Raising Awareness of the Generic Structure and Linguistic Features of Essay Introductions.

Recent work in genre analysis has shown how information is structured in several text-types and genres. One such investigation has revealed how information is organised in the introductions of expository texts (Henry & Roseberry, 1997). Based on this study, teaching materials for university-level second-language learners were created with the aim of raising learners' awareness of the rhetorical organisation and salient linguistic features of the essay. The teaching method relied heavily on explicit instruction and essential metalanguage. An evaluation of these methods and materials, based on an analysis of student writing before and after instruction, revealed that students had improved their ability to structure their essay introductions. In addition, the students were tending to improve their ability to texture their writing. The paper concludes that explicit genre-based instruction with the attendant metalanguage can help learners improve their writing.