Developing genre awareness in collaborative academic reading: A case study of novice academic learners

Abstract

Genre awareness, the conscious knowledge of how genre features function in reading and writing (Tardy et al., 2020), plays a facilitating role in reading academic texts. However, there is limited empirical research focusing on novice academic learners' genre awareness acquisition and development in collaborative reading contexts, despite the great benefits associated with such collaborative designs (Johns, 2008; Ye, 2020). Therefore, the current study, employing a qualitative case study approach, investigated how Chinese first-year university students acquired and developed genre awareness in collaborative academic reading. Data from multiple sources were collected, including classroom recordings, students’ written products, and semi-structured interviews, from two focal groups in a university English for Academic Purposes (EAP) reading course with a pedagogical design aimed at collaborative reading of research reports. Drawing on relevant genre and metacognition theories, data analyses revealed that these two groups of Chinese freshmen developed awareness of text structure, academic language, and academic norms, and that the development of the three types of metacognitive genre awareness followed different trajectories over a semester of collaborative academic reading. These findings contribute to our understanding of how novice academic learners become aware of an academic genre and learn it through a collaborative approach.