“This Is Helping Me With Writing in All Languages”: Developing Genre Knowledge Across Languages in a Foreign Language Course

Abstract

This project builds a trajectory for the study of multilingual genre learning and the teaching of genre-based writing to multilingual students in additional language courses. Previous research in genre-based instructional settings has examined practices of students who were multilinguals (e.g., Artemeva & Fox, 2010; Artemeva & Myles, 2015; Bawarshi & Reiff, 2010). However, since expert multilingual writers seem to draw on their whole repertoire of genres and rhetorical strategies across languages strategically (Gentil, 2011), more research is needed to understand how multilinguals use their dynamic repertoires of knowledge (Rinnert & Kobayashi, 2016) to write specific genres across languages. This dissertation examines students' responses to pedagogical tasks, or metacognitive scaffolds (Negretti & McGrath, 2018), implemented in two 15-week courses of Portuguese-as-an-additional-language genre-based writing to students with multiple language backgrounds (including L1/L2/heritage Spanish, L1/L2 English speakers). Students’ responses were qualitatively coded and analyzed in the light of a genre knowledge framework that brings together the constructs of metacognition, social context, recontextualization (Tardy, Sommer-Farias & Gevers, forthcoming). Findings identified patterns students went through to develop genre knowledge, such as gradual association of linguistic features to content, audience and purpose, and recognition of context, format or socio-rhetorical purpose based on previous experiences in multilingual settings. Results also revealed the influence of language ideologies raised in instructional and non-instructional settings in multilingual and disciplinary identities as well as self-awareness as writers across languages. Suggestions on how these findings inform genre theory and pedagogy are discussed, such as capitalizing on translingual competence to develop genre knowledge across languages in collegiate FL education due to genre awareness’ non-language-dependence.