Supporting the process approach to writing in EAP contexts: a discipline specific focus on source use and application.

Source Information: Wingate, U (2021). Reintroducing the process approach into EAP teaching. Proceedings of the 2021 BALEAP Biennial Conference exploring pedagogical approaches in EAP teaching, Glasgow, UK, 6^th-10^th April.[online].https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=f5LIWEQCSNI&list=PL0xk8t5VPtus2PcL-OBuiawe1Qls3lo-K&index=2

SF TEAP competencies being addressed

SP 10: You apply knowledge of specific academic contexts to materials or learning resource design

ST 8: Your teaching develops students ability to navigate conventions and values of current educational contexts

ST 1: You demonstrate a broad knowledge of EAP theories and academic contexts to inform EAP provision at institutional level

ST 10: you raise awareness of discourse features in writing

ST 11: You train your students to investigate the practices of a discipline

Summary of Source

In this presentation, Wingate documents her research into the research and writing practices of students at her institution, while highlighting the successes of students who adopt a process approach to writing to support their subject specific assessment tasks. Her presentation follows a typical structure for academic research dissemination, starting with a rationale for her study, a look at the literature surrounding the area, an explanation of her research methods and then a discussion of her findings. She also makes some interesting comments at the end that ground her work in the context of EAP practitioners’ teaching and promotion of academic literacies in HE institutions.

She makes a convincing argument for the need for EAP practitioners to include parts of the essay writing process in their work. Although not suggesting that this approach should come at the expense of a genre (product) based approach, (in fact she argues that both approaches can work in tandem), she makes the important point that the process approach may often be side-lined in EAP modules/courses and its facets are key to developing successful academic writers. Her research project analysed the approaches of 13 students when tasked with small-scale research and writing assessments in different disciplines. The analysis of her participants focused on these features of the writing process; time allocation to parts of the process; understanding functions of planning and reviewing; and source use, indicating that more successful student writers tended to adopt detailed application of strategies and approaches within these sub-parts of the process. At the end of her talk, she points to specific interventions that EAP tutors/course developers can adopt to support students, such as raising awareness of time allocations needed in each part of the writing process, while stressing the need to focus on source usage and its synthesis to the discipline specific demands of students’ written assignments. She also points to the importance this approach has in teaching academic literacies, while encouraging a collaborative approach to teaching, moving EAP interventions away from bolt-on, study-skill provisions.

Reaction to Source

Wingate’s argument that emphasizes the teaching of EAP related modules and courses around a process approach is one that I agree with. In fact, for the last 5 years I have been teaching on and convening an study skills module (Academic Development) that adopts a process approach in its design and delivery. I have mentioned this EAP context in previous posts (‘Promoting equality of opportunity…’), but here is a brief summary of module for you, in case you need a reminder:

The Academic Development (AD) module is a core Foundation Year module, spread across two university terms. The cohort is comprised of mainly British students who had failed to make their A-level grades and are taking this course to progress onto a degree at UoS. The AD module teaches students academic skills akin to those found on a pre-sessional course, such as research and reading skills, writing composition skills and other skills relating to academic practice and conventions of their incoming academic departments. The module guides students through similar stages in Wingate’s process model through the deconstruction of essay questions, collection, and evaluation of source material, planning of argument and reviewing of composition.

Teaching this process approach to students has been useful and important in highlighting differences in writing approaches. Many of the students I have taught over the years describe school experiences of writing as a product-driven endeavor, with very few having experience of, or realising the importance and effort required to carry out relevant research to inform the writing of academic genres at HE level. However, teaching the process approach is not without its complication, and I have found that students still need specific scaffolded support in the form of memorable frameworks to help them approach the skills of finding, evaluating and connecting source material to the arguments they intend to make in their essays. In the next section I will outline such a framework that I devised, inspired by Legitimation Code Theory’s semantic gravity dimension.

Application to my practice

To support my students, and other AD tutors’ investigation into writing practices of the subject areas of their students, I developed a conceptual framework relating to different levels of research needed in essay writing. This ‘Pyramid Approach to Research’ (PAR) is informed by Legitimation Code Theory’s Semantic Gravity (Maton, 2013), and supports gathering of supporting source material for essays’ arguments, representing different knowledge types. The aim of this framework is to ensure that the written arguments students will eventually compose demonstrate discourse patterns that move between context independent and context dependent concepts, a key feature of critical and analytical writing (Maton, 2012, cited in Szenes et al, 2015).

