•  • SAAD SAMEER DHARI• ASHRAF MOHAMMAD• MAAD ABDULELLAH • TAHA MAHMOUD • MUNTAHA ALI

A GENRE ANALYSIS OF EAP CLASSROOM LESSONS

JOSEPH J. LEE

EAP : English for Academic Purposes

ESP : English for Specific Purposes

INTRODUCTION

• This genre-oriented analysis explores the rhetorical structure and

linguistic features of EAP classroom lessons.

• The analysis is based on a corpus of 24 EAP classroom lessons

taught by highly experienced IEP teachers.

• Using a focused Swalesian move analysis combined with corpus-

based methods, the study examines the rhetorical moves in different

phases of EAP lessons and frequent lexical phrases used to signal

discourse organization in each phase.

INTRODUCTION

• In addition, four EAP teachers were interviewed in order to gain

insider perspectives into their discursive practices.

• The analysis reveals that EAP lessons consist of three major

phases, each with three distinct moves, and with varying

linguistic realizations

INTRODUCTION • In the past few decades, Swales’s (1990) conceptualization of genre

has been critically influential in English for Specific Purposes (ESP)

and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) scholarship, as it has

played a central role in providing a robust framework for researching

specialized discourses and offering insights for second language (L2)

pedagogy (Paltridge, 2013).

•

• A genre, according to Swales (1990), is “a class of

communicative events” recognized and employed by particular

discourse communities whose “members…share some set of

communicative purposes” (p. 58).

• In other words, genres are considered communicative strategies

for accomplishing social actions of specific discourse

communities rather than the culture at large (Hyland, 2007).

• Although genres vary, and manipulating them is possible, they are

nonetheless identifiable by particular discourse community

members due to their “prototypical” schematic structure, or the

most typical realization of patterns of the events.

• Structural patterns are developed through a series of rhetorical

moves (and component steps), or communicative strategies used to

achieve certain communicative goals, and the lexico-grammatical

features used to realize them

• These move sequences represent a genre's schematic structure

in accomplishing deliberate social actions and lead to the

coherent understanding of the discourse.

• A text, therefore, must include certain features for it to be an

exemplar of that particular genre. While genres are dynamic,

flexible, and open to change in response to community

members' needs and contextual changes, they have differing

degrees of choices and constraints, and violating genre

expectations comes with unpredictable consequences.

Our study shows that the lecture genre is a highly structured

communicative event with recurrent rhetorical patterns and

routinized linguistic characteristics for achieving broad

communicative purposes, in this case pedagogical.

They also illustrate various strategies lecturers use to

compensate for the perceived constraints inherent in real-time

discourse with a live audience, as well as opportunities

available in constructing coherent and meaningful lectures.

• However, these studies have primarily concentrated on the

distribution and functions of teacher and student contributions to the

tripartite IRF exchange, with little attention given to the schematic

structure of a language lesson.

• Although classroom instruction sometimes involves teachers'

making extemporaneous decisions in response to their assessment of

classroom situations and improvising accordingly, L2 lessons are

planned, structured, and routinized communicative events, with a

beginning, middle, and end, performed by a specific community of

language teachers.

• Further, they occur in particular social settings, involve

primarily two participant types, consist of recognizable tasks,

and have a broad communicative purpose. While descriptions

for opening, sequencing, and closing language lessons are

provided (Richards & Lockhart, 1996)

• The study examines the rhetorical moves in different phases of

EAP classroom lessons and frequent lexical phrases used to

signal discourse organization in each phase.

• In addition, the study includes interviews with EAP

teachers in order to gain insider perspectives into their

discursive practices.

• Thus, this study seeks to show the relevance and power

of Swales's move analysis combined with corpus

techniques and qualitative interviews in investigating an

under-examined genre engaged in by EAP teachers.

2. Corpus and procedures• The corpus consists of 24 EAP lessons taught by four highly

experienced EAP teachers from the second language classroom discourse (L2CD) corpus created by the author.

• Three teachers were female and one was male, and they worked in an intensive English program (IEP) at a large urban university in the US Southeast.

• Baker taught structure and composition, Burt and Mary taught oral communication, and Lillian taught reading and listening.

• Each teacher's lessons were video-recorded six times over a 16-week semester, totaling 28 h.

• The first recordings occurred in weeks three and four, four consecutive lessons then were recorded in weeks six to nine, and the last recording took place in weeks 11e14.

