Understanding students’ mimicry, emulation and imitation of genre exemplars: An exploratory study

Guided by the Vygotskian concepts of mimicry, emulation, and imitation, this study examines how eight Chinese EFL students modeled from genre exemplars when composing their first academic papers in university. The students were enrolled in a “Cultural Tourism Studies” course at a university in south China. The course was delivered in a co-teaching approach with an embedded six-week EAP workshop. Given the short time frame of the workshop, an ESP...