The PAR is analogous, utilising a diagram of a pyramid with three constituent parts, coupled with a notion of structural integrity that links to argument strength. The bottom or base of the pyramid represents a ‘point’ the students want to make in a part of the essay; the central part of the pyramid is called ‘broad based support’ and the top level is called ‘empirical example of case-study’. If students can support a ‘point’ in their essays with information at these levels, their argument will have strength and structural integrity. Relating this to LCT’s semantic gravity, the point (or pyramid) being written in the essay would ‘wave’ from CI (SG-) to CD (SG+) knowledge.  If the students find just the top level of support (empirical examples or case-studies) for their point, they are shown that the pyramid would ‘collapse’ as the middle part (broad based support) is absent. Similarly, they are shown that if they find the ‘broad based support’ for their point, then their pyramid will remain intact but is incomplete. The same analogy can be applied to the argument that they are making in their written work, being linked to the idea of Semantic Flat Lining (Maton, 2020).

I have utilised this approach in my own teaching with students in the Business strand of the AD module. I used a business essay question along with two texts and accompanying guiding exercises to help students identify how source material in this discipline could be used at different levels of the pyramid to support an argument (see extract below). Using these materials led to interesting discussions with students about the types of source material that could be used to support the top level of the pyramid, such as whether media related sources would suffice. Some of my Business students attested to the importance it gives them in structuring and planning their research in an academic subject area they are transitioning into.

The idea is that once the student has gathered the source information above and linked it to the ‘point’ they intend to make about digital and social media marketing (in the case above), they would write this out in a paragraph (or two), starting with the ‘point’, then including a summary and connection to the ‘broad based support’, and then finally they would include detail about the ‘example/case study’ in their prose, while linking this to the ‘point’. Analysing such a text across one or two paragraphs would result in a semantic wave profile that moves gradually from CI to more CD forms of knowledge, in line with what LCT would describe as being more analytical and critical writing (Martin, Maton and Doran, 2020).

The PAR is equally useful for AD tutors to help investigate the disciplinary differences to academic practice of the students they are working with on the AD module. For instance, tutors can use the framework to guide their questions to liaison subject tutors about the types of support that are needed in the pyramid; whether the pyramid can relate to discourse produced in that discipline; and what types of source material would be best to consult at the different levels of the pyramid. The following example show how another AD tutor used this approach to support her students studying Arts and Humanities prepare for a presentation assessment.

Your Reaction

• Do you think that my PAR approach is a suitable way of teaching ‘literacies’ (as Wingate mentions) to students? Can you see any potential limitations or problems with this approach?

• Do you have any novel ways of supporting students through teaching the process approach to writing? Why are they successful and how to you scaffold them?

References

Martin, J. R., Maton, K., & Doran, Y. (2020). Academic discourse: An interdisciplinary dialogue. In J.R Martin, K. Maton, & Y. Doran, (Eds.), Accessing academic discourse systemic functional linguistics and legitimation code theory (pp. 1-31). London, England: Routledge

Maton, K. (2013). Making semantic waves: A key to cumulative knowledge building. Journal of Linguistics and Education, 24(1), 8-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2012.11.005

Re-introduction to the TEAP Online Reading Circle Blog

It has been some time since I updated this blog, with the last post being entered around 5 years ago. This coincided with efforts I was making to work towards the Fellow level of BALEAP’s individual teaching scheme (TEAP). Since being awarded that certification in 2018, I have been working towards completion of the Senior Fellow level of the same scheme. I thought it was time to update this blog with entries that addressed some of the reading and application of ideas and knowledge to my own practice as I work towards this senior level teaching qualification.

I have been using the 2008 version of the TEAP competencies to support my scholarship and teaching for the SF level. However, in April 2022, the TEAP scheme’s competencies have been updated. I will refer to these new competencies in all of the posts I write to support those working towards this scheme at different levels to show how the scheme supports developmental CPD efforts for EAP practitioners.

As with the old format to this reading circle/discussion platform, for each post I will briefly summarise an article/text that has inspired, informed, or resonated with my work. I will then indicate which TEAP competencies my work is matched to, while explaining in detail the nature of my activity or scholarship. At the end of each blog post I will pose a few questions to others eliciting your views on the topics covered in the source text being discussed or about my application to practice. Please respond using the blog site’s comment functions to help encourage discussion and further learning about the topics being displayed and analysed. I will respond to all comment posts made.

Promoting Equality of Opportunity…’scroll down’ to find out more.

