Journal of English for Academic Purposes 10 (2011) 121–129

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Journal of English for Academic Purposes

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/ jeap

From genre awareness to cross-genre awareness: A studyin an EFL context

Demet Yayli*

Department of Foreign Languages Education, Pamukkale University, 20070 Denizli, Turkey

Keywords:Genre-based writingGenre awarenessCross-genre awarenessEFL

* Tel.: þ90 2582961028; fax: þ90 2582961200.E-mail address: demety@pau.edu.tr.

1475-1585/$ – see front matter � 2011 Elsevier Ltddoi:10.1016/j.jeap.2011.02.001

a b s t r a c t

This study aims to capture both how the participants’ genre awareness becomesembedded in their stances through genre-based writing instruction in an EFL context andalso how viable multi-genre portfolio use is in genre-based EFL writing instruction. Thequalitative data were gathered from several sources: (1) the participants’ annotations oftheir writing, (2) interviews, and (3) pre- and post-instruction interviews and open-endedquestions. The findings indicate that besides having a genre awareness and recontextu-alizing their genre awareness in each new writing, some of the participants were observedto use certain generic features belonging to a genre while being engaged in another genre.This bridge-building between genres through transferring their skills of recontextualiza-tion refers to cross-genre awareness. Also, the participants’ positive remarks graduallyincreased through the instruction, which signals the benefits of practicing genres andreflecting on their own performances in annotations.

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1. Introduction

The last decade, with the movement from structural approaches to language learning that support cognitive homogeneityof learners and their abstract cognitive or technical abilities in reading and writing toward communicative approaches thatdraw on how language is used to achieve social purposes in different contexts, genre and genre-based approaches havegained prominence in writing instruction (Hyland, 2003, 2004, 2007; Johns, 1997, 2002; Street, 1995). Proponents of processwriting have shifted their interest from the personal meaning-making of the writer to expectations of academic readers andwriters’ socialization into the academic community (Raimes, 1991).

In genre-based pedagogies, the importance of context as well as form and a concern with description, analysis andinterpretation are stressed. There are three influential genre-based approaches in L2 classroom. Australian genre studies arebased on systemic functional linguistics taking its roots from Hallidayan functional linguistics (Halliday, 1994) and socio-cultural theories of learning (Vygotsky, 1978), whereas the New Rhetoric view of genre draws on post-modern social andliterary theories, especially Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism. English for Specific Purposes (ESP) genre studies, on the other hand,are largely based on Swales’ (1981, 1990, 2004) discoursal work on academic and research English demystifying the use ofEnglish in academic contexts.

Classroom applications of genre are centred on various practices that are appropriate for particular times, places,participants and purposes. The concept of genre enables writing teachers to look beyond the content, linguistic forms andprocesses of writing so that they can assist students in their attempts to communicate with the reader. Writing is not seen asan isolated product existing in a vacuum but as a mediated and dynamic social activity in which writer’s thoughts andintentions are under the influence of the beliefs, values and norms of the audience (Canagarajah, 2002). Basically, genre-based

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writing instruction emphasizes that features of similar group of texts and the contexts inwhich they are created or used are inclose relationship with each other; therefore, teachers and students must always be mindful of the link between thosefeatures and the expectations of the reader in any writing activity. Also in classroom applications, students’writing consist ofmultiple writing samples, written over time, representing students’ abilities and progress (Hyland, 2004).

Although text-based genre analyses are commonly pursued, research on how students analyze and produce genres ingenre-based writing classes is still underrepresented in the literature (Cheng, 2006). In one of the few studies conducted,Henry and Roseberry (1998) investigated to what extent genre-based instruction andmaterials improved the learners’ abilityto produce effective tokens of the genre. Three measures (a motivation index, a move score and a texture index) were used toevaluate the learners’ improvement in producing a tourist information text. The results of the study indicate that a teachingapproach based on rhetorical organization can be successful in ESP/EAP teaching situations. In another study, Pang (2002)compared the film review writing progress of two groups of first-year university students who were speakers ofCantonese at a university in Hong Kong. The scores obtained in a writing-strategy questionnaire and a criterial assessmentform indicate that both groups made considerable progress and both approaches yielded almost equal results in the quality ofthe participants’ writing products and their use of strategies in film review writing. Swales and Lindemann (2002), on theother hand, observed how 11 L2 graduate students and two visiting scholars performed an intertextual exercise inwhich theyincorporated nine abstracts that offered a variety of perspectives into the literature review section of a dissertation proposal inthe area of engineering. They argued that the participants’ “observations and perceptions will now, in an effort to developtransfer of learning., be directed toward their readings in their own disciplines, so that they will be more aware of how andwhy authors might put a literature review together in a particular way” (p. 117, italics original). In a further study closer to thescope of the present study, Cheng (2007) analyzed three article introductions written by a Chinese-speaking graduatestudent, Fengchen, in electrical engineering department at a large American university. Cheng collected the data in an Englishacademic writing course he instructed. The analyses revealed that not only was Fengchen able to transfer some previouslynoticed generic features into his own writing but he was also able to recontextualize his genre awareness.

