Critical Discourse Analysis of Teachers’ Written Diaries Genre: The Critical Thinking Impact on Cognition in Focus

Reflective practice is becoming a dominant aspect of EFL teacher education programs worldwide. Learners who think reflectively become aware of and control their learning by actively accessing what they know, what they need to know and how they bridge that gap. This study aimed at exploring the experience of a small group of Iranian EFL novice teachers during their participation in a process of self-reflection and considers its effect on their cognition. Due to the recognition of the role teaching experience can play in information processing and thus internal structure of EFL teachers’ writing genre, the study also tried to illuminate the moderating effect of teachers’ and learners’ experiences. In so doing, the study analyzed the teachers’ written diaries, as a means of reflective practice, on their instruction after watching the recorded film which was delivered to them at the end of each session. The critical discourse analysis of the data revealed that there were variations in teachers’ belief from the beginning of the research to the end. As to the genre-based analysis of the teachers’ diaries, the results of the study point to the high level of relevance between rhetorical features of teachers’ writing genre with their experience with as time passes; that is; results unveiled an ascending trend of complicacy in the move structures of teachers’ diaries and learners’ writing in finale sessions.