Abstract

 This study investigates the effect of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses on students’ ability to achieve coherence in general academic writing tasks. Writing is a complex process that requires not only grammatical accuracy but also cohesion and coherence across sentences and paragraphs. Previous studies have shown that thematic and topical progression play a central role in producing coherent texts. However, many students at the Arab International University struggle with presenting elaborate ideas and maintaining coherence in general academic writing, despite being able to produce grammatically correct sentences. To address this issue, the present study examined whether exposure to ESP courses could enhance students’ general writing performance. A total of 120 undergraduate students from Civil Engineering, Arts, and Information and Communication Engineering were divided into experimental and control groups. The study employed a pre-test, an ESP instructional intervention, and a post-test. The pre-test and post-test writing tasks were evaluated based on content, form, and coherence. Findings revealed that students who completed the ESP course demonstrated greater improvement in producing organized, coherent, and content-rich paragraphs compared to those who only took the general academic writing course. These results suggest that integrating ESP with academic writing instruction can help students bridge the gap between discipline-specific and general writing skills. The study highlights the pedagogical value of combining ESP practices with general writing instruction to enhance students’ academic literacy.

Keywords: English for Specific Purposes, academic writing, coherence, thematic progression, higher education.

Link to full paper

https://journal.unilak.ac.id/index.php/ELT-Lectura/article/view/27843/8186