It is certain that studies that are conducted in EFL countries might yield different but still noteworthy results whencompared to those in ESL countries like the USA and Australia. The Communicative Language Teaching and the ProcessWriting Approach are pervasive in Turkish language learning contexts. Therefore, there is a greater need to introduce genre-based writing instruction to countries like Turkey where students are exposed to the planning-drafting-rewriting-evaluationchain pinpointing the processes underlying the production of written texts (Matsuda, 2003) with little attention paid tocontext, reader–writer relationship or purpose in their limited involvement in writing. In fact by dealing with such conceptsgenre-based writing instruction may create a difference in how students respond to genre awareness building. The presentstudy aimed to capture how the participants’ stances evolved throughout the instruction. Since the primary interest wasparticipants’ attitudes and perceptions and how these evolved over time, annotations and interview transcripts formed themain sources of data. Therefore, participants’ actual genre-specific writing samples were not included in the analysis. Thestudies mentioned above focused on only one type of genre. A study focusing on different genres inwhich students are askedto keep multi-genre portfolios should yield intriguing results. Therefore, the two research questions below will be addressedin the present study:

(1) Howdoes genre awareness become embedded in the stances of EFL participants through genre-basedwriting instruction?(2) How viable is multi-genre portfolio use in genre based EFL writing instruction?

2. Method

2.1. The course and the participants

The participants for the study were the volunteers among 32 first-year students who had already completed their primaryand secondary education and passed the university entrance exam to be enrolled in an English Language Teaching (ELT)program in a state university in Turkey. In Turkey, the medium of instruction is Turkish in Turkish educational settings and isEnglish only in English-language-related programs at universities like the one in the present study and in a few English-medium universities. The career goals of the students of an ELT program are to work as teachers of English at primary,secondary and tertiary levels. The reasons for the choice of this group of participants were twofold: (1) the conveniencesampling method was used and I was the instructor assisting the students in their genre-based writing experiences as hasbeen done in some previous studies (e.g., Cheng, 2007; Henry & Roseberry, 1998; Pang, 2002; Swales & Lindemann, 2002); (2)the pedagogical implication made by Hyland (2007) that “[f]or teacher educators, genre-based pedagogies offer principledways of assisting both pre- and in-service writing teachers to provide their students with targeted, relevant, and supportiveinstruction” (p.148) urged me to accommodate genre-based writing instruction for my students who were pre-serviceteachers of English.

The participants were six volunteering students attending an advanced reading and writing course I instructed. At thebeginning of the fall semester, when I asked for some volunteerswhowould bewilling to be interviewed after classes and sharetheir writings, only these six students said that they would allow me to audio-tape the interviews and use their writtendocuments by hiding their real identities. Theywere similar to their classmates (all pre-service teachers andfirst-year students)in terms of their proficiency levels as they all hadpassed theuniversity entrance exam to be educated in an ELT department. Like

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many of their classmates, all three of them had studied in a university prep class before starting their first-year education atuniversity. During their prep year, their writing instruction background had focused on improving four skills and grammar.

2.2. Data collection

The studywas conducted during thewriting sessions of the course in both semesters that lasted 14 and 15weeks in the falland spring semesters. I obtained the qualitative data for the present study from several sources: (1) the participants’annotations of their writing, (2) interviews and, (3) pre- and post-instruction interviews and open-ended questions. Althoughthe whole class took part in the writing assignments (writing first and second drafts for each genre) and annotation writing,the analyses of the annotations were limited to the ones produced by the six participating students. In the first week, theparticipants were administered a survey with pre-instruction interviews and open-ended questions looking into theirprevious writing experiences. The participants, who were among those with a prep year experience at university, mostlyrecalled and reflected on the writing instruction they had received the previous year. The three participants without a prepyear education at university complained that their writing experience at high school did not go further than parallel writingand guided paragraph writing for the given tenses. At the end of the instruction phase, I also provided a similar survey withpost-instruction interviews and open-ended questions in order to observe how genre awareness was built through genre-based writing instruction.

Alongwith the first drafts of eachwriting assignment, the students were asked to hand in an annotation reflecting on theirown writing (Cheng, 2007). After I perused both the first drafts and the annotations, I held interviews with the six partici-pants; which were audio-taped with the consent of the participants. Therefore, the whole class did the writing assignmentsand annotation writing but the following interviews were held only with the six study participants in order to probe deeplyinto the reasons behind their choices.

