English writing instructors' use of theories, genres, and activities: A survey of teachers’ beliefs and practices

Abstract

In second language (L2) writing, the concept of genre has been an important construct. To date, multiple theories (sometimes referred to as schools or approaches) have driven a considerable amount of genre-based research and pedagogy, including: English for Specific Purposes (ESP), Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), and the New Rhetoric/Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) approach. Despite their growing prevalence, studies are needed that investigate the extent to which writing instructors adopt these theories in practice. This study addresses this issue by exploring 1) the genre-based theories that inform writing instructors’ pedagogies; 2) the different genres instructors teach in their classrooms; and 3) the types of pedagogical activities practitioners employ. To understand these phenomena, survey data (N = 141) and semi-structured interviews (n = 7) were collected from L2 English writing instructors. Findings show that ESP was the most well-known and adopted approach, followed by SFL and RGS. For written genres, most instructors reported teaching traditional, monomodal genres (e.g., argumentative essays), while digital multimodal genres were rare. This study discusses the implications of these findings, including developing teacher training, expanding pedagogies to include multimodal genres, and forging links between genres used in the classroom and those students will encounter in their lives.