English Academic Writing Challenges of Senior High School Students in Non-academic Tracks: Toward an Equitable and Socially Just Academic Writing Practice

This chapter presents critical insights of academic writing that could shed light into its equitable and socially just teaching practice within an English Medium Instruction (EMI) context. It draws upon an exhaustive exploration of the English academic writing challenges experienced by senior high school students in non-academic tracks and explicates how such challenges can be addressed from the lens of equity and social justice in EMI. The academic writing challenges of the students explored in this chapter are multifaceted, ranging from linguistic nuances to genre conventions, stylistic elements, the writing process, and collaboration dynamics, which were unpacked through quantitative and qualitative analyses. Based on the analyses, the chapter propounds the need for reconfiguring academic writing curriculum, instruction, and assessment to address the learners’ multi-/plurilingual needs without necessarily deviating from the established norms of academic writing, thereby charting the ways toward an equitable and socially just academic writing practice—one that is truly liberating and empowering for learners.