TY - JOUR T1 - Awareness Versus Production: Probing Students' Antecedent Genre Knowledge JF - Journal of Business & Technical Communication Y1 - 2010 A1 - Artemeva, Natasha A1 - Fox, Janna KW - antecedent genre KW - engineering communication KW - genre KW - genre competence KW - prior genre knowledge KW - rhetoric KW - targeted instruction AB - This article explores the role of students’ prior, or antecedent, genreknowledge in relation to their developing disciplinary genre competence by drawing on an illustrative example of an engineering genre-competence assessment. The initial outcomes of this diagnostic assessment suggest that students’ ability to successfully identify and characterize rhetorical and textual features of a genre does not guarantee their successful writing performance in the genre. Although previous active participation in genre production (writing) seems to have a defining influence on students’ ability to write in the genre, such participation appears to be a necessary but insufficient precondition for genre-competence development. The authors discuss the usefulness of probing student antecedent genre knowledge early in communication courses as a potential source for macrolevel curriculum decisions and microlevel pedagogical adjustments in course design, and they propose directions for future research. VL - 24 SP - 476–515 ER -