Worldwide, as students are now expected to demonstrate academic communicative competence, English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programmes have come into the spotlight. At the same time, it is becoming more and more common to move away from traditional paper coursebooks towards developing in-house digital teaching materials. However, this transition requires thorough planning and preparation. As teachers are the ones who are usually tasked with developing materials, their beliefs and experiences need to be examined in order to identify possible issues with this process. This small-scale qualitative study is aimed at exploring the development of, and teachers' attitudes towards in-house digital EAP teaching materials in a Preparatory Programme in Turkey. For this purpose, five teachers who have been involved in materials production were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire.

The key findings suggest that a lack of clearly defined materials development process or consistent institutional support which has been causing frustration and strong discontent among staff. It has become apparent that not following a research-based approach, but relying on teachers’ own experiences and intuition can result in producing irrelevant and inappropriate teaching content. This has caused materials creators themselves to form negative opinions of the EAP materials used at the Preparatory Program and the ways of their delivery, which has put the whole teaching process under a threat.

Key Words: English for Academic Purposes (EAP), in-house materials, qualitative study, attitudes, materials development process.