Source Information:

A survey of the ways universities cope with the needs of dyslexic foreign language learners and, in consultation with tutors and learner, the piloting of appropriate assessment methods (Hill, J and Roed, J, 2005) Available from: file://smbhome.uscs.susx.ac.uk/dm418/Downloads/Dyslexia_Foreign_Language_Students%20(1).pdf. Last accessed 03/03/2017

TEAP competencies potentially being addressed

A1F (i) Applying knowledge of norms, conventions and values of non-EAP tertiary education course delivery to inform own teaching practice

B1 F (ii) planning sessions or learning resources appropriate to the language competence level, stage and level of studies of learners.

B1F (iv) Promoting equality of opportunity through teaching.

Summary of source

The report details a small-scale research project focusing on the needs of dyslexic foreign language learners (native speaking home students studying modern languages such as Spanish or French at the University of Sussex). Although this teaching context is different to an EAP one, some of the conclusions and recommendations for good teaching and assessment practice that accommodate dyslexic students’ needs seemed salient and transferable to an EAP and academic development context.

The report makes insightful reference to Crombie (1999, cited in Hill and Roed, 2005: 11), whose research indicates that teaching methods and approaches that can support dyslexic students can ‘work for all’. Typical examples of this might be: the tutor’s use of clear instructions; varying tasks types; stating aims and outcomes of lessons; reading text layout; and text spacing when analysing texts for reading and writing purposes.

Application to Teaching Practice

Taking on this idea of inclusivity, I researched ways that I could adapt some of my teaching methods and materials to accommodate the needs of some dyslexic students in an Academic Development (AD) module I currently teach on.

The AD module is compulsory for all foundation year students, of which the majority are native speakers. Many have taken the foundation year as they missed out on the A-level grades they needed for their original degree choice. Others on the course have elected the foundation programme as a way of discovering which particular degree they would like to undertake. The AD core module is ‘bolt-on’ in nature and focuses on the essay writing process and other relevant academic skills students need to develop for the purposes of undergraduate study.

Specifically, the course involves a degree of text and genre analysis to support students’ writing and research purposes. During these particular classes, it was apparent that some of the dyslexic (and indeed non-dyslexic students) found tasks that required them to locate evidence and examples, the flow of an argument, and stylistic writing features in a text rather challenging. This often left them feeling exasperated and lagging behind other members of the group. Therefore, in order to accommodate these students, while keeping in mind Crombie’s (2005) notion of what works for dyslexic students, works for all, I decided to develop some lessons using the ‘text-mapping’ technique, which helped students process and navigate somewhat lengthy texts for salient features.

I came across the idea of text-mapping through my reading around dyslexic learners and in a post from the ALDinHE forum. (See here for a website link: http://www.textmapping.org/overview.html.) This technique of creating ‘scrolls’ (sticking pages of a document together horizontally) for students to analyse a journal article or an essay seemed to support the students by helping them navigate, and get a more holistic perspective of, lengthy academic texts.

I followed up on the theme of the text-mapping technique and other approaches university tutors can utilize to accommodate dyslexic students by speaking to a dyslexia tutor from the student support unit. She confirmed the appropriateness of some of the recommendations from the Hill and Roed text and the text-mapping technique, while stressing the significant impact that page layout, line spacing and word density can have on a dyslexic learner. This discussion gave me some added reassurance in trialing the text-mapping technique with my students.

The following descriptions and activity examples show how I used text-mapping in a lesson that was focused on analysing and applying essay marking criteria to a sample text. The tasks below followed on from initial exercises that made students aware of the meaning and application of the marking criteria the AD course was using to assess students’ summative work.

Questions i) and ii) encourage students to take a holistic view of the essay, while enabling them to create a mental division of the segmentation the essay makes.

The exercises below encourage a more in-depth analysis of specific language and organisational features of the essay.

An example of the ‘essay analysis’ using the text-mapping technique can be seen in the pictures below.  The yellow highlighted parts show where subsections mentioned in the introduction are located in the body of the essay. The other coloured highlighted parts relate to features of the marking descriptors being used to grade the essay.

As you can see the spacing out of the essay by centering and adding greater distance in the line margins can potentially help students feel less overwhelmed by a wall of text while allowing them to annotate certain text parts to support their textual analysis.

At different times during the lesson, I asked students why they thought I was using the text-mapping technique. By doing this exercise, it became apparent to the students that it was easier for them to see the connection, or lack of, between the thesis statement and the concluding comments surrounding the main argument. It became apparent to one student that actually the essay writer had made a slightly different point in the conclusion to the one they had set out to do in the introduction. This realization was seemingly assisted by the text-mapping technique.

Another student commented that the text-mapping technique was useful in helping her see how sub-sections were displayed, and how much ‘page space’ was devoted to arguments that (as inferred from the introduction) carried the same weighting. Again, the text-mapping approach seemed to facilitate this discovery.

