The Link between English for Academic Purposes and undergraduate business dissertations

Undergraduate programmes often expect students to consolidate their discipline knowledge in a dissertation. Many Hong Kong students face an additional challenge as the dissertation is written in their second language, that is, English. Language courses are usually offered in the junior years of undergraduate studies, and students may not apply the English for Academic Purposes (EAP) skills (e.g. coherence and referencing) learned before when they reach the final year dissertation stage. This lack of EAP application problem has often been reported in the literature as students could not perceive the connection between English courses and discipline subjects (e.g. writing skills required for completing discipline assignments) and consider them as different courses. This paper presents the design and implementation of an additional 30-minute workshop that aims to make explicit to final year business students the connection between the writing skills taught in EAP courses and those needed for their dissertation, via workshop activities and handouts that include excerpts from a discipline-specific journal article. Students’ immediate feedback was very positive as they became more aware of the need of applying EAP skills to their dissertation writing.