• the following criteria were used to identify lesson boundaries: (1) explicit linguistic reference to lesson shift; (2) changes in prosody plus physical movements; (3) lengthy pause plus a discourse marker (e.g. okay) produced with a falling tone; and (4) lengthy pause plus non-verbal behavior (e.g., gesture, shuffling paper). This process led to the identification of three major EAP lesson phases: opening, activity cycle, and closing.

• In analyzing the corpus, a Swalesian (1990) genre analysis was first applied in order to identify the communicative purposes of EAP lessons, as expressed through the recurrent rhetorical moves (and component steps) and linguistic features that realize these movements.

• The rhetorical moves/steps were coded according to Biber, Connor, and Upton's (2007) guidelines. It consisted of a recursive process of reading the lesson transcripts and identifying and coding the moves/steps in order to determine their communicative purposes.

• Then, to determine the conventionality of moves/steps, or “move stability” (Kanoksilapatham, 2005), the frequency of each move/step was recorded. For the present study, a move/step was considered conventional when appearing 80% or higher and optional when below 80%. Although the arbitrary cut-off frequency is high, this conservative approach was taken due to the small corpus size and speaker number (cf. Kanoksilapatham, 2005). To mitigate analyst bias, a second coder independently coded a randomly selected 15% of the corpus,5 or one lesson transcript from each teacher's lessons.

• Additionally, using Antconc (v. 3.2.4, Anthony, 2011), a text analysis and concordance tool, the corpus was analyzed for the most frequent lexical phrases (DeCarrico & Nattinger,1988), or clusters, used to signal discourse organization. The corpus was divided into the three phases (Table 2), and each phase was transferred to Antconc separately.

Table 1

Description of the L2CD corpus.Teacher Course Level Class

sizeClass meeting

Class timed

No. of lessons

Tokens

Baker Structure and Composition

3 17 MWF 100 min

6 41,170

Burt Oral Communication

2 13 MWF 50 min

6 39,719

Lillian Reading and Listening

3 15 TTH 80 min

6 38,874

Mary Oral Communication

3 15 MWF 50 min

6 59,875

Total 24 179,738

Table 2Description of the L2CD lesson phases.

Phase Tokens Percentage Mean SD Range

Opening 18,641 10.38 776.71 506.57 114--1798

Activity Cycle 141,341 78.68 5889.21 1761.40 3737--9628

Closing 19,656 10.94 819.00 521.97 94--2030

Total 179,638 100.00 7484.92 1721.67 5085--11,448

Findings and discussion• Rhetorical moves and lexical phrases in the opening phase• 1- The opening phase functions to orient students to the

current lesson by signaling the start of lesson, informing students of important course-related matters, and setting up lesson framework.

• M1:• Getting Started signals a lesson's official start. It is often

realized by a combination of a discourse marker and greeting .• (1) okay good afternoon. (BU-D1)• (2) uh i'm gonna get started. (L-D2)

• 2- M2: Warming up serves to highlight course-related matters, look ahead to future lessons, and maintain rapport with students before engaging in more substantive parts of the lesson, similar to academic lecture introductions (Lee, 2009).

• M2S1: Housekeeping is used to make announcements, collect and/or return homework, and offer reminders:

• (3) before we get started … i wanted to show you something that Bill mentioned … (BA-D1)

• (4) if you have homework for me give it to me now. (BU-D5).

• M2S2: Looking ahead functions to inform students of upcoming lessons:

• (5) i think maybe on Tuesday after the exam … we will have a little bit of that speech and you can sort of see what the president said about that okay? (L-D1)

• the optional M2S3: Making a digression allows teachers to discuss issues less germane to course content, but those that may be relevant in sustaining positive teachers student relationship:

• (8) happy birthday to you Emilie yeah hopefully we'll have time to sing to you at the end of class.

• 3- M3: Setting Up Lesson Agenda is optional. In Thompson's (1994) study on lecture introductions, she found four steps for a comparable move (Setting Up Lecture Framework): announcing topic, indicating scope, outlining structure, and presenting aims. In EAP lesson openings, however, this move is a rather brief series of activities planned for the lesson.