I also tried to stress to students that the text-mapping technique was optional for self-study purposes. It may help them to analyse their own written essays prior to submission, or even help them navigate lengthy research articles.

Application to an EAP context?

I appreciate that these techniques have been recommended for students who are dyslexic and that diagnosing dyslexia in students whose first language is not English is rather problematic. This topic came up in the meeting I had with the dyslexia support tutor. We spoke about the challenges of effectively detecting/diagnosing dyslexia in non-native speaking students studying in English at UoS. The tutor claimed that it can be rather challenging to determine if a non-native speaker of English has dyslexia based on the assessments and diagnostics employed by the educational psychologist. Even though not all of these assessments/diagnostics are based on reading and writing (some were related to movement and logic), it was still difficult to effectively diagnose some international students with dyslexia. Moreover, the cost of the assessment from the educational psychologist might deter students from taking this further. However, I can imagine that many of the international students we teach on EAP programmes may indeed suffer from undiagnosed conditions as well as finding texts difficult to navigate for their academic purposes. Therefore, with Crombie’s idea still I mind…’what works best for dyslexic students, works for all’, perhaps there is no harm in trialing such text-mapping methods with our international students in an EAP class.

Discussion Points:

• Do you think text-mapping could work for your students in similar teaching circumstances?

• Have you interpreted the competency (B1F iv) in the same way? I’d be interested to hear your approaches and application to practice.

Student Needs

Source Information

Chapter 3: Students’ Needs and EAP Course Design in Theory and Concepts of English for Academic Purposes (Bruce, 2015)

TEAP competencies potentially being addressed

B1 F (i) Using the results of a principled and systematic analysis of the gap between students’ competence and what they need for academic study to inform own teaching practice.

B1 F (ii) Planning a series of learning resources appropriate to the language competence level, stage and level of studies of learners.

Summary of source

The chapter states the importance needs analysis have in informing aims and learning outcomes of EAP course design, while stressing the need to incorporate theories of language and learning and teaching into the creation of such aims and outcomes.

Hutchinson and Waters’ ‘present’ and ‘target needs analysis’ (1987, cited in Bruce, 2015) are referred to, with example questions to be considered in a ESP needs analysis, such as: Who are the students? What were their writing experiences prior to this course? What are their learning styles/expectations? What language and skills do the students need for their current stage of development? In what capacity/context will this taught language be used? Answers to such questions obtained through principled and systematic analysis can provide valuable information to the EAP teacher that plugs the ‘gap’ between present and target situations. This information will help create course aims and outcomes to support a specific group of leaners.

The chapter goes on to raise the importance of also linking theory of language and teaching and learning to the creation of aims and outcomes. For example, it makes reference to Widdowson’s ‘Capacity’ and ‘Competence’ (1983, cited in Bruce 2015) abilities, which relate to being able to exploit and adapt language or skills for individual purposes (capacity), while developing a knowledge of the rules that govern the use of language (competence).

The idea of capacity development is important with regard to the ‘wide angle’ multidisciplinary (Widdowson, 1983, cited in Bruce, 2015) nature of many EAP pre-sessional and insessional courses at UK universities. Aims and outcomes influenced by the notion of capacity involve guiding students to recognise generic rhetorical cognitive genres in speech and writing, and then adapt these textual features into their own interdisciplinary discourse. The author also mentions the importance of creating aims/outcomes that accommodate a social genre focus, but due to an immense range of such genres in different disciplinary contexts, such ‘whole text focus’ (p.48) cannot be the main feature of course design. I understand this to mean, your course objective should not be something like: ‘to raise awareness of essay construction and practice writing this genre type’. Instead, aims or outcomes that look to develop rhetorical functions of cause and effect, comparison and contrast and problem solution in particular stretches of text, may be far more applicable to the wide angle EAP teaching contexts we may find ourselves in.

Application to Teaching Practice

In my first blog post (Introduction and an example) I mentioned an in-sessional EAP module I am currently teaching on (please look back at this for more context).  I will explain how I have attempted to meet the competencies B1 (i) and (ii) in that teaching context, while making relevant links to certain parts of the chapter mentioned above.

I carried out my own present and target analysis through: a questionnaire/survey given to students at the start of the course; analysing an essay that students had written recently for a subject module; and a short diagnostic test.

The analysis of the essay enabled me to understand the types of written assignments the students were being asked to produce at this level (undergraduates L4 and L5), while seeing which features of academic writing were in need of development. Individual comments were written on each essay I viewed as a means of identifying areas of development. After returning these essays, students compared my comments with some of the self-cited areas of weakness they had made about their own writing and academic abilities in the questionnaire. From this analysis it was apparent that the students’ perceived gap was different (at times) to my own understanding of students’ needs. By comparing these points, students created a set of self-study goals that could focus their developmental efforts.