2.3. Writing assignments and the procedure

I followed the key elements proposed by Hyland (2007) in thewriting activities that were based on the principles of genre-based writing instruction: (1) planning learning, (2) sequencing learning, (3) supporting learning, and (4) assessing learning.These key elements guided me both before and during the instruction.

2.3.1. Planning learningAs stated by Hyland (2007), “ [g]enre writing classes are usually planned either around themes. or the genres likely to be

encountered in a relevant context, as in ESP learning situations” (p. 154). In the writing course I instructed, first we discussedthe students’ writing background that, for the majority, was dominated by process-writing. I informed them about therequirements of this newwriting course and introduced them to the concepts of genre and genre-based writing activities. Wefocused on rhetorical dimensions of genre such as the roles of the writer, reader and purpose in genre production and ongeneric dimensions such as moves, steps and how words, phrases and sentences help authors achieve their purposes. Later Iasked the students about their genre preferences and listed the genres that they wanted to study in the course, following theargument that students should study genres that they will need and/or that will motivate them to learn (Johns et al., 2006).Considering the academic and non-academic needs of pre-service teachers, we agreed on a pool of genres from which wechose e-mail, recipe, CV, letter of complaint and two types of essays (informative essay and argumentative essay) as ourfocused genres.

2.3.2. Sequencing learningAmong a number of different principles informing the sequence of genres proposed by Hyland (2007), I preferred “grading

genres by perceived increasing levels of difficulty” (p. 156). The selection of genres from our genre pool ranging from e-mail toessay writing was based on their degrees of difficulty.

2.3.3. Supporting learningIn genre-based writing instruction, a particular interest is paid to both peer interaction and teacher support. Since genre-

based pedagogies employ the ideas of Russian psychologist Vygotsky and the American educational psychologist Bruner, bothinteraction with peers to gain shared consciousness, and interaction with more knowledgeable others to acquire borrowedconsciousness are emphasized (Hyland, 2007). In order to enhance shared consciousness, I asked the students to work ingroups in their genre-analysis of the sample texts before they produced their own texts. As for the borrowed consciousness, Iwas at their disposal at every stage of their writing, if not in the classroom, via e-mail. To support their learning, I acted asa mediator (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006) of genre knowledge and genre production.

While explainingwriting development in the Hallidayan genre approach, Hammond (1992, cited in Burns, 2001) proposed“awheel model of a teaching–learning cycle having three phases: modelling, joint negotiation of text by learners and teacher,and the independent construction of texts by learners” (Burns, p. 202). Following this model, we chose e-mail as our firstgenre to have some practice in the rhetorical and textual organization of genres in terms of moves and steps. I aimed at raisingthe students’ awareness of context, the roles of the reader and thewriter, their purposes, constraints and challenges inwriting(Canagarajah, 2002). I shared some of my own e-mail notes with the students, who read the copies and in groups

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distinguished the formal from the informal register. Instead of setting rules of writing, I asked them to identify the moves andsteps and describe what the authors were trying to do in these moves and steps and which lexical items enabled them toachieve their communicative purposes. Learning or teaching formulae were avoided and the students were encouraged toformulate their own rules (Henry & Roseberry, 1998; Pang, 2002). I led the class discussion while the groups shared anddiscussed their analyses one after the other. Next, I asked them to write both formal and informal e-mail notes to makea request from a professor in the formal and from a friend in the informal register. I also asked them to write an annotation,with the emphasis on reflection, discovery and critical thinking, in which they analyzed and explained their own writing. Iasked them to explain which moves and steps they included in their first drafts by referring to their group analyses in whichthey had done a generic move-step analysis. They also explained what lexical features helped them create two e-mail notes intwo registers. In other words, they both reflected on and defended their writing. This framework of activities was used in thefollowing assignments as well. I regularly prompted them to make use of the generic features they observed in the sampletexts as ‘a set of heuristics’ rather than as ‘a set of rules’ to be obeyed in their own writing (Cheng, 2007).

After the students completed the writing assignment and the annotation, they received my written comments andquestions related to the rhetorical organization and lexico-grammatical features in their writing before they wrote theirsecond drafts. With each of the six participating students I held interviews both to get a better picture of their choices andtheir reasons by probing for more information and to improve the rhetorical and textual organization of their writing. Afterthe interview sessions, the whole class including the participants handed in a second draft to receive my comments on thegrammatical accuracy, spelling and document design.

