The Effects of Using Scientific Genre to Promote Undergraduate Students’ English Academic Writing in an ESP Course

Abstract

Argumentative writing is problematic for Thai EFL learners. This study aims to determine the effects of an argumentative correspondence writing course in an ESP for Science classroom. The course was designed from the genre-based approach, including stance and engagement by Hyland (2005) and ESP material design by Hutchinson and Waters (1987). The experiment involved 40 participants studying in a science field in a public university in Thailand. The study used a one-group pretest and posttest design. The research instruments were a knowledge test and a writing test for scientific argumentative correspondence. The results revealed statistically meaningful differences between the pretest and posttest scores, indicating that the students increased their abilities and gained higher test scores through completing the course. The findings suggest that instruction of writing scientific argumentative correspondences is effective and should be included in ESP science courses, especially as a foundation for writing longer texts in scientific genres.