Genre analysis of introduction sections in student produced research articles in Turkey

Research in Genre Theory seeks to account for the ways people use language in particular communicative situations and employs research findings in literacy education. Genre Analysis, which is the powerful tool of Genre Theory in describing form-function correlations in academic and professional texts, can be utilized in studies in Applied Linguistics, especially the development of Academic Literacy. Academic Literacy practices constitute central processes through which students learn new subjects and develop their knowledge about new areas of study. In these practices, genre-based pedagogies present teachers and students a different view of writing, supplying students within a contextual framework for writing and offering them an explicit understanding of how texts in the target academic genre are structured. Within the framework of Genre theory and Genre-based Pedagogy, and drawing basically on CARS Model (Swales, 1990; 2004) and Citation Studies (Hyland, 1999; 2000) in the field, this study aims at investigating whether student writers in the discipline of Linguistics in Turkey will be able to produce academic texts as responses to the norms socially accepted in the discipline when they are provided with a genre-based academic writing program. The genre focused on the research is the Introduction sections of research articles. The following hypotheses are tested: (i) genre-based writing pedagogy will contribute to the development of student-writers? academic skills; (ii) CARS Model (Swales, 1990; 2004) is effective in raising student-writers? awareness on academic genre; (iii) provided with awareness raising tasks, student-writers will be able to produce texts similar to those produced by expert writers.In order to test the hypotheses, the Introduction sections of research articles produced by student-writers are compared to those produced by expert writers. The findings reveal that genre-based pedogogy contribute to the academic literacy skills of the students on a large scale.