English for Occupational Purposes, Motivation, and Writing Skills: Evidence From Indonesian Higher Education

In the context of increasing internationalization, profession-specific English proficiency is widely recognized as a key graduate attribute for employability and competitiveness. Yet, English teaching in higher education often remains focused on General English, with limited integration of English for Occupational Purposes (EOP). This gap contributes to low student motivation and underdeveloped writing skills. Addressing this issue, the present study investigates the influence of EOP on student learning motivation and examines how both factors affect writing ability. The study employed a quantitative approach with a confirmatory and explanatory design. The research sample consisted of 100 students from a university in Riau Province, determined using the Slovin formula. Data collection was carried out through questionnaires, and data analysis used SEM-PLS with the help of SmartPLS 4.0. The results showed that EOP had a significant effect on student writing ability, learning motivation had a considerable effect on writing ability, and EOP had an indirect impact on writing ability through the mediation of learning motivation. The results of the determination coefficient test showed that the R² value for the writing ability variable was 0.813. This means that 81.3% of the variation in students' writing ability can be explained by the English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) and learning motivation variables. Meanwhile, the remaining 18.7% is influenced by other factors outside the research model, such as self-efficacy, language anxiety, learning environment support, and vocabulary and grammar mastery. The R² coefficient indicates a high level of explanatory strength, confirming that the model is effective in predicting differences in students' writing performance. Thus, it could be concluded that the effective implementation of EOP not only improves writing ability directly but also indirectly through increased learning motivation. This finding provides important implications for the development of English curricula in higher education, particularly in the integration of the EOP approach to strengthen motivation while improving students' writing skills.