Writing and Pedagogy Jun 2026

Cultivating Genre-Based Writing Instructional Expertise in the TESOL Practicum: A Focus on Genre-Related Episodes

Lisya Seloni Illinois State University ; Şebnem Yalçın Boğaziçi University

Abstract

Focusing on genre-related episodes (GREs) identified in teacher talk, this article investigates how two preservice teachers enacted genre-based writing instruction during their practice teaching in a 9th-grade public school English class in Türkiye. We adopted a teacher-oriented lens to investigate GREs, specifically paying attention to presentation choices and teacher talk during the genre knowledge elicitation phase—a move that facilitates eliciting students’ prior genre knowledge and making connections to the target genre. By examining the types of intentional guidance embedded in these GREs, the findings suggest that, through overt instruction and supervision in TESOL practicum courses, preservice teachers attempted to incorporate genre-specific instruction and showed increased investment in using prompts and tasks that would elicit their students’ genre-specific knowledge and organize their teaching around genres. Two important insights could be gained from this study: (1) TESOL practicum courses can serve as productive sites for cultivating genre-based writing expertise, enabling preservice teachers to design genre-rich lessons that support English as a foreign language student engagement with genre; and (2) GREs identified in classroom observations are valuable tools for examining new teacher genre-oriented deliberations during collaborative writing tasks. The article ends with a call to expand scholarly conversations on second language writing expertise and metacognitive awareness of genres to include a closer look at GREs during new teacher practice teaching.

Journal
Writing and Pedagogy
Published
2026-06-01
DOI
10.3138/wap-2025-0018
CompPile
Open Access
Closed
Topics
genre theory writing pedagogy teacher development collaborative writing multilingual writers
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