2017

Paldanius, Hilkka

The purpose of this study is to describe the genre of an expository history essay. The data consist of 52 document-based essays that were written as a part of a history exam at a Finnish general upper secondary school. In this article, I analyse the functional structure of these essays using genre-theoretical move-analysis in a framework of genre theories and disciplinary literacies. Three different moves and six steps were found. The communicative functions of these structural elements were to contextualize the historical content of the essays, to analyse historical
documents, and to use the analysis for supporting the chosen argument. The essays exhibit features of an expository text but also those of argumentative genres. The findings suggest that literacy teaching in different subject areas could be improved by explicitly teaching linguistic features and the communicative functions that realize these genres.