Some questions from student questionnaire/survey

Using the results of this analysis enabled me to create a series of lessons that fit in with the current syllabus, while addressing students’ individual needs. Some specific topics that were fed into the lessons were: appropriate use of cause and effect language; paragraph length and the effect this has on argument development; consulting and synthesizing more academically reliable sources in their writing; the use of functional language to express addition, comparison and reference to evidence; thesis statements and position of argument; mechanics of referencing etc.

Example of my analysis/feedback of student essays

 

 Part of Diagnostic Test

Additional reflective tasks getting students to consider areas of skills and language that need development

The students on this course are studying disciplines such as international development, media studies, business and finance and biology. In order to develop the ‘capacity’ ability of students on this ‘wide angle’ course I have attempted to focus some of the course content on analysing textual features of academic genres (journal articles), before allowing students practice in producing these texts within extended written responses centered around a discipline specific topic or question. The examples I referred to in my first blog post (an introduction and example) attempt to show this. However, I list a few more examples from materials I created to exemplify this point.

 Sample Materials from part of a lesson that focused on cause and effect and other ‘moves’ within an introduction

Assignment Task facilitating ‘capacity’ development

Discussion Points

• The module mentioned above that I teach on has rather lose aims and outcomes, allowing a fair degree of adaptation to student need. However, I imagine if you teach on modules/courses that are much more prescribed in their aims/outcomes and weekly content, carrying out specific needs analysis and then planning sessions to suit your group of learners might prove more challenging. Does this describe your situation? How easy is it for you to address competencies B1 (i) and (ii) in your context? Do you think that these competencies are meant for those in the position to change aims and outcomes such as module conveners or course designers?

• How useful are student questionnaires/surveys that elicit their feelings on what they need to learn on an EAP course? Is it best for EAP tutors to use their own observations and experience to judge what is best for our students? Are we the captain of their ship?

 

Next Reading

Hill, J and Roed, J (2005). A survey of the ways universities cope with the needs of dyslexic foreign language learners and, in consultation with tutors and learners, the piloting of appropriate assessment methods. Available through HEA website.

 

Discipline Specific Endeavors

Source Information

Lea, M. R., & Street, B. (1998). Student writing in higher education: an academic literacies approach. Studies in Higher Education, 23(2), 157–172.

 TEAP competencies potentially being addressed

A1 (ii): Applying Knowledge of tertiary education modes of knowledge communication to teaching materials exploitation.

A3 (i) Researching discipline specific academic skills and language for teaching purposes

A3 (iii) raising awareness of discourse features of texts in their disciplines through a series of lessons.

B2 (iii) taking individual differences in critical thinking into account in teaching

Summary of source

This article starts by making the point that literacy standards in HE are declining, with a particular focus on students’ efforts to produce appropriate and acceptable written work (the essay) for their specific disciplinary contexts. In relation to these standards, it describes the ‘study skills model’ of ‘fixing’ students’ academic writing deficiencies as a response to this problem. However, the authors state this supposedly transferable technical approach to teaching writing skills adopted by many universities (and EAP centres) seems to neglect the import that the academic literacies framework gives to writing, taking epistemological considerations of knowledge formation/argument development into account. The academic literacies framework also proposes making students aware of the need to ‘switch practices’ between settings (modular course choices, tutor expectations…)  and to write using appropriate language devices as well as ‘handling the social meanings and identities that each evokes’ (p. 159).

The article details research that was carried out at two universities where student work was analysed and interviews conducted with staff and students about their understanding of the literacy requirements in specific subject areas. It also investigated problems tutors saw in students’ ‘inappropriate’ written work and difficulties students faced when composing essay assignments.

The results of the research indicated that concepts like ‘structure’, ‘argument’ and ‘clarity’ were considered by subject staff (across many disciplines) as important features of an academic essay at this level (BA/BSc?). However, interviews with staff highlighted that further description of how students could display such concepts in their written work was unclear.

The results also highlighted that it was not just disciplinary differences that created mixed opinions concerning writing appropriate arguments or using suitable structure. It also mentions that staff were teaching on programmes that often integrated a number of different approaches to writing based on genre type and communicating with different target audiences (non-subject specialists). This type of ‘empathy writing’ (p. 162) included composing reports to imaginary clients (business related degrees) or reports to commons select committees (physics).

