Expectations of text genres used in knowledge communication and academic teaching vary greatly among members of different disciplines and of different linguistic and cultural regions. Genres, defined as typified rhetorical practices in defined settings, help members of knowledge communities to structure knowledge and communicate effectively. Students confronted with the task of writing the genre of another culture usually find it difficoult to meet the expectations of the host culture. In spite of its importance, research on the intercultural differences in genre use is scarce, even within the national educational systems such as that of Switzerland. In this project, we will compare the genres genre practices between universities of different cultures, among them universities of the German-, French- and Italian-speaking parts of Switzerland. The following issues will be focused on: Which text genres are used? How are they are defined? How are they integrated in academic learning? How they are connected to writing practices? We will also investigate how genre skills are taught, how they are valued by the faculty members, and how their place in the respective curricula is defined. The projekt is connected COST-Action IS0703 „The European Research Network of Learning to Write Effectively“.