These stages were aimed at enhancing both validity and interest, two basic requirements for designing classroom-basedwriting activities (White,1994). I aimedat achievingvalidity through the consistencybetweenwhat the students experimentedwith in class andwhat theywere asked towrite (Hyland, 2003). As for the interest level, I observed that the students’ curiositywas especially stimulated in generic move-step analyses in which they tried to explain the reasons for writers’ choices oflanguage structures and rhetorical organization; and also in their annotations in which they explained their efforts to makechanges that would produce a text different from the sample texts, and the conventions they felt they needed to comply with.

2.3.4. Assessing learning“An approach to assessment well suited to genre-based writing teaching is the use of portfolios, as these not only

represent multiple measures of a student’s writing ability,. but also help students to understandmore about the genres theyhave studied” (Hyland, 2007, p. 162). Multi-genre portfolios offer a platform where students are able to observe similaritiesand differences among genres (Hamp-Lyons & Condon, 2000). Keeping in mind the relevance of the use of portfolios, Iinformed the students as to how to be engaged in portfolio keeping. In their multi-genre portfolios, they included sampletexts provided for the textual and rhetorical analysis of each genre type, their first drafts, annotations on their first drafts andtheir second drafts in order. Besides serving as a collection of targeted genre samples and student writing, multi-genreportfolios were observed to help the participants when they needed to recall and refer to the details of some previousassignments in interviews and in some annotation excerpts.

2.4. Data analysis

The qualitative data for this study were drawn from several sources: (1) the participants’ annotations on their writing, (2)the interviews related to the participants’ written performances in a particular genre and (3) pre- and post-instructioninterviews and open-ended questions. That is, the analysis focused on how the participants analyzed the targeted genresamples and how they deployed moves and steps in their writing. I also examined their explanations on the rhetorical andtextual organization of their own texts both in their annotations and in the interviewswe held after classes. All these, togetherwith pre- and post-instruction data, enabled me to observe how their genre awareness became embedded in their stancesover different phases of instruction. The descriptive study in question hadmulti-data sources and involved the combination ofdata collection with analysis; therefore, the research design was the constant comparative method (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003;Glaser, 1978). I read each document in the data sources numerous times and sorted out key patterns which I gathered indifferent phases of instruction. They became my categories of focus. While searching through the data for regularities andpatterns under these categories, I was also open for any possible change, irregularity or the emergence of a new dimension.While writing on the categories I was exploring, I did some more reading of the data to discover all the details about thesecategories and to choose some excerpts to exemplify them verbatim. Besides, half of the coded-data were cross-checked bya colleague who is interested in qualitative research and no major discrepancies were identified. Pseudonyms were used inthe excerpts so as not to reveal the participants’ identities.

3. Findings and discussion

3.1. How does genre awareness become embedded in the stances of EFL participants through genre-based writing instruction?

3.1.1. Pre-instruction phaseInitial data were drawn from the participants’ responses to pre-instruction open-ended questions and interviews. My

purpose was to collect their views on their previous writing experiences and their definitions of good writing instruction

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before we started genre-based writing activities. Not surprisingly, their responses were mainly set in the premises of processwriting as they had been instructed in that way in their preparatory year. For example, Oya said:

The writing we did last year in the prep class was based on forms, rules and templates. If you include a good thesisstatement in the introduction and transition words in the body, you get at least 70. At first I received a lot of negativefeedback that was hurtful but later on I realized the rule I mentioned and started to get high grades.

Another participant, Fatih, said:

The instructor gave some sample texts with the key phrases underlined so we mostly paid attention to these phrasesand got good grades if we included them in our writing. For instance, you have to include “firstly”, “secondly”,“thirdly” if you are describing a process. Although we increased our vocabulary of fixed phrases in writing, it wasa form-based type of writing. If I had been the instructor, I would have emphasized the importance of message as well.I mean we never cared about what we were trying to say or what message would make our writing interesting to thereader.

The initial comments of the participants indicate the power of the writing teacher and her expectations from the students.Fatih’s comments on the importance of the reader suggest that contextual awareness building was not part of their prep classwriting instruction. Mostly, the students stated that they improved their paragraph and essay organization and vocabulary,but they did not comment on meaning and foregrounded form.