Interpreting the student interviews, it was apparent that some students tried to apply similar knowledge of essay structure and argument across disciplines in particular ‘course switching’ options. However, this transferable application of essay structure and argument formation resulted in contrasting feedback, with a tutor in one discipline (History) awarding positive comments and high grades to a student’s essay, with comments like ‘well-structured and clear argument’. The same student wrote an essay for an Anthropology module using similar structure and argument. However, the tutor said the student lacked ‘structure’ and the inadequate use of what the tutor called ‘linkage’, which, in their eyes, lead to a deficient argument, or indeed an absent argument. The Anthropology tutor could not see the more subtle linkages the student was adopting in terms of lexical chains or repetition of key words from the question. Instead, their feedback comments implied they wanted a more explicit structure in the essay that would support the argument’s development. This situation is interpreted by the authors as relating to ‘different conceptions of knowledge,’ leaving them to deduce that ‘epistemological presumptions regarding academic disciplines are hidden beneath more technical attention to supposedly generic features of academic writing’ (p. 167).

From this example, it is my understanding that the academic literacies approach to student writing identifies epistemological concepts of knowledge formation in the structuring and argumentation of points through a written text. I had this point in mind when considering this application to my own teaching practice.

Application to Teaching Practice

The article above indicates a need for Academic Development tutors (those providing writing support to home and international cohorts) and, in my opinion, EAP tutors to pay more attention to understanding the ways in which epistemological aspects of discipline specific subject knowledge connect to the production of written genres and their constituent text types. I have tried to relate this feature of the academic literacies approach to different EAP/Academic Development roles I have had. I hope my efforts in this area will go some way to addressing the competencies A1 (ii), A3 (i) and A3 (iii).

Here follows an example of some work I carried out at an Arts University (last year) that showed how I investigated how knowledge formation and its communication occurred in essay writing in the Animation discipline. I then used the results of that analysis to develop materials that helped students focus on discipline specific writing skills.

In order to inform my EAP/ESAP teaching to international students studying Arts related degrees at foundation and BA level, I worked closely with lecturers from the Animation department to delve into the ‘argument, structure and clarity’ of written essays, as indicated in Lea and Street’s article. Through discussions with those tutors and analysing students’ essay feedback, I discovered certain features of the discourse of essay writing in that subject area. See below for some email communications and discussions relating to essay writing and source selection for essay writing purposes.

Email Correspondence from me to tutor

Reply from Tutor

From these communiques and subsequent analysis, it seemed that the tutor had a tacit understanding of how an essay should be produced, which related to his ‘analytical approach’. I used his feedback commentaries on student essays (see below), as well as referring to a writing guide he created for his students, to help inform my own practice (materials creation for EAP related teaching).

Feedback comments from animation tutor to his students:

Student 1

Student 2

The first piece of feedback makes reference to the tutor’s academic writing guide, which details important structuring points needed in an essay introduction, such as what a thesis should include, the importance of explicitly referring to source material being referenced in the body of the essay etc. The second piece of feedback implies that students need to relate features of the animation’s production to wider societal themes such as gender and the media at the time of production.

Through my own analysis of students’ work, tutor feedback on student work and conversations with this tutor, it also became apparent that the use of imagery in essays was an important feature of supporting arguments being made. The positioning and mentioning of such imagery within the essay body required a specific knowledge of discourse in that area, which the tutor was obviously keen for his students to understand and apply to their own written work. It was important for students to know exactly where to place them on a specific page, the appropriate selection of image that connected to the argument written in prose etc. See below for a comment taken from his academic writing guide:

With these features of structure, argument and clarity in mind I devised a series of lessons that focused on analysing the social and cognitive genre moves of an essay produced in this discipline. The focus of these moves attempted to highlight the specifics of argument formation, support and cohesion. These materials were then used with the animation students I worked with during one-to-one support tutorials, as well as on larger ‘wide-angle’ art and design courses such as foundation year EAP and pre-sessional courses. Note, although these materials were related to argument formation and structure of an animation essay, I included more general writing skills that could be transferred to other art and design writing assignments (e.g. multi-modality discourse; a seemingly common feature of essay writing in many other art and design courses.

Argument Moves

Here is an example of some general questions I created that helped students notice the general moves an argument took in one section of the animation essay. The essay was titled ‘the portrayal of Japanese women in anime; changes or the same old sexism?’

Recognising the Move Structure and Language Use

After some related and additional noticing exercises on argument structure and language use to convey functions, the students were then asked to transfer the information recorded above onto a flow diagram. It was thought this visualisation of the move pattern/argument sequence would support their own production of arguments when they came to answer an essay question. See below for an example of this. Note: each section of the essay was broken down in this way, with students searching for and then recording ways the argument developed.

