John Swales's approach to pedagogy in Genre Analysis: A perspective from 25 years on

• I review Swales's treatment of pedagogy in Genre Analysis.
• I consider how some of his ideas might be developed in light of current theory.
• I discuss Vygotskyan theory, genre relations, corpus linguistics and English as a Lingua Franca.

It is now 25 years since the publication of John Swales's seminal book, Genre Analysis: English in academic and research settings and it is a good time to take stock of the influence of this book on language teaching. In this article, I review Swales's approach to the pedagogic application of genre theory for language teaching and consider how some of his major ideas might be developed in the light of present day theory. In the course of the discussion I also refer to Swales's own writing since Genre Analysis, where relevant. The strands of pedagogic theory I consider are: Vygotskyan theory; genre relations; corpus-informed pedagogy; and English as a Lingua Franca.