3.1.2. Practice phaseThe students gained some practice with e-mail writing identifying the writer/reader relationship and purposes. In the

annotations following formal and informal e-mail writing, the students explained the relationship they had with their tar-geted reader, how it influenced their choices of the lexico-grammatical features in their e-mails and how these featureshelped them pursue their purpose in writing the e-mails. Following Cheng (2007), the purpose behind this practice activitywith e-mail writing was “to raise the students’ awareness of the rhetorical dimensions of genre, such as the roles of writer,reader and purpose in genre production and consumption” (p. 291). The students targeted two different readers: a professorand a close friend. Although the purpose, making a request, was the same in both e-mail notes, the lexico-grammaticalfeatures varied a lot. The practice phase was followed by interviews with the six participants in order to trace their firstimpressions about and reactions toward genre-based writing instruction. Their statements all included positive remarks. Forexample, Fatih and Oya said:

It is the first time I have had fun time in awriting activity. I think it was because this was real writing. I am curious aboutwhat is coming next. (Fatih)Reading the instructor’s real e-mails was amusing to me. The following activities were also fun and new. I had neverheard about move/step analysis or annotationwriting before. I liked studying with my friends in a group to find movesand steps in an e-mail. (Oya)

3.1.3. Instruction phaseBefore and during the practice phase, the students were set straight on the concept of genre, the importance of reader–

writer relationship and purpose in writing activities. They were informed that the basic feature turning a collection ofcommunicative events into a genre lies in shared communicative purposes (Swales, 1990, p. 46). After the practice phase,we moved on to recipe writing for which I provided a collection of sample recipes. In their genre analysis, I observed thattwo of the participants had difficulty in delineating sample texts in generic moves and steps. They needed more supportthan the others. During the interviews, Aliye and Semiha complained about their challenges with generic move-stepanalysis:

At first I had contradictions with my group members but after you answered our questions we were able to come upwith a more appropriate analysis. (Aliye)I wish you had been in our group working with me. I do not feel safe without your guidance and I easily feel confused.Although you repeatedly warn us that there is no one correct analysis, there is a competition among the groups.Therefore we try to produce the best analysis. (Semiha)

It was the first time the students had been instructed in genre-based writing and due to the emphasis on discovery andreflection in this course, they found the task somewhat confusing and called for some continuous mediation. While gainingsome shared consciousness in their group interactions, the participants mentioned their incessant need for borrowedconsciousness (here we should remember that shared consciousness is gained in the interaction with peers and borrowedconsciousness in the interaction with more knowledgeable others). Despite some complaints about the genre analysis inrecipes, they also found writing in this genre realistic and highly enjoyable. For example, Feride said:

I didmy best towrite a different recipe than the ones we read in class and I decided towrite one of our family traditions.My recipe belongs to my grandmother so it is real.

Another participant, Mahmut, said:

Normally I do not cook but after reading these samples and trying to write my recipe I thought it was not so hard.

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In CV writing, the participants were observed to pronounce fewer complaints over the move-step analysis and anincreasing awareness toward selecting what to include and to exclude. For example, Feride said:

Actually each analysis and writing started to get easier. At first it was hard for me to include the steps I observed in thesamples in mywriting because I wanted tomake changes but I also felt that I should be loyal to these steps but in time Ifigured it out how to do that. I did not include the move ‘presenting social skills’ in my CV because it had nothing to dowith the job offer I was trying to get.

In the interviews we held after they wrote the first drafts and annotations for the letter of complaint, I observed that theparticipants more frequently verbalized their search of appropriate lexico-grammatical features depending on the purposeand the context. For example, Oya said:

I started my letter by giving factual information, my address and the receiver’s address, the name of the person Iaddress tomake the communication easy to follow. Then in the first move ‘giving background information’, I gave somebackground information such as when I ordered and received the pair of trousers, its item code and etc. to inform theauthorized people. Then in the second move ‘stating the complaint’, I clearly stated what the problem was with thetrousers in order to make the problem clear to the reader and to complain about it. In the last move ‘presentinga solution’, I thanked the reader for reading my letter and asked for a solution in a kind way. Although there were suchexamples in the samples we read, I did not use any threatening expressions as they would do nothing but harm therelationship between my reader and me.

Because of ‘why’ questions I posed at every stage of their tasks, the students explained their rhetorical and textual choicesby giving some detailed reasons in their annotations. These prompts made annotation writing the most intriguing, chal-lenging and beneficial activity for them. In an interview, Fatih verbalized this as follows:

My favourite part is annotationwriting. Despite the fact that first wewrite the first draft and then the annotation, whilewriting the first draft I always think how I will express my choices in the annotation. This forces me to shape my draftmore carefully. I mean I make more conscious selection of lexico-grammatical items or of formal language featuresdepending on my purpose to sound logical in my annotation. Especially when I wanted to make a change from thesample texts as you always urged us to do, at several occasions I wrote new things, I mean for some new purposes, butwhile writing the annotation I could not give feasible reasons to defend them. Annotation writing continuously forcedme to go back to the draft and omit some new ideas if it was impossible to defend them.

