Understanding students’ approach to discipline-specificity when learning eap writing

Abstract

While the teaching of discipline-specific writing has drawn increasing attention in recent EAP writing research, much remains to be investigated regarding what constitutes teaching specificity. This study, adopting a learner-focused perspective, examines how students respond to discipline-specificity when learning in an EAP writing class and what the relationship is between learning the writing of disciplines and general academic writing. It used an in-depth qualitative approach and documented three focal students’ learning trajectories of a business-specific genre – case analysis – in an Academic English for Business course at a Chinese university, drawing on data from interviews, the students’ course reflections, and their multiple drafts of case analysis texts. It was found that the students grasped the genre-specific move structure and the specialized vocabulary of case analysis writing, and they also sharpened their academic skills for business study, including assessing information, applying disciplinary knowledge, and making evaluative analysis. However, the students’ learning of case analysis was affected by problems regarding their general academic writing skills, including argumentation and the formality and clarity of language in the academic written register. The issues of learning disciplinespecific writing in combination with disciplinary ways of knowing and doing, and the interplay between learning discipline-specific and general academic writing are discussed. Pedagogical implications for teaching specificity in EAP writing classes are also suggested