Creating a transformed space for disciplinary discourse and knowledge creation through an adjunct instructional model

Acknowledging that collaboration between faculty members and language teachers is challenged by resources constraints and their perceived distinctive roles in supporting knowledge and academic discourse development, this paper considers an adjunct instructional model that promotes the collaborative design of a genre-based bridging pedagogy in three disciplinary courses (Mechanical Engineering, Tourism Management and Sociology) at a Hong Kong tertiary institute. First, the paper examines the design and role of Engineering-specific assessment tasks in engaging students in simulated disciplinary problem-solving scenarios and selections of rhetorical and lexico-grammatical resources in their disciplinary knowledge creation processes. It also demonstrates the role of genre-based pedagogy in illustrating technicality in facilitating students’ understanding disciplinary discourses in Tourism Management. Then, it highlights the functions of creating multimodal genre-based environments in facilitating students’ sociological inquiry through scaffolded written tasks based on real-life social issues. Lastly, it explores how learners engage with polyvocal resources to clarify how they make sense of their disciplinary roles through their writing practices in the adjunct courses. The implications of these diverse trajectories are discussed in line with the need for curriculum-embeddedness of disciplinary conventions (Wingate, 2016) and discursive strategies for bridging English language learners’ disciplinary discourse and knowledge creation across the curriculum. Copyright © 2017 Author(s).