Exploring the Methodological Usefulness and Limitations of Genre-Based Instruction for the Development of EFL Colombian Students' Academic Writing Proficiency of Expository Essays in an English Composition Course

ABSTRACT: Worldwide and Colombian university students must develop and demonstrate English writing proficiency for social, academic, and professional purposes across educational contexts and situations. Pre-process, process, and post-process approaches have fostered university students’ academic writing proficiency (AWP). The effectiveness of post-process approaches, such as genre-based, to develop AWP has been well documented among L1 English learners. In Colombia, process and product-based approaches have predominated to foster AWP, especially in teacher education programs. However, experts have claimed that more knowledge is needed on the effects of SFL genre-based approaches (GBA) among EFL/ESL learners. Although research interest has emerged in the field, little is known on their effects among students in the disciplines, or its potential limitations. This exploratory case study aimed to evaluate the usefulness, effectiveness, and limitations of genre-based instruction and the Curriculum Cycle (CC) to develop AWP of nine EFL students at an English Composition course of one professional development program at a Colombian public university. Using video recordings of lessons, artifacts, and group interviews, data helped identify, describe, map, and explain the effects of GBI over students’ AWP and the approach’s limitations. Data analysis, supported on NVivo10 and Microsoft Excel, included codification and categorization using functional grammar theories. Results showed that the effectiveness of the approach outweighed its limitations, as reflected in learners’ systematic development of AWP to write expository essays with textual features of argumentative essays and functional language of English academic writing. Main limitations resided in learning some functional grammar concepts in modeling, task choice in joint construction, negative effects of new topic exploration in independent writing, and higher writing expectations over social interaction..