• (10) um today we're gonna work a little bit with the lecture notes, and um you're going to give me some feedback on, how this course is going okay? (M-D3)

the most frequent lexical phrases in the opening phase

• only two appeared once ptw or more: we're going to/ gonna (1.77 ptw) and I'm going to/gonna (1.61 ptw). Teachers use these phrases to indicate future actions, announce plans, and refer to future lessons. Interestingly, we're going to/gonna is often used for M2S2 and M3 (11), while I'm going to/gonna primarily is used for M2S1 (12):

• (12) okay i have your tests, i'm gonna give them back to you at the end of class today. (L-D3)

Table 3Frequency of moves/steps in the opening phase.

moves Frequency (%) Conventionality

M1: Getting Started 24 (100) Conventional

M2: Warming Up 24 (100) Conventional

S1: Housekeeping 22 (91.7) Conventional

S2: Looking ahead 7 (29.2) Optional

S3: Making a digression 5 (20.8) Optional

M3: Setting Up Lesson Agenda

7 (29.2) Optional

3.2. Rhetorical moves and lexical phrases in activity cycle phase

• 4- M4: Setting Up Activity Framework is realized by two conventional and four optional steps. Its primary purpose is to announce and provide directions for activities. The conventional M4S1: Announcing activity names the activity students will perform:

• (14) the next thing we're going to do is, prepare, a little more for our lecture. (M-D3)

• Similar to M4S1, the M4S2: Outlining activity procedures is conventional:

• (16) so on the next page, with your partners at your desk, i want you to answer the first four questions. looking at how it's organized, noticing the main points … (BA-D2)

• The remaining M4 steps are optional• M4S3: Modeling activity functions to demonstrate verbally

(often multimodally) how to complete activities:• (17) so for example if you look up. and there's an X, through all

these times. and then, this is the first one that has not been crossed off, that's your time. (L-D2)

• M4S4: Checking in serves to check on students' comprehension. Noteworthy is the frequent use of yes/no questions:

• (18) any questions? (M-D4)

• M4S5: Indicating activity time notifies learners of the time allotted for activities:

• (19) i'm gonna give you 5 min, to talk with your groups, 5 min (BU-D5)

• Finally, M4S6: Initiating activity signals the start of an activity.• (20) okay so go ahead, practice these questions. (M-D5)• 5- M5: Putting Activity in Context is the next pre-activity

move in this phase, and it is conventional (88%). While typically absent in the initial activity, it appears in subsequent activities. Its broad purpose is to contextualize an activity by building and/or eliciting leaners' prior knowledge, offering justification, and/or making intertextual links to prior lessons.

• M5S1: Building/activating background knowledge functions to build and/or activate students' background knowledge of a topic or activity. Its optionality is likely due to teachers' accomplishing a similar function, particularly building background knowledge, when they explicitly model how to complete an activity through M4S3 above. Build and activate are combined because of the difficulty of disentangling whether the EAP teachers were developing or stimulating students' prior knowledge.

• (21) what are some components [of culture], that we talked about. (BA-D4)

• In these examples, the teachers attempted to refresh learners' preexisting knowledge of topics discussed previously.

• M5S2: Presenting rationale is a conventional step (87.5%) used to articulate an activity's underlying purpose:

• (24) why is this useful. why are we doing this, activity. (BA-D1)• M5S3: Referring to earlier lessons, when present, functions to

make connection between the current activity and specific previous lessons:

• (26) do you remember what we were doing last time with pronunciation? (M-D1)

• 6- M6: Reviewing Activity is employed to review the activity. It is realized by three conventional and three optional steps.

• The conventional M6S1: Regrouping participants, according to Mary, is a “coming-together sort of strategy” to reorient learners. When the teachers sensed that enough time had been spent on an activity, they moved to the center-front of the classroom and verbally indicated their desire to regain control of the class.

• (28) okay i'm gonna interrupt your discussion right now. (L-D4)

• The conventional M6S2: Establishing common knowledge establishes what might be considered officially recognized knowledge among class participants:

• (29) we're gonna take a look at what, your colleagues have said. (L-D1)

• The optional M6S3: Following up is used to indicate what teachers would like to do subsequently with an activity that has been reviewed:

• (33) time is almost up and i know, some of you still have questions we'll go over the answers to these when we meet again on, Thursday, okay?

