Training disciplinary genre awareness through blended learning: An exploration into EAP students’ perceptions of online annotation of genres across disciplines

Abstract

Despite a marked shift towards blended learning in EAP due to massification of higher education and the impact of COVID-19, relatively little is known about student engagement with EAP genre education as realised through blended learning. This paper explores international undergraduate/graduate students’ perceptions of using an online text, image and video annotation tool (CIRRUS) during a blended academic writing course, as they annotate genre exemplar texts for key functional and rhetorical language features both in-class and individually online. Genres covered include essays and critiques within the Arts and Humanities, case studies and problem questions within the Social Sciences, explanations and methodology recounts within the Life Sciences, and design specifications and exercises within the Physical Sciences following Gardner and Nesi's (2013) genre families taxonomy. We explore students' end-of-course reflections of the value of annotating genre features for understanding disciplinary academic writing practices under a blended approach, the affordances of annotating disciplinary exemplar texts using the CIRRUS annotation platform, and any remaining challenges for future iterations. Using both questionnaire (n = 62) and interview (n = 10) methods, the results suggest students appreciated the value of annotating exemplar texts for genre features, while annotating in CIRRUS was advantageous over previous practice in improving students' understanding of text structure, organisation, generation of ideas, and knowledge of genre/disciplinary rhetorical features.