovered by R, who criticised EAP's functional feature, saying that TESOL is more educational because it imbued with classic humanistic readings. From a different perspective, for F and L, EAP seemed to be more educational because it empowered the students to either become proactive researchers or research for human well-being.
The teachers held some unique views of EAP. For example, B integrated a moral segment into her EAP definition by raising a slogan: "Trustworthy, knowledge-seeking, truth-pursuing, and willing to share." At first glance, this may appear to be redundant because this slogan represents the academic capital that every academic is supposed to know. However, this is not straightforward as it may seem to be. In an editorial in Science, Shi and Rao (2010) seriously criticised the unethical academic behaviours in China, saying that scholars become bureaucrats, and they spend more time pulling strings than training young researchers. They even commented on the research culture in China: "It wastes resources, corrupts the spirits, and stymies innovations" (Shi & Rao, 2010, p. 1128. Hamp-Lyon (2011, p. 2) advised that prevention is an effective treatment of academic misconduct: "prevent is far better than cleaning up the mess". In this context, B's moral slogan in EAP seemed to be a precautionary reminder to her Chinese students who may one day become academics. F's use of EAP to improve the students' academic identities and L's idea of using EAP to improve the students' sense of the social meaning of research are also moral practicum to some extent. Including morals in EAP concepts is unique in the Chinese context. However, it is of equal importance to the international EAP community, as Bruce (2017) welcomes the broadest possible EAP communities' contribution.

CONCLUSION
This multiple case study adopted semi-structured interviews and classroom observations to probe four Chinese university TESOL teachers' perceptions of EAP in their pedagogical transitioning from TESOL to EAP teaching, as set out under the policies of the Shanghai Education Bureau. By answering the three research questions-1. How do the participant teachers define EAP? 2. What are the factors contributing to the formation of the teachers' definition of EAP? 3. How do the teachers perceive the difference between TESOL and EAP? -the current research has revealed that the teachers' perceptions of EAP included eclectic theories and experiences of research, personal education theories, and judgements of students' needs. However, their eclectic knowledge of EAP to some extent overlapped with some current EAP theories, despite being not holistic. When facing an unethical research culture in China, many of the teachers added their moral rubrics into their EAP concepts and teaching. The teachers reported that TESOL and EAP diverged in discourses and commissions-EAP is more student-empowering, but TESOL is more humanistic. It is hoped that this study will help to deepen our understanding of teachers transitioning from TESOL to EAP teaching in the context of China and will help the participant teachers to see their established perceptions of EAP and TESOL, which will facilitate their transition. Nonetheless, this study has some limitations, as the participants may not represent a broader population. Still, it is hoped that this study can provide some useful references for future studies in this area.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This study is adapted from the first author's PhD dissertation under the supervision of the corresponding author. The PhD dissertation has now been published as a monograph titled with Educational Change Amongst English Language College Teachers in China: Transitioning from Teaching for General to Academic Purposes. The monograph is an Open Access publication licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).