L2 Learners' Perceived Knowledge of Genre Elements and Recontextualization of Genre Awareness in Higher Education

Introduction

Genre, as a multifaceted and complex construct (Cheng, 2011), is defined as “a class of communicative events” (Swales, 1990) within the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) genre-based approach. In their seminal work, Swales (1990) characterizes genres by their “communicative purposes” and by various patterns of “structure, style, content and intended audience” (p. 58). In the literature, scholars highlight the social function and form of a genre (Hyon, 1996) with a particular emphasis on structural move analyses to describe global organizational patterns (Swales, 1981, 1986, 1990). Acknowledging these considerations, approaches to genre-based pedagogy vary significantly (Hyon, 1996). For this reason, this study is based on the ESP genre-based pedagogy in an L2 setting. In ESP, genre-based applications can help non-native speakers of English master the functions and linguistic conventions of texts (Hyon, 1996; Swales, 1990). Scholars conducting ESP based genre studies have proposed language analysis tasks outlined by Bhatia (1993). For example, Swales and Feak (1994), and Weissberg and Buker (1990) illustrate activities for helping students gain awareness communicative purposes and linguistic features of texts that they need read and write in their disciplines and professions. Specifically, techniques such as “flow chart” analyses of genre structure, “gap filling” of structural slots, and “concordancing” of verb forms found in genres are used to promote learners’ mastery of genre conventions (Flowerdew, 1993).

With the shift towards this pedagogical framework, genre has become one of the most significant and influential concepts in language education (Hyland, 2004). It is often defined as “a distinctive category of discourse of any type, spoken or written” (Swales, 1990) to achieve a communicative purpose. There is a growing body of literature that recognizes the significance of genre approaches to writing instruction, which emphasizes that all writing takes place in a social situation and is a reflection of a particular purpose (Clark, 2012; Han & Hiver, 2018; Paltridge, 2013; Zhang & Zhang, 2021). In a recent study, texts within the same genre are found to have different communicative purposes, and there is extensive communicative variation among texts within genres produced by learners (Goulart, Biber & Reppen, 2022). More specifically, a single genre exhibits different major purposes which challenges the preconception that all texts within a genre share the same communicative purposes (Goulart et al., 2022). In the literature, several ESP genre scholars identified “how communicative purposes are conveyed in textually conventionalized ways by members of a particular discourse community who regularly participate in a given genre and who share similar communicative purposes” (Cheng, 2011). These variations and different communicative functions lead to the examination of the language patterns and complex nature of genre elements in L2 writing pedagogy. As such, language patterns are central to the structure of genres, and they provide contexts for learning new lexico-grammatical features or discourse structures in a second language (Tardy, 2012). In line with this argument, “genre pedagogy, then, provides a useful lens through which to view the social nature of writing and writing development” (Tardy, 2012). Considering this emphasis, genre-based L2 writing pedagogy is a fundamental property of writing instruction. This pedagogical framework highlights the role of genre-specific knowledge, which entails genre knowledge and genre awareness (Tardy, Sommer-Farris & Gevers, 2020).