Pedagogical implications of teaching codes of ethics at tertiary level. An Italian case study

The study aims at investigating the use of codes of ethics in teaching EFL to students enrolled in a first-level master course in Marketing Management in an Italian public university. Ethical codes are expected to reveal their potentiality in “sensitising and preparing students to meet the communicative demands of disciplinary communication”, in Bhatia’s (2002) words. Within the theoretical framework of genre analysis and its possible implications for language teaching, the present paper focuses on learners’ achievements in their EFL learning process using corporate codes of ethics, which are presented to the students both theoretically and on a practical level. A pre-questionnaire, a pre-and post-test, and an abridged post-treatment questionnaire are used to collect data. The scope of this five-week study is to demonstrate that genre pedagogy caters to learners’ needs, as on one side it raises rhetorical and genre awareness, and on the other side it fosters language awareness also at a micro-textual, lexico-syntactical level.