**3. Predicaments in EAP teacher education**

Tavakoli and Tavakol [46] pointed out that, EAP teacher educators are not able to provide the prospective EAP teachers with satisfactory education due largely to financial problems. According to them, the preponderance of the EAP courses is not funded by governmental grant in university settings. Moreover, the language institutes are not capable to fund appropriate EAP teacher education courses. Moreover, Taherkhani [47] pointed out that the current EAP teacher education courses are not able to furnish the pre-service and in-service EAP teachers with useful manuals which apprise them of the ways of putting the theory of EAP into practice in the context of the classroom.

Furthermore, Soodmand Afshar and Donyaie [48] noted that the lack of effective teacher education courses in second and foreign language learning contexts stems from the lack of access to erudite EAP teacher educators in these contexts. As they explained, most of the current EAP teacher educators are self-taught and have not attended specific education courses. According to them, this issue precludes them from providing the prospective EAP teachers with effective education regarding the theoretical and practical issues of this field of study.

Finally, Wichadee [49] argued that the EAP teacher education program developers and EAP teacher educators' reluctance to seek assistance from the field experts constitutes one of the major impediments to the development of effective EAP teacher education courses. He noted that, in most of these courses, program developers and teacher educators presume that their understanding of the technical jargon of the various fields of study ensures the sufficiency of their knowledge of the pertinent fields. Notwithstanding, as he pointed out, the collaboration between the EAP program developers and teacher educators and the experts of the relevant disciples is the sine qua non of their acquaintance with the methodological features of the relevant fields. As he concluded, the development of efficacious EAP teacher education courses offers several advantages over the traditional EAP teacher training courses in second and foreign language learning contexts.