In essay writing assignments, the students wrote two types: informative and argumentative. The collected reactions onessay writing mainly reflected the participants’ ease with both analysis and writing stages as Aliye put forward:

Essaywriting was easy. In the letter of complaint, I needed to say a lot of things in a single sentence or I felt that way butin essays I feel myself freer. As for move-step analysis I think we all have learnt to identify them in new texts by now. Ifessay had been the first genre we had studied, it would have been very hard for all of us but since essays are long texts,transitions and transitory sentences played a bigger role in bridge-building between the moves and made it easy for usto identify the main purposes.

The only stated difficulty was by Semiha in her group analysis, mostly stemming from the fact that the other students hadstudied essaywriting in the prep class the previous year.Withmyadvice, andher groupmembers’mindfulwarnings, the groupreached a compromise. Semiha said:

My biggest challenge was that last year we divided informative texts into three parts; introduction, body andconclusion. But genre analysis means focusing on the purposes so I found it a little hard to read essay samples to findthe steps under the moves. I could free myself frommy previous way of thinking with the help of the instructor and ofmy group members.

With generic move-step analysis, the students learnt how to delineate the texts into moves and steps by analyzingpurposes of writers. Since I prompted them to maintain a discovery-based orientation, the students were engaged in inde-pendent and creative analyses. I always reminded them that there would be no correct or perfect analysis to be announced. Iresponded to their analysis and their genre productions by making additional suggestions to improve the rhetorical andlexico-grammatical realizations of their writing.

3.1.4. Post-instruction phaseFinal data were gathered from the participants’ responses to post-instruction open-ended questions and interviews. They

mostly stated that the instructionwas different and difficult to them at first but over time they enjoyedwriting assignments intandemwithmove-step analysis and annotations as they found themvery beneficial, challenging and thought-provoking. Forexample, Fatih said:

I was not expecting to have a different writing instruction from the previous one. In e-mail writing I realized howdifferent things were going. We were more creative and critically engaged in all stages. The instructor never offereda template to be followed, instead she encouraged us to read the sample texts to identify the major andminor purposesof the writers and how writers achieve them.

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Another participant, Aliye, said:

I learnt the importance of reader in writing. The previous year we mostly paid attention to use correct structures butwritingwas not an activity aiming to communicatewith a reader. But thewritingwe did this year was not so focused oncorrect writing but appropriate writing.

The stances of the participants underscored creativity, critical thinking and liberty in writing instruction, which stemmedfrom the nature of genre-based instruction. I regularly reminded them of the benefits of resisting templates and prescriptions(Canagarajah, 2002; Paltridge, 2001); therefore, they had some difficulty at first. As they gotmore into the task, their concernsand difficulties gradually diminished. Besides, in our interview sessions, some of the participants stated that they started to beengaged in ‘writerly reading’ and ‘readerlywriting’ as defined by Cheng (2007) in the other reading activities they did for othercourses. They said theyapproachedwritingor reading a textwith several questions and comments in theirminds such as ‘Whatis the author trying to do here?’, ‘Howdoes he achieve his purpose, withwhat vocabulary and language structures?’, ‘With thismove I am sure the reader will leave his or her doubts about my sincerity aside’, ‘Here I think with theword ‘dear’ I will clearlysignal my respect to and distance frommy reader’, ‘I never come across the use of colloquial words such as ‘dude’ in academicwriting because it would be odd’ and so on. This indicates that awareness raising in the rhetorical and textual features of onespecific genre was the first step, and the participants were able to go beyond that. In fact my analysis points to their ability to“becomemore observant readers of the discoursal conventions” (Swales & Lindemann, 2002, p.118) and to build an increasinggenre awareness with each reading or writing activity they were engaged in outside the writing class as well.

3.2. How viable is multi-genre portfolio use in genre based EFL writing instruction?

The writing instruction deployed in this study required assisting the students to keep multi-genre portfolios rather thanlimiting their genre production into a single genre. During the analysis, some oral and written stances of the participantsremindedme of Selinker and Douglas’s (1989) doubt about the probable transfer of skills from one genre to another and urgedme to scrutinize clues of transfer that could indicate cross-genre awareness. The concept of ‘cross-genre awareness’ differsfrom ‘recontextualization’ as described by Cheng (2007), who sees recontextualization as “learners’ abilities not only to usea certain generic feature in a newwriting task, but to use it with a keen awareness of the rhetorical context that facilitates itsappropriate use” (p. 303). This was exemplified in Canagarajah’s (2006) analysis of three research articles (RAs) written in twolanguages (Tamil and English) by the same scholar for three different audiences; RA in Tamil for local publication, RA inEnglish for local publication and RA in English for foreign publication. Canagarajah emphasizes that authors are engaged insome negotiating acts and they vary their styles depending on the rhetorical context. Cross-genre awareness on the otherhand points to a transfer of skills of recontextualization across different genres requiring awareness of different purposes,different contexts and different lexico-grammatical features. In spite of all the differences among genres, the participants inthis study were observed to convey some features of one genre to another. For example, Mahmut commented:

Writing a letter of complaint was not difficult to me as it was similar to the formal e-mail writing. In our move-stepanalysis, we went back to our formal e-mails and analyses to get some help.

