Dynamism of Academic Genres and Language Teacher Pedagogy

Recent ICT-related technologies (multimedia, hypertext, etc.) have given rise to the emergence of new academic genres. EFL teachers and practitioners require to be familiar with and able to participate effectively in new socio-semiotic practices of the field of language teaching. For this reason, the present study attempted to investigate the extent to which university English language teachers are familiar with new technological advances in ICT (computer and the Internet), and the extent that they are familiar with and participate in new academic genres that emerge as the result of those technological advances. 45 university English language teachers voluntarily participated in this study and they filled in a questionnaire which tapped their ICT literacy. The results revealed that the majority of participants employed word processing and PowerPoint applications as well as e-mail services effectively while they were rarely familiar with multi-media applications, web designing, on-line academic discussion groups, and video-conferencing. These findings call for teacher training programs which provide university language teachers with enough ICT literacy in order to make them able to pace with currents of information and knowledge in their field in the age of globalized knowledge and technology.

Keywords:

genre dynamism , academic genres , ICT literacy