2018 Annual Conference of China English Language Education Association (CELEA2018)

186 / 2018-06-29 23:38:49

Enhancing L2 Learners’ Genre Awareness in EAP Writing Tasks: A Case Study of Non-English-major Graduate Students in Beihang University

genre, instruction, task-based, EAP writing

Plenary track > 中国特色英语教学研究

Second language learners are assumed to need systematically-designed explicit instruction before accomplishing writing tasks because they are doubly challenged by both their limited linguistic resources and their lack of familiarity with the genres and registers expected in secondary discourses. Therefore, introducing students to meaning-making choices in different situations can help promote their awareness in the construct of different genres. This paper is a pilot study on EAP writing course design, which aims to enhance non-English-major graduate students’ rhetorical awareness, integrating genre instruction into tasks with the guidance from task-based language teaching (TBLT) principles. The participants of this study were 50 non-English-major graduate students who were enrolled in a writing course designed to link the two important notions of genre and task. Sample analyses of three linked genres (full-length research articles, abstracts of the research articles and the sci-tech news to report the research articles) were incorporated into the syllabus so that students could understand genre chains and genre network. Then two target genres were designed and assigned to students as writing tasks: summary writing and sci-tech news writing. The assessment of students’ performance in the writing tasks indicates that unpacking genre objectives into well-motivated task design and task sequences can contribute to their learning of language and expand their lexicogrammatical repertoires in writing.

Keywords: genre, instruction, task-based, EAP writing