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English-medium instruction (EMI), English for Academic Purposes (EAP), and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) are often discussed as separate educational enterprises, yet universities increasingly expect them to solve a common problem: how to develop students’ ability to study, communicate, and perform professionally through English. This article argues that the three fields should be understood not as competing models but as complementary pathways toward ESL competence in internationalised higher education. Adopting a critical integrative review design, the article synthesises foundational and recent scholarship from EMI, EAP, and ESP to examine their distinct pedagogical logics, their limits when implemented in isolation, and their combined potential for curriculum design. The analysis shows that EMI primarily creates an ecology of disciplinary exposure and authentic participation, EAP provides explicit mediation of academic genres and literacy practices, and ESP refines competence through needs-based attention to specialised discourse. Each pathway, however, becomes pedagogically incomplete when detached from the others: EMI may overestimate incidental language learning, EAP may become overly generic, and ESP may narrow learning to immediate instrumental needs. The article therefore proposes an integrated pathway model in which EMI supplies the communicative environment, EAP offers academic scaffolding, and ESP delivers disciplinary and professional precision. This model reconceptualises ESL competence as multidimensional, encompassing linguistic, academic, disciplinary, interactional, and strategic capacities. The article concludes with implications for curriculum sequencing, teacher collaboration, assessment, and equity-oriented language policy in higher education, while also identifying future research priorities for longitudinal, discipline-sensitive, and multilingual investigation across diverse institutional settings, and policy contexts.