• The optional M6S4: Checking in serves to check on potential questions students might have about previously established common answers to an activity:

• (35) how are you at this point? (M-D6)

• providing feedback on learners' overall performances on activities is accomplished through the conventional M6S5: Evaluating student performance (87.5%). It is usually in the form of positive appraisals:

• (36) okay, good. so we have a lot of good examples here. (BA-D3)

• (38) okay some of you might need to practice them [keywords] again this weekend okay? (M-D1)

• Similar to its related step in M5, the optional M6S6: Presenting rationale offers teachers opportunities either to reinforce rationale given prior to an activity or to supply previously unstated justification: (39) if we do this a little bit every tie most every time when we come together from now on, i think you'll find you're reading a little bit fast, okey-dokey? (L-D2)

Moves/steps Frequency (%) Conventionality

M4: Setting Up Activity Framework 24 (100) Conventional

S1: Announcing activity 24 (100) Conventional

S2: Outlining activity procedure 24 (100) Conventional

S3: Modeling activity 12 (50) Optional

S4: Checking in 17 (70.8) Optional

S5: Indicating activity time 17 (70.8) Optional

S6: Initiating activity 13 (54.2) Optional

M5: Putting Activity In Context 21 (87.5) Conventional

S1: Building/Activating background knowledge

16 (66.7) Optional

Moves/steps Frequency (%) Conventionality

M5s2 : Presenting rationale 21 (87.5) Conventional

S3: Referring to earlier lesson 10 (41.7) Optional

M6: Reviewing Activity 24 (100) Conventional

S1: Regrouping participants 24 (100) Conventional

S2: Establishing common knowledge

21 (87.5) Conventional

S3: Following up 13 (54.2) Optional

S4: Checking in 12 (50)

S5: Evaluating student performance

21 (87.5) Conventional

S6: Presenting rationale 10 (41.7) Optional

• Regarding lexico-grammatical features, Table 5 represents the five lexical phrases occurring at least once ptw in this phase. All phrases are predominantly used to realize M4, especially to provide task instructions (M4S2). Considering the importance

• of clear instructions, this is not surprising. Unlike the opening phase, where there is a greater sense of a collective enterprise, this idea seems to be less represented in the activity cycle phase. As shown in Table 5, you're going to/gonna is the most frequent cluster:

• (40) okay, uh so you're gonna read, and i'm going to count the time for you. when you finish reading. you're going to look up

• you're going to find out, the time that has not been crossed out. and write that down. all right? (L-D2)

• Similarly, want you to, I want you, and I want you to also are used to realize M4S2. Biber et al. (2004) found that I want you to is a common lexical bundle in classroom teaching used to direct students in performing an action. It acts as a “buffer” to subsequent series of directives:

• (41) i want you to write down, the directions....i don't want you to say what it is. you're going to yet, i just want you to give me the directions. then you're gonna tell somebody else those directions, and you're gonna see if your directions. tell them, where you wanna go. okay? (BU-D1)

Rank Lexical phrase N Frequency (per 1000 words)

1 want you to* 39 1.98

2 you're going to/gonna 38 1.93

3 I want you* 34 1.73

3 I want you to* 34 1.73

Table 5Most frequent lexical phrases in the activity cycle phase.

Rhetorical moves and lexical phrases in the closing phase

• The closing phase functions to deal with homework, announcements, and farewells.

• 7- M7: Setting Up Homework Framework functions to establish a framework for homework assignments.

• The conventional M7S1: Announcing homework serves to announce homework assignments and is realized multimodally:

• (44) that ((T points at the whiteboard.)) is your homework. okay? so your homework page fifty-three fifty-four fifty-five. (BU-D2)

• (45) ((T points at the screen.)) so we have two homework assignments for Friday, all right? all right. so homework for Friday this page and bring your friend's notes and voice recording too. okay? (M-D2)

• M7S2: Outlining homework procedure provides specific homework instructions.

• (47) so on, page sixty-five sixty-six sixty-seven, you're given two choices, and i want you to make a choice to decide which one of those is the main idea, okay? (L-D3)

• M7S3: Modeling homework (48) and M7S4: Checking in (49) serve similar functions as their comparable steps in M5 in the activity cycle phase:

• (48) so if you‘re choosing for example Joon you have, symbols. values. beliefs. which one do you like the most, what‘s your favorite of those three. (BA-D5)

• (49) questions about the homework? (M-D4)

• 8- M8: Cooling Down shares similar broad purposes with M2 in the opening phase: to attend to course-related matters and/ or to discuss future lessons that may or may not have been discussed in the lesson opening. The optional M8S1: Looking ahead offers students a preview of upcoming lessons:

• (50) on Friday i'm going to finish the lecture, okay? and then, on Monday we're gonna talk about the results of your interviews.

