“Integrating corpus- and genre-based approaches in academic writing research and pedagogy”

Xiaofei Lu, Penn State

An emerging body of academic writing research has employed corpus-based genre analysis (CGA) to systematically describe the linguistic realizations of different rhetorical functions in various genres of academic writing and documented the potential of CGA activities for promoting novice writers’ academic genre competence. Different from analyses/activities that focus on either identifying key linguistic features or analyzing the rhetorical structures of different genres of academic writing in isolation, CGA highlights the connection between key linguistic features characterizing different genres of academic writing and the rhetorical or communicative functions they are used to realize. This workshop introduces participants to the rationale and agenda of the CGA approach, findings of recent studies adopting this approach, and methods for employing this approach in academic writing research and pedagogy. Topics to be covered include:

• CGA approach overview: rationale, agenda, and recent research findings
• The notion of genre competence and the basics of rhetorical function analysis
• Compilation of specialized academic writing corpora
• Automated tools for extracting linguistic features from written corpora
• Methods for matching linguistic features to rhetorical functions
• Design of CGA activities for academic writing pedagogy