Another participant, Fatih, said:

E-mail writing changed my whole view of writing since wewere introduced to new concepts like purpose, context andaudience. That was like a revolution to me. After the practice, I started to do all writings and readings with these newconcepts in my mind.

Another participant, Oya, said:

In each genre analysis stage, I learnt some new vocabulary and structures. Then I tried to use them in the followinggenres as well, if possible. For instance, the structure “I was wandering if you could” we saw in formal e-mail samplesdid not exist in the letter of complaint samples but I still used it in my letter of complaint because the contexts aresimilar in those genres and you need to use formal language in both of them.

These excerpts exemplify that the participants had a tendency to establish bridges between genres through transferringtheir skills of recontextualization. This finding indicates that writers’ awareness in one genre might influence their awarenessin another, forming a cross-genre awareness. The similarities in purposes and language structures in the formal e-mail writingand the letter of complaint, for instance, might be said to scaffold Oya’s transfer stemming from her own cross-genreawareness. This awareness might have been facilitated through the use of multi-genre portfolios because they both highlighthow texts belonging to different genres are organized differently but they can also “.illustrate howone genre often relates toor interacts with others” (Hyland, 2004, p.178). Despite the fact that the concept of cross-genre awareness was not aimed atwhen the instruction began, it was observed to emerge during the analysis. Although such examples are scarce in theparticipants’ stances, their existence points to a possible cross-genre awareness building through genre-based writinginstruction supported with multi-genre portfolios even in an EFL context. Therefore, students may go beyond having a genreawareness and recontextualizing their genre awareness and build a cross-genre awareness through which they can transfersome of their skills in one genre to other genres.

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4. Conclusions and implications

The present study was based on the descriptive analysis of multi-source data. Different genres formed the focus of studentwriting, and for the purposes of research the analysis was based on the data provided by six volunteering participants amongthe first-year pre-service teachers attending an ELT program. In essence, the assignments required the participants to observeand practice different rhetorical and lexico-grammatical organizations of different genres. The analysis of genre samples theycarried out in groups was a prelude to writing their own texts. In a related vein, their annotations aimed to enhance thestudents’ reflection and critical thinking so that they were introduced to new concepts such as ‘creative and independentanalysis’ and ‘resisting templates’. They were observed to transfer some previously-noticed generic features into their ownwriting, which is congruent with some previous ESP genre-based writing instruction studies (e.g., Cheng, 2007; Henry &Roseberry, 1998; Pang, 2002). The participants were also observed to make some changes in their writing in order not tosound repetitive or imitating owing to the constant prompts they received. By the term ‘changes’ I mean that they wereprompted to force themselves either to use different vocabulary items than the ones used in the samples or not to use some ofthe previously noticed steps in the generic organization of their papers. The reason for such prompts was to help “.moderatethe teacher’s dominant role and tone down what might be seen as over-directive and prescriptive interventions in studentwriting” (Hyland, 2004, p. 61) and ameliorate the possibility that “.the permanence and materiality of written texts leavewriters so vulnerable to critical inspection” (Leki, 2003, p. 104).

Besides transferring the previously noticed features into their own writing and recontextualizing their genre awareness,some of the participants were observed to use certain generic features belonging to a genre while being engaged in another.One of the main goals of genre-based teaching is to raise learners’ awareness of “the specific audience for and purpose ofa particular text, and how best to communicate rhetorically in that instance” (Beaufort, 2004, p.140). Drawing on thisunderstanding of genre-based teaching and learning, it could be proposed that when audience expectations, purposes and/ortextual features in a particular genre bear resemblance to those of another, a transfer may emerge, that is cross-genreawareness. As depicted in their stances, some participants were able to recontextualize an awareness of rhetorical and textualconsiderations of one genre in their writing of a text belonging to another genre. This reflects a more sophisticated awarenessas it points to a sharper understanding of genres in terms of similarities and differences in audience expectations, purposesand/or textual features among them. This is congruent with the previous studies (Cheng, 2007; Henry & Roseberry, 1998;Pang, 2002; Swales & Lindemann, 2002) pinpointing the success of genre-based teaching as it increases an awareness ofgeneric structure of texts so that learners could learn to produce highly textured texts to achieve their communicative goals.Also, it could be concluded that cross-genre awareness is well operationalized through the deployment of multi-genreportfolios in genre-based writing instruction.

