English writing competence and EMI performance: student and expert perceptions of academic writing in EMI

Abstract

University English Medium Instruction (EMI) programmes place heavy demands on students' writing skills, yet academic writing support is rarely provided. This paper investigates the English academic writing competences of a group of Economics students taking EMI courses at a Spanish university from a triple perspective: we compare how these students rated their own writing competence, and how content teachers and language experts rated the texts they produced. After examining whether the students' self-assessment correlated with the content grade awarded by the course teacher and with evaluations of their work by language experts, we found major discrepancies between students' self-reported confidence in their writing ability and their actual performance as assessed independently. Importantly, the quality of students' writing was significantly correlated with their overall content score. Our conclusions suggest that students would benefit from academic writing training if it could be tailored to meet specific needs that arise in the university context. Content teachers should collaborate with language experts to design writing programmes focused on course requirements