ACADEMIC WRITING FOR NON-LINGUISTIC STUDENTS: CHALLENGES AND TEACHING STRATEGIES

The increasing role of academic literacy in higher education has led to a growing emphasis on academic writing skills across a wide range of disciplines.University students enrolled in non-linguistic programmes, such as information technology, psychology, economics, and related fields, are increasingly expected to engage with research literature, write summaries and abstracts, and produce short academic texts in English.This tendency reflects a broader shift towards genre-based and disciplinesensitive approaches to academic writing instruction, which emphasise the relationship between language use and disciplinary practices (Hyland, 2019).Despite this growing demand, academic writing remains one of the most challenging components of language learning for non-linguistic students, particularly in contexts where English is taught as a foreign language.Unlike language majors, these students often have limited exposure to academic genres and research-based texts prior to university study.As a result, academic writing tasks are frequently perceived as abstract, overly formal, or disconnected from students' professional interests, which negatively affects both motivation and performance.One of the key difficulties lies in students' insufficient familiarity with academic genres and conventions.Non-linguistic students often lack an understanding of how academic texts are structured, how arguments are developed, and how evidence is integrated into written discourse.Their written work frequently demonstrates problems with text organisation, coherence, academic register, and appropriate use of sources.Insufficient awareness of genre conventions often leads students to produce texts that resemble general informational writing rather than academic discourse, particularly in summary and abstract writing tasks (Swales & Feak, 2012).Another significant challenge concerns working with academic sources.Many students experience difficulty paraphrasing and summarising complex research texts, which often results either in excessive quotation or in unintentional plagiarism.Limited awareness of citation practices and academic integrity requirements further complicates the learning process.In addition, students frequently struggle to distinguish between popular science materials, educational blogs, and peer-reviewed research articles, which affects both the quality and credibility of the sources selected for academic writing tasks.Research in ESP and EAP contexts consistently indicates that source-based writing is among the most problematic skills for learners in nonlinguistic programmes (Basturkmen, 2010).