Metacognitive genre awareness as cognitive tool for improving expository essay in EFL: using SFL genre based instruction

The development of writing ability in EFL tertiary level college students depends on multicomponent elements. The body of genre research can shed light on the development of L2 writing in both an ESL and EFL context because teaching genre knowledge can also provide L2 writers with some sense of what they write, to whom they write, and for what purpose. As a result, genre-based writing instructions can benefit L2 student writers, especially in an EFL context, and help to build sufficient genre knowledge so they can then apply it to their own written contexts. The current study draws upon the notion of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), which views language as a meaning making potential within a specific cultural context rather than a set of fixed rules or structures, and investigates how the genre-based approach framed by SFL can increase the expository writing skill of EFL students. This study was conducted in a Korean university with 62 second -year college students. In particular, the development of the writing ability in EFL college students was interpreted through the framework of metacognitive genre awareness. The progress of metacognitive genre awareness is a means to understand the development of the writing ability of EFL tertiary level college students. For mixed methods research, data collection relies on written text data, questionnaire and reflection on the blog and email. A two-way ANOVA and mixed ANOVA were computed in SPSS for findings of the current study, revealing that SFL genre based writing instruction was more effective than a conventional bottom-up writing method in terms of improving expository writing quality of the EFL tertiary level college students regardless of their previous writing competency.