This article describes teacher research in an EAP context, teaching English for theology at the United Theological College, Bangalore, India, an international, liberal, and ecumenical institution. Conceptually grounded in the theory and practice of genre teaching, and discourse analysis of large pieces of texts such as the thesis, inspired by Swales (1990) and Hoey (1983), this article analyses NNS-students' struggle to conform to the academy and seeks ways to enculturate unskilled L2 learners in the art of thesis writing. (Contains 2 tables and 2 notes.)