Exploring Impacts of Consciousness-raising in a Genre-based Pedagogy

This study reports on the findings of a genre teaching course for developing academic writing of a class of EFL students in Iran. The information report genre was taught in a cyclical way of teaching and learning, which was started from ‘setting the context’ and ‘deconstruction’ of prototype information report genre, and continued with ‘joint construction’, ‘independent construction’, and finally ‘comparing’ with different academic genres. Results of the analysis revealed that the students have taken a significant leap towards controlling macro genre structures. Some progressions were also observed at micro language features such as lexical density and the frequency of embedded clauses. The findings of the analysis revealed that the consciousness-raising approach in genre teaching course might be a contributing factor for text development.