Acknowledging the limitations of conventional GBI for novice ESP learners in EFL settings, this chapter argues against seeking a universal genre model. Instead, it advocates for a shift from genre acquisition (reproduction) to fostering Genre Awareness and Rhetorical Flexibility, essential for adaptive knowledge transfer. It porposes building instruction from what learners can already do, aligning with Cheng's (2006), and discusses two earlier frameworks offering transferable skills: Carter's meta-genres (2007) provide a top-down view by classifying broad, cross-disciplinary academic tasks (e.g., problem-solving) to simplify expectations; conversely, Trimble's Rhetorical Functions (1985) offer a bottom-up linguistic toolkit for enacting key cognitive operations (e.g., classifying, defining) across texts. Building on both frameworks as conceptual stepping stones intended to support students’ rhetorical agency and disciplinary meaning-making, the chapter brings together their shared insights as a pedagogically tractable foundation for ESP instruction. This foundation is taken forward here through the framework of Cognitive Discourse Functions (CDFs) developed by Dalton-Puffer (2013, 2016).