The effectiveness of genre-based pedagogy in developing students' academic literacy in Hong Kong EMI secondary schools

Abstract

For second language learners in Hong Kong EMI secondary schools, there is lack of an effective pedagogy for teachers to help students acquire functional academic English language proficiency in content subject classrooms. From previous studies, genre-based pedagogy was welcomed by both teachers and students in Australia. Also, genre-based pedagogy was implemented in some CLIL programmes in Europe, though the effectiveness of genre-based pedagogy in developing students’ academic literacy was not clear. The present study aims to evaluate whether genre-based pedagogy can be applied to help students improve academic literacy in Science in EMI secondary schools effectively. In the study, eight teachers, twenty Form one students and ten Form two students from a band one EMI girl school were recruited as participants. Student participants were asked to have English remedial classes after school and teacher participants were asked to observe those classes. Afterwards, some of them were selected to fill in the questionnaires and have interviews. Results showed that genre-based pedagogy was effective in developing students’ academic literacy in Hong Kong EMI secondary schools. Besides, the findings revealed that all the students and the majority of teachers agreed to apply genre-based pedagogy into other subjects at whole school level. The findings suggested that EMI schools teachers should apply genre-based pedagogy in every subject. Meanwhile, teachers are recommended to have more professional training on genre-based pedagogy.