The effectiveness of genre-based pedagogy in students' genre awareness and professional identity development : a case study of a university engineering language course

Abstract

Considerable attention has been given to exploring students’ genre learning processes in relation to the genre pedagogies, genre knowledge development, learning strategies, and learners’ different learning trajectories. Given the multifaceted nature of genre learning, this study sought to extend the scope of genre research studies by investigating the effectiveness of genre-based pedagogy in developing students’ genre awareness and professional identities from a sociocultural perspective. In a Hong Kong comprehensive university, a 13-week discipline-specific language course was carried out with the objectives of developing the final year engineering students’ language skills to meet their academic and professional communication needs through focusing on two target genres - the final year research project and the white paper with topics specifically chosen within the students’ discipline. Having incorporated elements of the three major genre traditions into its integrated pedagogical framework, the language course adopted both linguistic and sociocultural approaches in order to offer students both textual and contextual awareness-building experiences. The aims of this research were threefold: a) to examine students’ gains in linguistic knowledge, b) to investigate students’ heightened genre awareness, and c) to consider how students negotiated their professional identity during this language learning process. A multi-case study approach was employed to generate rich descriptions of three student cases. Several data sources were used including: focal students’ interactional data, annotated writing, interview responses and teacher’s field notes. To investigate focal students’ linguistic gains and genre awareness development, the data were qualitatively analyzed in light of a genre knowledge framework which links up the key constructs of genre awareness such as recontextualization and metacognition (Tardy et al., 2020). To explore students’ professional identity building, an integrated analytical framework encompassing positioning analysis and other analytical approaches was adopted to offer multiple perspectives in examining the focal students’ sense-making process in this language course. Findings revealed patterns of students’ genre awareness and professional identity building, such as the focal students’ rhetorical considerations behind the language choice, their abilities in deploying their genre knowledge to different situations as well as their enhanced clarities concerning their career aspirations. These findings facilitated the discussions of how all elements, such as the authentic context, social interactions, and contextualised analytical tasks, led to the students’ different trajectories of learning and identifications towards the engineering profession. A conceptual framework which entailed all these sociocultural resources was also proposed to shed light on genre studies for promoting genre awareness and professional identity.