The Impact of Knowledge of English Rhetorical Patterns of Organisation on BA Accounting and Finance Students' Writing Academic Genres

Introduction

Teaching academic writing has been a challenge for many practitioners, mainly in ESP (English for Specific Purposes) contexts as it is related and due to a lack of consideration of its importance by both institutions and graduate and post-graduate students. Specificity of the discipline requires specific courses (Basturkmen, 2010) that consider the type of the discipline, the learners, the content, and the objective behind the course. In an Accounting and Finance department as the one in Ghardaia University, it has been noticed that there is no clear objective for teaching English for either graduate or post-graduate students, and this lack has made teachers rely on themselves to provide courses based on mainly teaching specialised vocabulary while neglecting the reading and writing skills. Concerning the latters which are interrelated (Grabe, 2003, 2006, 2009; Grabe and Stoller, 2001), there should be a focus on developing them as they are needed for many objectives which range from writing business letters, memos, e-mails, reports up to dissertations. Grabe (2003) claims that “reading and writing might reinforce or accelerate the learning content, the development of literacy skills, and the acquisition of language abilities” (p. 242). Nonetheless, students should have linguistic knowledge, English in this case (Alderson, 2000). Swales and Feak (2004) maintain that “Graduate students face a variety of writing tasks as they work toward their chosen degrees.” (p. 7). Letters of application are required for job hunting, and are not taken into consideration by the majority of teachers in business studies, mainly in Accounting and Finance content area, which implies teaching how they are structured through a specific framework.