Speakers
Description
This paper reports an ongoing longitudinal action research cycle investigating the application of cognitive genre (Bruce, 2005) to the existing language element of a pre-sessional English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course at a UK university. This course is followed by students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, hence the need to make explicit the role of cognitive genres in helping students to become effective communicators in their own fields. There are two reasons for this development. The first is that effective academic reading for learning requires an ability to identify the rhetorical purpose of a text, and then notice writer’s choices in terms of moves and the discourse patterns that emerge from that purpose. The second relates to the reductive nature of models of argumentation (Walkova and Bradford, 2022). It is felt a focus on cognitive genre can go some way in highlighting the complexity inherent in academic arguments. This action research therefore involves an introduction of the higher order levels of cognitive genre (rhetorical purpose, image schema and discourse patterns) to existing pre-sessional course material, and we aim to discover whether connections between rhetorical purpose, text structures and discourse patterns can be made more salient for our students, supporting the focus on English for Multi-disciplinary Academic Purposes (EMDAP) (Gillway, 2020) since these structures and patterns occur across disciplines and social genres. The discussion will be informed by data gathered through student focus groups, and this will be supplemented with interview data reporting teachers’ perspectives.
Affiliation of the author(s)
University of Bristol, UK
Biographical note(s) of the author(s)
Kevin Haines worked in international Higher Education programmes in the Netherlands between 1992 and 2021, specializing in guiding university lecturers and students in international classrooms and English Medium Instruction (EMI). He has contributed to several local, national and international projects. He is co-author of the IntlUni Principles (http://www.intluni.eu) and was academic lead for the EQUiiP project (www.equiip.eu). During this time he has worked intensively with and across cultures and published on the integration of cultures and languages into pedagogy through ‘purposeful interaction’. He is currently Deputy Director at the Centre for Academic Language & Development, University of Bristol, UK.
| Contact e-mail address | eq20267@bristol.ac.uk; tony.prince@bristol.ac.uk; kevin.haines@bristol.ac.uk. |
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