Teaching English Academic Writing to Economics Students: Challenges, Genre-Specific Needs and Effective Strategies

The article examines the development of English academic writing competence among economics students within English for Specific Purposes and English for Academic Purposes courses. The relevance of the topic is determined by the growing role of English-medium academic communication, the internationalisation of higher education, the need to prepare future economists for participation in international educational, research and professional projects, and the rapid spread of digital tools and generative artificial intelligence in study and professional practice. For economics students, academic writing is treated as an integrated professional competence that includes the ability to formulate and justify claims, analyse and interpret economic data, integrate sources appropriately, use discipline-specific terminology, and produce texts in different academic and professional genres. The aim of the article is to identify the main difficulties encountered by economics students in English academic writing and to systematise pedagogical strategies suitable for use in economics universities. The methodological basis is a narrative review of scientific and methodological literature on academic writing, English for Specific Purposes, English for Academic Purposes, genre-based instruction, disciplinary literacy, formative assessment, academic integrity and the responsible use of artificial intelligence. The reviewed sources were organised into thematic clusters, which made it possible to identify the most common challenges: weak text organisation, insufficient argumentation, inaccurate use of economic vocabulary and collocations, genre confusion, difficulties with citation and paraphrasing, and excessive dependence on digital tools. The article substantiates the value of combining a process-genre approach with analysis of authentic economic texts, scaffolded writing, corpus-informed vocabulary work, formative feedback, portfolio assessment and transparent rules for generative AI use. The proposed approach moves from controlled short tasks to increasingly independent production of abstracts, literature-review fragments, data commentaries, case analyses and final reports. It is concluded that effective academic writing instruction for economics students should simultaneously develop language accuracy, economic reasoning, genre competence, source integration, academic integrity and responsible digital literacy.