Existing studies of student written genres across business school disciplines wereundertaken more than a decade ago. This study has produced an updated overviewof master’s level written coursework assignments from core modules across elevenbusiness school degree programmes. Nesi and Gardner’s (2012) genre familyframework was applied in analysing task briefs and related documentation to identifysocial purposes and genres. Results suggest that in the decade since the Britishacademic written English (BAWE) corpus texts were collected, there has been aconsiderable increase in the proportion of genres with the ‘preparing for professionalpractice’ social purpose (Nesi & Garner, 2012, p. 36), alongside a considerable dropin proportions of ‘demonstrating powers of informed and independent reasoning’(Nesi & Garner, 2012, p. 36) genres, which had previously dominated. We arguefor the usefulness of further applications of the approach taken in this study acrossdifferent disciplines and institutional contexts to regularly update knowledge andinform EAP practice
