This study investigates the level of pragmatic competence for ESL writing skills among Nigerian undergraduates. Methodologically, it adopts descriptive research design within the explanatory framework of the QUAN-Qual model. The instruments used are descriptive essay text and focus group interview questions. In writing the descriptive essays, a total of 402 undergraduates' participated through convenience sampling. Quantitatively, an independent samples t-test was carried out. The results indicated the females required putting more efforts towards improving their pragmatic competence in the ESL writing as they achieved a higher means for language errors, compared to that of the males. Moreover, the ttest value demonstrated that the females lacked skills in the pragmatic skills of mechanical structure, grammatical function, and sentence structures and this made them commit more language errors. Qualitatively, a focus group interview was held randomly with 12 participants out of the 402 undergraduates through purposive sampling. The results of the interview sessions revealed novelties of culture-specific, learning feasibility and the academic discourse as the key elements that constraint most of the Nigerian undergraduates ESL writing skills, particularly the females. Therefore, this study revealed strong implications on how best to develop Nigerian learners' pragmatic competence in ESL writing skills.

In this study, we built a learner corpus, specifically the C-BUK corpus, to investigate variation in the processing of determiners in the descriptive ESL writing of the Nigerian undergraduate. The theoretical assumption that guides this study is that of the usagebased theory. Basically, the method applied in this study is the quantitative descriptive research design within the multi-dimensional corpus-based orientation. The findings showed that the overall undergraduates attained the highest frequency in processing the determiner capable of pronominal function (DD). This was followed by the singular determiners (DD1), the wh-question determiner (DDQ), post-determiners capable of pronominal function (DA), and pre-determiners capable of pronominal function (DB). These prove variant to the DDQGE, DDQV, DB2, DAR, DAT, DA1, DA2, and the DD2 forms of determiners, which were least processed. In terms of their gender variation, the females achieved higher frequencies in processing the DD, DD1, and DB, which was in variance to the males that attain a higher frequency in DDQ and DA. In terms of their ethnic group variation, the Igbo group achieved higher rates in DD1, DDQ, and DB. The Hausa group and the Yorùbá group attained higher rates in DA and DD respectively. The pedagogical implications suggest for the organization of seminars and the adoption of situated learning methods in order to enhance the Nigerian undergraduates English writing systems.

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