Multimodal Discourse

Here are some examples of how I attempted to focus students’ attention on the multi-modal discourse, another important feature of support for a specific argument being made.

After analysing the examples below, students were set writing tasks that allowed them to practice describing, evaluating and comparing images.

In different EAP working roles I have tried to develop an understanding of the epistemological views of tutors in subject specific departments and the influence this has on argument, structure and clarity of written work. Perhaps I have not gone to the depths that Bruce indicates in chapter 2 of Theory and Concepts of English for Academic Purposes, that in order to fully understand knowledge formation the EAP tutor needs to have an awareness of the research paradigms of the disciplines their EAP students are studying, such as realism (scientific) or interpretative (naturalistic). However, for the time being I hope that such example analysis and application to practice will suffice in meeting the competencies relating to ‘knowledge communication’ and ‘discourse features of discipline specific texts’, as stated at the start of this blog entry.

Discussion Points

1) Have you found any examples of how epistemological aspects of discipline specific subject knowledge connect to the production of written genres and their constituent text types? If so, did you focus your analysis in the way I have done? I would be interested to hear your approach.

2) In the article it mentions that there are often differences between the ways that individual tutors in a single department may view knowledge formation…as seems to be the case with the tutor I collaborated with. If this is true, where does this leave us as EAP tutors striving to investigate our students’ needs and then produce materials to support them? Is it our job to make them aware of many eventualities, styles and attitudes towards communicating an argument in their written work for the multitude of writing situations they may find themselves in? How challenging is this, do you think?

3) At the start of this blog entry I implied that through this work I was addressing B2 (iii) taking individual differences in critical thinking into account in teaching. Do you think I have done this?

Next Reading: Chapter 3: Students’ Needs and EAP Course Design in Theory and Concepts of English for Academic Purposes (Bruce, 2015)

Introduction and Example

Hi all.

If this is your first visit to this site, please view the ‘About’ page for details of the rationale and other specifics of this Reading Circle, before coming back to this page.

Here follows an example of how I envisage this circle to operate. I have laid out the page under the headings; source information, TEAP competencies being addressed, summary of source, application to teaching practice, discussion points and next reading. Please read through this example page and contribute to the discussion in the ‘discussion points’ section.

Source Information

• Chapter 5: EAP Courses and Subject Discipline Knowledge in Theory and Concepts of English for Academic Purposes (Bruce, 2015).

TEAP Competencies potentially being addressed

• A3 Academic Discourse: (ii) applying theories of text and discourse analysis to text exploitation; (iii) integrating academic discourse into lesson plans and task design
• A3 Academic Disciplines: (iii) Raising student awareness to discourse features of texts in their disciplines through a series of lessons

Summary of Source

Below is a summary and analysis of the source text, followed by my attempts to apply this theory to my practice, but with raised concern on the suitability or applicability of this theory/approach.

Please feel free to comment on any of the points I have made. I’d also be very interested in hearing how you have understood the theory and applied it to your context.

The particular sections of this chapter I wanted to look at were those that mentioned the terms ‘social’ and ‘cognitive’ genres and how understanding these terms would assist me in performing an analysis of written work at the genre and text level. The book defines social genre as ‘socially recognised constructs according to which whole texts are classified in terms of their overall social purpose and function’ (p.77). So this would relate to the form that academic articles, book chapters, website entries etc are organised to fit a socially communicative purpose. Cognitive genre refers to small segments or internal features found within a larger social genre that display a rhetorical function. Typical examples might include; recounts or descriptions of sequences, compare and contrast, problem solution, cause and effect; to name a few.

I found the explanations of these terms in this chapter to be clear and useful starting points to base an analysis of genre and text. Some information from chapter 2 of EAP essentials (Alexander et al, 2008) also chimed with this explanation and provided more detailed ways to classify rhetorical functions.  I used these approaches to create a series of lessons I will teach on a credit bearing EAP module currently offered at my university.

Application to Teaching Practice

The EAP module has both an academic development and language accuracy focus, but with flexibility to address the specific needs of the student cohort (12 undergraduates from different disciplines). It is my aim in some classes to help these students become analysts of texts and genres in their own subject areas to support their reading and writing skills development, while helping them gain an understanding of how knowledge is communicated in that field.

I have planned a series of lessons that begin by getting students to analyse the social genre and cognitive genres of three genre types: an academic journal article, website and chapter in a book.

