A GENRE APPROACH TO SCAFFOLDING RESEARCH PAPER WRITING ON MOODLE

The present study results from a reflection on pedagogy to teaching Research Paper Writing to undergraduate English majors in an EFL context. This paper outlines a conceptualized scaffold with a genre approach embedded and provides students with support for writing a research paper. Through Moodle, a free and open-source learning management system, language components and referencing skills were phased into the online course for students to progress in a systematic order. To raise students’ genre awareness, the teacher-researcher sought to make learners recognize the communicative purpose, structure and linguistic features of a research paper. Consequently, another goal of this research was to evaluate the proposed teaching framework. Results provide some evidence of the effectiveness of genre knowledge in organizing information and developing ideas. Questionnaires reflect a majority of students’ need for research literacy.