Sessions /
Exploratory Practice in an L2 Genre Writing Class #1291

This presentation initially defines Exploratory Practice, a style of practitioner research in response to Action Research (Burns, 2003) that seeks to integrate classroom research and empower students as co-researchers studying language classroom quality of life (Allwright, 2005). The presenters discuss implementation of EP into a Japanese university freshman-level reading and writing class that follows a genre approach. The presenters will share results of an ongoing EP project which contextualizes genre writing of academic research papers by instilling concepts of autonomy, personalized language-learning research topics, and teacher-student collaboration. The presenters will end with reflections and suggestions on the potential role and benefits of EP in the language learning classroom.