Regarding the social genre model, I plan to ask students to consider the purpose, audience and general organisation of these three texts in a surveying exercise. The topic of each piece is the same (the effects of Social Networking Sites on university students). I will then probe students on how often they consult such sources and how suitable they might be for their current academic requirements. Through feedback from myself on the students answers, I can make them aware of the basic need to recognise how each genre has a different social make up. (Note: I decided on a general academic topic for each genre that all students could relate to. This starting example is used to base the discourse analysis on, before setting them similar tasks to apply to genre and text types in their own discipline specific areas).

Social Genre Tasks

Following on from this activity, I will attempt to raise awareness of different sub-genres and cognitive genres or rhetorical moves in an academic journal article. I chose this genre type as a way of introducing students to the possible discussion of how research is conducted and knowledge is created in a particular discipline. Moreover, this analysis will help them become familiar with certain sub-genres (introduction, methods, discussion etc)  and how each one can be consulted/surveyed for different purposes the students might have.

After this I created a series of questions that help students analyse the cognitive features of a particular sub-genre (the introduction). After this inductive task, students will then be shown how the answers to these questions could be displayed in a sequence of moves. The use of a visual flow chart seemed to demonstrate this well I thought.  I appreciate that the area of analysing journal article introductions has been heavily researched and documented in the literature, thus implying that what I am doing here is nothing new, but as a starting point for my students in this area of academic acclimatization, I thought it suitable.

Inductive Questions that highlight functions

There are other tasks in this lesson that involve a closer inspection and recording of particular language structures that are used to express a particular rhetorical function. After this detection, the structures can be tabulated for assistance in future reading and writing tasks the students have.

Discussion Points

With all of this in mind, I have a couple of questions/doubts surrounding my practice that I hope you might be able to contribute to:

1. I found it difficult to recognise the specific rhetorical functions present in the Introduction of the article. I can’t at times distinguish between‘argument and support’ and ’cause and effect’. At times the cause and effect ‘move’ seemed like an ‘argument'(see Q3 ‘what are the specific causes of this depression?) . Do you also have this problem in distinguishing the type of function? Does this impact on how to phrase your inductive questions for your students?
2. It was obvious in the introduction that different functions can exist in the same sentence e.g. Q5 related text segment seems to contain contrast, problem and cause/effect. With this in mind, I tried to simplify the noticing I wanted the students to focus on by deliberately leaving out some of these functions and instead focusing on (possibly) more manageable ones for my group.Do you agree with this approach? 
3. Feel free to make any other additional points on this theme, or any source texts we can use for future discussions.

Please post your responses by leaving a ‘comment’. I would very much like to hear from you and your practice in this area.

Next Reading

Lea, M. R., & Street, B. (1998). Student writing in higher education: an academic literacies approach. Studies in Higher Education, 23(2), 157–172.

Comments from others

Tony Myers

Jan 30, 2017

Thanks for sharing this David – it’s interesting stuff. In reference to discussion point 1, I try to steer my students toward asking what the text does to the reader. So in the case of cause and effect, it persuades them, or tries to, and that makes it support for an argument. The fact that everything in an article is part of an argument, from the title to the order of paragraphs to the selection of facts, is something that my students always seem surprised by.

Tony Myers

3 days

Hi David – reflecting on it, what I do most often is ask students why some feature of a text is there – including their own essays. In this way, I try to link what they do with what they read others do. The main problem we have is that the recontexualisation that this entails is a difficult process for some students who haven’t had the most thorough grounding in critical thinking

anastasos

Jan 31, 2017

Hey, David. Your online reading circle sounds like an awesome idea. Just wanted to say a few things in response to the first question you asked, having difficulty identifying and distinguishing rhetorical moves. What I usually do is focus on a paragraph and ask students to find the connection sentence 1 and 2, 2 and 3, and so on. If they are weak, I underline the word/phrase for the them and have discuss. For example, in the text you are using I would highlight the following (see the connection in brackets): it can mean (explaining by exemplification), because of (cause/effect), have been found (introducing research by making a generalization – notice the source combination), specifically (repetition but this time focus on one source), also (adding info about depression – it’s increasing), five times as many (more specific info – what does ‘increasing’ mean? & comparison). Maybe, the first time, you can highlight words and provide the rhetorical moves of every sentence and have them match them, then create an outline of the paragraph summarizing the rhetorical moves and use it as a model for writing. Rhetorical moves might overlap and that;s something you can raise awareness of. It can be found in function words/phrases, lexical cohesion, etc. but also the purpose of genre e.g. literature reviews can include reference to theories, definitions, establishing importance of topic, recent research, identified gaps, etc. Have a look at Crombie’s inter-propositional relations in Bruce’s ‘Syllabus design for general EAP writing courses: A cognitive approach’ I’m adding the DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2005.03.001