From Saying to Communicating: The Generic Development of Classroom Academic Presentations by Chinese First‐Year College Students

ABSTRACT Classroom academic presentation (CAP) has been perceived as an important academic genre integral to college learners' academic success. However, the schematic structure of CAP and learners' acquisition of it remain unclear. In this study, we identified its schematic structure with the method of metagenres and investigated L2 learners' generic progression in employing the genre by examining the generic structures of 39 CAPs delivered by a cohort of Chinese undergraduate learners over a semester. The results show that the learners manifest an unequal development in the CAP generic structure, and they weave the interpersonal meaning inappropriately later into the structure than the ideational one. Our findings offer a reference model for the schematic structure of CAP, help identify obstacles to learning the genre, and have important implications for teaching.