TL;DR: EAPP is English for Academic and Professional Purposes, one of the seven Applied Track subjects of the K to 12 Senior High School curriculum: Grade 11 or 12, 80 hours per semester, no prerequisite. Its curriculum guide is built around five written outputs across two quarters, with a prescribed week allocation for each, and it is contextualised for Tech-Voc learners through explicit footnotes. It is now an outgoing subject. DepEd Order No. 017, s. 2026 replaced the Applied Track with a five-subject core plus electives, and no subject called EAPP appears in either list. The nearest core subject is Effective Communication, at 160 hours a year and aligned to the college GE subject Purposive Communication.
EAPP is the subject that teaches Senior High learners to write the documents the rest of school and work will demand of them: summaries, critiques, concept papers, position papers and reports. It is also one of the least understood, because most learners meet it as a series of assignments rather than as a designed sequence with a stated logic.
This guide sets out what the DepEd curriculum guide actually requires, in the order and the week allocation the guide itself prescribes, and then explains where the subject stands after the Senior High School restructure.
What Is EAPP?
EAPP is an Applied Track subject of the K to 12 Senior High School curriculum. The DepEd curriculum guide gives the subject description in one line: "The development of communication skills in English for academic and professional purposes." The guide is dated December 2013 and carries the header "K to 12 Basic Education Curriculum, Senior High School — Applied Track Subject".
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Grade level | 11 or 12 |
| Hours | 80 hours per semester |
| Prerequisite | None listed |
| Subject category | Applied Track subject |
| Competency codes | CS_EN11/12A-EAPP-… |
The Applied Track classification is the thing to notice. DepEd's seven applied subjects are English for Academic and Professional Purposes, Practical Research 1, Practical Research 2, Filipino sa Piling Larang, Empowerment Technologies, Entrepreneurship, and Inquiries, Investigations and Immersion. All Senior High School learners took them, whatever their track. What varied was the contextualisation, not the competency.
Note also that the guide gives no semester. It lists Grade 11 or 12 and leaves scheduling to the school, which is why learners from neighbouring schools genuinely do take EAPP at different points in Senior High.
What Are the Five EAPP Outputs?
The subject is organised around five written outputs, and the curriculum guide assigns each a block of weeks. This is unusually prescriptive for a DepEd curriculum guide, and it is the clearest picture of what the subject expects.
| Quarter | Weeks | Content area | The output |
|---|---|---|---|
| I | 1-3 | Reading Academic Texts | A precis, abstract or summary of texts across disciplines |
| I | 4-6 | Writing the Reaction Paper, Review or Critique | An objective, balanced critique of a work, event or programme |
| I | 7-10 | Writing the Concept Paper | A well-balanced concept paper in a specific discipline, plus exam |
| II | 11-14 | Writing the Position Paper | A position paper defending a stand with properly cited evidence |
| II | 15-20 | Writing the Report: Survey, Field, Laboratory or Scientific Technical Report | A written report from a survey, experiment or observation, plus exam |
The progression is deliberate and worth naming: the learner reads and compresses somebody else's text, then responds to a text, then explains an idea, then argues a position, then generates original data and reports it. Each stage adds one thing the previous stage did not require. By week 20 the learner is doing something close to the front half of a research paper.
What Each Output Actually Requires
Reading Academic Texts (weeks 1-3). Ten competencies, running from determining the structure of an academic text through to writing a precis, abstract or summary. Along the way: differentiating the language of academic texts across disciplines, stating the thesis statement of a text, paraphrasing in one's own words, outlining, and summarising. This is where most Filipino learners first meet the abstract as a form, though as a summary of somebody else's work rather than of their own study. Writing an abstract for your own research is a different task, covered in the research abstract guide.
The Reaction Paper, Review or Critique (weeks 4-6). The guide asks learners to form opinions based on facts, cite specific sources to support claims, raise contrary views appropriately, and use appropriate critical approaches such as formalism or feminism. The performance standard names the objects of critique explicitly: performance arts, film, festivals, art exhibits, industrial and craft design, and graphic design communication materials such as posters and billboards.
The Concept Paper (weeks 7-10). Six competencies. The learner defines what a concept paper is, determines how a writer elucidates a concept by definition, explication and clarification, identifies situations where a concept paper could improve society, and explains concepts across a listed set of fields including art, business, law, philosophy, politics, religion, science, sports and Tech-Voc specialisations. The output is a novel concept or project presented with visuals or graphic aids.
The Position Paper (weeks 11-14). Five competencies. Define the form, identify situations where it applies, gather manifestos and analyse the arguments in them, defend a stand with reasonable arguments supported by properly cited factual evidence, and write various kinds of position paper. The phrase "properly cited" is doing real work: this is the point where citation mechanics stop being optional. The rules are in the APA citation guide for Philippine student papers.
The Report (weeks 15-20). Seven competencies, and the heaviest block by weeks. Learners determine the objectives and structures of various kinds of report, design, test and revise survey questionnaires, conduct surveys, experiments or observations, gather information from them, disseminate the findings in written form, summarise findings, and execute the report through narrative and visual or graphic forms.
