From Summarizing to Stance-Taking: Combining Genre Pedagogy and Academic Literacies to Help L2 University Students in Sweden to Write Literature Reviews in Social Sciences and Humanities

This chapter focuses on developing innovative teaching materials (Tomlinson in Materials development for language teaching. Cambridge University Press, 2011) for sustainable education (Sterling in J Educ Sustain Dev 4:213–218, 2010) in ESP courses in higher education. In particular, teaching and learning tasks designed to develop students’ critical writing skills in the context of a literature review paper (i.e., a research-based text that discusses the current state of knowledge on a given topic) are presented. The materials give students opportunities to: (a) assess the relevance and reliability of potential secondary sources; (b) select information from their secondary sources; and (c) integrate that information into their own writing, while maintaining the leading voice in their texts. Although essay writing is common in university courses, students often struggle to strike the balance between incorporating secondary sources and maintaining the authorial voice of their texts. As a result, their literature reviews often read more like annotated bibliographies (i.e., a collection of summaries) than overviews of the current state of knowledge. Taking an eclectic approach to writing instruction inspired by McGrath and Kaufhold (Teach High Educ 21:933–947, 2016) and combining Genre Pedagogy and Academic Literacies, teaching and learning activities were designed in order to support the development of students’ academic literacy skills with a special focus on the integration and critical discussion of secondary sources in their writing. In addition, these materials are the result of a collaboration between the library and faculty staff. Thus, this chapter illustrates how collaboration across different units can help students to develop their academic literacy skills.