• (M-D6)• the conventional M8S2: Housekeeping occurs frequently and

serves comparable functions:• (51) okay i wanna give you back your test … and give you a

chance to look at things ask me questions. okay? (L-D6)

• 9- M9: Farewell is the final move in a lesson. Just as M1 in the opening phase is used to formally start a lesson, M9 formally signals a lesson's official end:

• (54) okay, see you later guys. have a nice weekend. (M-D3)

Moves/ steps Frequency (%) Conventionality

M7: Setting Up Homework Framework

24 (100) Conventional

S1: Announcing homework

24 (100) Conventional

S2: Outlining homework procedure

17 (70.9) Optional

S3: Modeling homework 6 (25) Optional

S4: Checking in 6 (25) Optional

M8: Cooling Down 24 (100) Conventional

S1: Looking ahead 17 (70.8) Optional

S2: Housekeeping 22 (91.6) Conventional

M9: Farewell 24 (100) Conventional

• In terms of lexical phrases, the closing phase includes four clusters that appeared once ptw or more, three of which overlap

• (Table 7). However, there is a striking resemblance regarding the types that are represented in this phase and the activity cycle phase. This is partly due to the fact that M7 is similar to M4, both of which establish frameworks for completing assignments.

• The overlapping clusters want you to, I want you, and I want you to are principally used to realize M7S2:

• (55) so on, page sixty-five sixty-six sixty-seven, you're given two choices, and i want you to make a choice to decide which one of those is the main idea, okay? (L-D3)

• In the activity cycle phase, you're going to/gonna is used to provide activity instructions; in the closing phase, it is used for a different purpose:

• on Friday you're going to write in class that's one of it's our first timed writing … i'll give you, so many minutes … i haven't decided yet. but you're gonna write something, on Friday, in class. (BA-D1)

Table 7Most frequent lexical phrases in the closing phase.

Rank Lexical phrase N Frequency (per 1000 words)

1 want you to* 39 1.98

2 you're going to/gonna 38 1.93

3 I want you* 34 1.73

3 I want you to* 34 1.73

Concluding remarks

• EAP lessons in this corpus consist of three phases: opening, activity cycle, and closing. Although the rhetorical moves in each phase occasionally progress in a linear sequence, the EAP teachers mostly performed a complex, rather messy, discursive maneuvering to realize the communicative purposes of each phase and to achieve overall pedagogic goals.

• The opening phase is concerned principally with establishing positive learning environments and reinforcing inter-lesson continuity than with providing a cognitive road map for a lesson (McGrath et al., 1992).

• teachers spend most of class time managing activities in the activity cycle phase. This recursive cycle of setting up and contextualizing activities and reviewing them allows EAP teachers to establish appropriate learning conditions and to achieve lesson objectives. This cycle is repeated multiple times depending on the number of activity types in a lesson.

• Finally, EAP teachers bring lesson closure by setting up homework, informing students of course-related issues,

• sustaining inter-lesson connections, and wishing students farewell as a means to continue maintaining positive teacher student rapport.

• A few limitations of this exploratory study need to be pointed out. First, the study's corpus included only four EAP teachers working in one IEP utilizing an academic task-based curriculum.

• Also, the L2CD corpus consists of only 24 EAP lessons, and mostly of teacher speech directed to the whole class. To confirm the present study's findings, future ESP genre-oriented research of classroom discourse could analyze a larger corpus (or a set of corpora) of EAP lessons from different teachers in various teaching circumstances.

• In conclusion, although classroom discourse is a collaborative effort, mutually constructed by both students and teacher,

• the teacher ultimately controls the content and structure of classroom lessons. Therefore, L2 teacher education programs,

• particularly those preparing pre- and in-service EAP teachers, may need to place greater importance to raising EAP teachers'

• awareness and understanding of the lesson genre. By becoming more intimately familiar with the discursive and linguistic

• patterns of EAP lessons, L2 teacher education could assist teachers in developing the discursive repertoire necessary to be

• effective in the classroom. Such classroom discourse competence would allow EAP teachers to make classroom lessons more

• accessible, navigable, and meaningful for students in the process of developing academic discourse competence.