The stances of the participants indicated that their positive remarks were observed to gradually increase throughout theinstruction and their statements signalled the benefits of practicing genres and reflecting on their own performances inannotations. The points they raised highlight that they started to question a monolithic and asocial view of writing. Equallyimportant, their writing started to be motivated by rhetorical considerations such as purposes in writing and targeted readerexpectations. These should be themain goals of any writing instruction to be adopted in EFL educational settings where thereis a handicap experienced by both teachers and students while predicting the targeted reader expectations for a given genre.

Since genres are seen as repeated social actions (Miller, 1984) they may have a specific cultural element and students,especially those in EFL countries, may not be aware of how genres are employed in their own specific contexts. Therefore,there is an enormous need for genre pedagogies where EFL learners will be offered “an explicit understanding of how targettexts are structured and why they are written in the ways they are” (Hyland, 2007, p. 151). The awareness-raising potential ingenre pedagogies holds significant implications for teachers as well. By analyzing students’ texts, teachers become moreaware of how students create meanings and more sensitive to the points where students need support. The belief of the NewRhetoric Approach followers that writing cannot be learnt in the inauthentic context of the classroom limits the empow-erment of the already disadvantaged EFL learners. On the other hand, genre knowledge can be viewed as a resource to exploitgeneric conventions so that learners learn to respond appropriately to the requirements of academic and non-academicpractices (Bhatia, 2004; Cheng, 2007; Swales,1990, 2004; Swales & Lindemann, 2002) without accommodating unnecessarilyto the existing modes of practice and values and ideologies of the dominant culture which embodies genres (Benesch, 2001;Canagarajah, 2002). Besides the planning-writing-reviewing chainwhich focuses learners on the process of writing itself, myview is that EFL learners in Turkey need genre pedagogies as a complement to process pedagogies and as a result of newlygrowing understanding of literacy (New London Group, 1996). When genre-related teaching is carried out, learners becomeresearchers participating in and observing the actions of language communities and thus raise their awareness of multipleaudiences, purposes, rhetorical features and social conventions (Devitt, Bawarshi & Reiff, 2003). Although the demand forgenre-based writing instruction for L2 speaking graduate students in the US kindled the emergence of “writing as languageuse in context” (Matsuda, 2003, p. 22), similar needs and demands are also experienced by L2 speakers in EFL contexts sincethese speakers also wish to be a part of social contexts in which “.most important non-literary texts ,,, are produced andnegotiated” (Johns, 2003, pp. 195–196).

Furthermore, teacher education programs have enormous responsibilities in the sense that they need to analyze pre-service teachers’ needs and allow them to understand and challenge valued discourses (Hyland, 2007). If a teacher is aware ofhow a text is structured and organized in relation to its purpose and reader and could select and/or create appropriatecontexts for learning, then s/he will be in a better position to intervene successfully in the writing of his or her students

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(Hyland, 2007; Zhou, 2009b). As Zhou (op cit) reminds us, teachers could help learners raise their awareness of achievableand unachievable goals and identify the origins of their difficulties. Keeping these caveats in mind, teacher educatorspreparing pre-service teachers to teach writing in L2 classrooms should be mindful of how to integrate genre-based teachinginto their syllabuses. Some writing teachers who have either limited training in discourse or genre analysis or insufficientlinguistic knowledge may feel themselves inadequate in genre-based writing instruction (Zhou, 2009a). If some discourse/genre analysis courses are provided in teacher education programs, pre-service teachers may successfully adopt genrepedagogies in their future teaching careers, which might help genre-based writing instruction achieve some prominence andprivilege even in remote EFL countries.

The limitations of the study could be acknowledged as follows: (1) therewere only six pre-service teachers as participants,therefore replications of the study with as large and as varied a group of participants as possible are needed in order to probefurther into the instances of cross-genre awareness and reach more generalizable findings and (2) the analysis was designedto capture how the participants’ genre awareness became embedded in their stances through the instruction, therefore, thisstudy did not include an analysis of students’ genre-specific writing samples. Further studies with linguistic concerns mightinclude an analysis of students’ writing samples to investigate their linguistic and lexical improvement.

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Demet Yayli is an assistant professor in the Department of Foreign Languages Education at Pamukkale University, Turkey. She holds a PhD. in EnglishLanguage Teaching. Shewas a visiting scholar at Pennsylvania State University for a year, mentored by Dr. Suresh Canagarajah. Hermain research interests aregenre analysis, genre-based writing and EFL teacher education.