Current Trends in the Theory and Practice of Teaching Academic Writing: A Systematic Review (2019–2025) with Special Reference to the Higher Education Context of Kazakhstan

Abstract

Between 2019 and 2025 academic writing pedagogy worldwide has been transformed by the rapid expansion of English Medium Instruction, the emergence of generative artificial intelligence, the rise of translanguaging practices, and a decisive epistemic turn toward understanding writing as knowledge creation. This systematic review analyses 112 empirical studies published in the period and situates them within the specific realities of Kazakhstan’s higher education system. Globally, the field has consolidated around genre- and corpus-based approaches, multimodal and digital literacies, plurilingual strategies, AI-assisted human feedback loops, discipline-embedded instruction, and the concept of academic literacy as the overarching goal. In Kazakhstan, despite the trilingual education policy, the “Рухани жаңғыру” programme, the drive to place ten universities in the global top 200 by 2029, and a dramatic increase in Scopus-indexed publications, academic writing instruction remains fragmented, predominantly text-centred, and largely confined to foreign-language departments. The review argues that Kazakhstan is uniquely positioned to develop an original trilingual model of academic writing pedagogy that combines international best practices with respect for Kazakh, Russian, and English rhetorical traditions, thereby producing graduates who are globally competitive while retaining a distinctive national scholarly voice