Rethinking ESP Teaching in Higher Education

This book proposes a shift in early higher education instruction, arguing that novice students should initially focus on mastering recurrent academic language functions such as defining, classifying, and explaining, rather than attempting to grasp complex, discipline-specific genres. Motivated by challenges such as the Bologna reform, the spread of English-Medium Instruction, and diverse student profiles, the authors suggest that this functional approach facilitates academic socialization. The central argument is that proficiency in these Cognitive Discourse Functions precedes the ability to construct comprehensive communicative events. The text provides an empirical exploration of Cognitive Discourse Functions emergence and realization in undergraduate writing across various disciplines. By focusing on the transition of students into expert roles, the research offers critical insights into academic literacy. The book advocates for prioritizing these functions to aid students' academic journey and will be valuable to ESP educators, researchers, and discourse analysis scholars interested in genre variation.