The curriculum guide itself footnotes that the design, conduct, gathering and dissemination competencies in this last block are also covered in the research subjects. That overlap is intentional, and it is why schools that teach EAPP before Practical Research 1 tend to have an easier time with the research subject.
How Is EAPP Contextualised for Tech-Voc Learners?
Through explicit footnotes in the curriculum guide rather than through a separate version of the subject. Three of them:
- For the Tech-Voc track, the academic texts read in weeks 1-3 may be modified to include texts specific to their courses, such as instructional manuals, brochures and digital materials, across Home Economics, Agri-Fishery, ICT and Industrial Arts.
- The critical-approach competencies in the critique block may be replaced by technical applications of specific Tech-Voc disciplines such as welding, vulcanising, housekeeping, home care or livestock.
- In the report block, learners may write about their field of specialisation, for instance the result of an entrepreneurial venture, a service, or a livestock experiment.
This is a genuinely useful design detail for teachers and learners alike: the assessed competency stays constant while the subject matter follows the strand. It also means two learners in the same cohort can produce very different-looking outputs and both be fully compliant with the guide.
Disclaimer: how a school schedules EAPP, and how strictly it applies the contextualisation footnotes, varies by school and by schools division. Confirm your own school's arrangement with your subject teacher.
Is EAPP Still in the Curriculum?
Not under the restructured curriculum, and this is where most material online is now out of date.
DepEd Order No. 017, s. 2026, "Strengthened Senior High School Curriculum", issued 4 June 2026, amends DepEd Order No. 021, s. 2019, specifically Annex 2 on Secondary Education, along with DO 030, s. 2017 on Work Immersion. It removes the Applied Track entirely. What remains is five core subjects taken in Grade 11 by all learners, plus electives within two tracks, Academic and Technical-Professional.
Table 1 of the order lists the core subjects and their alignment to college general education subjects under CHED Memorandum Order No. 20, s. 2013:
| SSHS core subject | Hours per year | Aligned GE subject |
|---|---|---|
| Effective Communication and Mabisang Komunikasyon | 160 | Purposive Communication |
| General Mathematics | 160 | Mathematics in the Modern World |
| General Science | 160 | Science, Technology, and Society |
| Life and Career Skills | 160 | Understanding the Self |
| Pag-aaral ng Kasaysayan at Lipunang Pilipino | 160 | Readings in Philippine History |
No subject called English for Academic and Professional Purposes appears there, and none appears in Annex A's elective lists either. The Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities cluster of Academic Electives does carry writing-adjacent subjects, Contemporary Literature 1 and 2 and Creative Composition 1 and 2 among them, but those are electives, not a replacement core.
The order itself gives only titles, hours and GE alignment, not content. But DepEd has since published the Effective Communication curriculum guide along with lesson exemplars and learning activity sheets for all four quarters, and it settles the question: Effective Communication is not EAPP renamed.
The guide describes a Grade 11 core subject developing communicative competence in both English and Filipino, across four contexts — personal and interpersonal, social and cultural, academic and training, and professional and work — benchmarked to CEFR B2. EAPP, by contrast, is an English-only Applied subject built around five written academic outputs.
The structure matters too. The guide describes a dual-language framework in which English and Filipino run as parallel but complementary strands, each delivered separately by its own teacher at 80 instructional hours per school year. So the 160-hour figure is the subject total across both strands, not 160 hours of English. Read against EAPP's 80 hours in a single semester, the English-side commitment is comparable; what is genuinely new is the Filipino strand beside it.
If you are looking for the EAPP writing outputs specifically, they are not the spine of the new subject.
When Does the Change Reach Your Year Level?
| School year | Grade 11 | Grade 12 |
|---|---|---|
| SY 2026-2027 | Strengthened SHS Curriculum in all public and private SHS | 2016 K to 12 SHS curriculum continues for learners not in pilot schools |
| SY 2027-2028 | Strengthened SHS Curriculum | Strengthened SHS Curriculum — full implementation across both grades |
DO 017 sets the phasing as Grade 11 in SY 2026-2027 and Grade 12 in SY 2027-2028, and provides that Grade 12 learners in SY 2026-2027 who are not in pilot schools continue on the 2016 K to 12 curriculum. So a Grade 12 learner this year who has not yet taken EAPP may still take it; an incoming Grade 11 learner will not.
The wider set of changes, including the replacement of the strand system with elective clusters, is covered in our guide to the Strengthened Senior High School Curriculum. The outgoing structure that current Grade 12 learners are still on is explained in tracks and strands, and for the English competencies that feed into Senior High from the lower grades, see the DepEd English curriculum guide.
Ready to find the right school? Browse schools or compare Senior High School programmes, strands and tuition across hundreds of Philippine schools on SchoolFinderPH.
Sources
- DepEd, Strengthened Senior High School Curriculum: Effective Communication (curriculum guide) — https://www.deped.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/Effective-Communication.pdf
- DepEd — English for Academic and Professional Purposes Curriculum Guide (SHS Applied Track)
- DepEd Order No. 017, s. 2026 — Strengthened Senior High School Curriculum
- DepEd — Senior High School Applied Track Subjects
- DepEd — Strengthened SHS Program
- DepEd — Practical Research 1 Curriculum Guide (SHS Applied Track)
