Supporting EMI students’ summary writing skills in the university context

In the last two decades there has been a growing trend of adopting English medium instruction (EMI) in universities. EMI increases the need for teaching English for specific purposes, so as to help students develop discipline-specific English language skills. Summary writing skills in such a disciplinary context are considered to be essential as students need to comprehend, synthesise and integrate source materials into their own academic writings. This paper focuses on a project supporting students’ summary writing skills through ESP summary writing workshops and an online learning platform in a university in Hong Kong. Data were collected through students’ self-reflections and post-workshop interviews. Findings reveal that disciplinary-specific summary writing training raises students’ awareness of writing skills that can be adapted to writings in their own subject courses; students also perceived that the online learning platform offers the chance for them to self-evaluate their own summaries and regulate their own learning. The present study contributes to the understanding of strategies that can support university students’ discipline-specific summary writing skills in the EMI context. Copyright © 2018 Asia TEFL.