A longitudinal study of developments in the academic writing of Thai university students in the context of a genre based pedagogy.

Abstract

This dissertation reports on a study of developments in key aspects of the English academic writing of Thai students undertaking a writing course in a Thai university in 2006. The course employed the genre-based pedagogy associated with the so-called Sydney genre school (see, for example, Martin and Rose 2008) and focussed on two of the argumentative genres identified in the Sydney genre-school literature, the Exposition and the Discussion. The course was delivered to 72 English majors in two classes over a period of twelve weeks. The writing of six students was selected for close linguistic analysis, with the data set consisting of the three essays which each student produced at the beginning, middle and end of the course (18 texts in total). The broad objective of the research was to investigate whether any developments could be observed in the student’s writing, as a group, which could be interpreted as positive developments in their academic literacy and which might plausibly be seen as at least in part the result of the teaching and learning opportunities made available by the course. It was found that a majority of the students produced essays at the commencement of the course, before any teaching, which (1) did not match any of the genre structural prototypes outlined in the literature, and which (2) seemed to be structurally and hence communicatively problematic, possibly on account of this. All students subsequently produced essays which did closely match one or other of the genre prototypes outlined in the literature and which seemed persuasively more coherent and easier to follow than the essays produced initially, before exposure to the genre-based pedagogy employed by the course. It is argued that it is plausible that the teaching and learning opportunities provided by the course played some role in this outcome. As well, several trends were observed in the student’s writing across the duration of the course by which they substantially increased the frequency with which they deployed the resources for construing inter-clausal relations (logico-semantic relations). In particular trends were observed by which the students, as a group, reduced the proportion of single clause sentences in their writing, increased the frequency of coordination (parataxis) and subordination (hypotaxis), made much greater use of mechanisms for referencing other sources and voices, and much more frequently construed relations of consequentiality (cause-and-effect) and counter expectation. It is argued that these changes can be interpreted as positive developments in the writing of the students by which they extended their communicative range and by which their writing became more fluent and more nuanced. It is argued that it is plausible to see the course and its pedagogy as having a significant role to play in this outcome. It is proposed that these findings, based as they are on longitudinal study involving a detailed and systematic analysis of specific linguistic features, lend strong support to claims about the efficacy of this genre-based approach to the teaching of writing.