Supporting effective English communication within the context of teaching and research in a tertiary institute: Developing a genre model for consciousness raising

Genre-based approaches to curriculum delivery have been applied to primary, secondary, tertiary and graduate programmes. This paper takes this approach one step further and shows how such an approach was applied in conceptualising a funded staff development programme at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). The programme described is entitled Effective English Communication for Teaching and Research (EECTR), and its remit is to provide English language support to all academic staff in the institution. In this paper we describe how we developed and modified our initial plans for programme delivery, took into account a number of contextual constraints, and attempted to apply a theoretical framework focusing on reflection within a broad genre-based approach. The description in this paper is based on an attempt to deconstruct the discourse of the providers and clients of EECTR. Through this description of the evolving theory of a contextualised, reflective genre-based approach to staff development, we attempt to show that such an approach can go far beyond the prescriptive, structural mode and can indeed be seen as a pedagogy of possibilities within a staff developmental context.