Scaffolding genres in English for Pharmacy and Real Estate Courses using 'Sydney School' pedagogy

Abstract

This presentation demonstrates how ‘Sydney School’ genre-based pedagogy has been used to develop materials and teaching strategies in two English for Specific Academic Purposes courses at the University of Hong Kong. ‘The English for Clinical Pharmacy’ course involves teaching ‘Drug Evaluation Bulletin Articles’ while the ‘Communication Course for Real Estate Students’ involves the teaching of ‘Persuasive Presentations.’ Already existing materials and pedagogical approaches were found to be less than optimally effective with students perceiving them as difficult and unclear or not tailored to their specific curricular context. We have responded to this apparent need for more scaffolding by applying a genre-based literacy approach with its roots in systemic functional linguistics. It will be clear from this presentation, however, given the differing language needs arising from the target academic disciplines, we have adopted two distinct ways of applying the same approach. The pharmacy course has used intensive reading and deconstruction of a journal article, followed by deconstruction and individual construction of a drug safety update in order to prepare students for joint construction of a drug comparison bulletin article. In the real estate course students give a persuasive presentation for the purpose of seeking retail space rental agreements. A persuasive presentation was deconstructed using a genre-based approach. Students then jointly constructed the target text in expert groups in preparation for an individual rendering of their own persuasive presentation. Students were invited to share their views of their learning experiences and evaluate the materials that were used to scaffold their learning.