Genre-based approach

Genre-based Approach to Language Teaching

Background

The notion of genre derives from a series of action research projects implemented

by teachers and functional linguists in Australia during the past three decades. It was

originally defined as a staged goal-oriented social process, emphasizing a series of

phases of meaning making that are designed to accomplish something through

interactions with others. This notion of genre was later given much emphasize as a

crucial layer within the functional model of language and this function of genre helps

to lay a foundation for the oncoming genre-based literacy practices. According to the

functional model of language, genre reveals the way in which a particular culture

manages to coordinate different and recurrent language resources to construct

particular meanings that are valued within the specific cultural context. This idea

implies the complex processes we have to undertake before concrete social purposes

are realized. And these complex processes, to a great extend, entails large amount of

texts and conversational interactions. In recent years this concept of genre has been

expanded to include all purposeful uses of language. Many researchers working

within different genre approaches have come out with a consensus that genres are

social practices that have evolved to enable us achieve our goals (Martin, 1985;

Painter, 2001, as cited in Derewianka, 2003). In the field of genre study, there are

several theoretical trends and they can be put along a continuum. At one end of this

continuum lie those who express major interests in such contexts as social, culture and

history (Hyon, 1996; Flowerdew, 2002; Hyland, 2002; Johns, 2002). There are other

researchers positioning themselves within the New Rhetorical School (Miller, 1984;

Bazerman, 1994; Freedman & Medway, 1994), focus their studies on the way genres

either realize certain social cultural purposes or form particular frameworks through

involvement into varied contexts. At the other end of this continuum is the group

dealing with discourse analysis, focusing on pedagogical exploration on enhancing

students’ communicative competence in their future professional and academic areas.

In line with them are those who are doing English for Specific Purposes (Swales,

1990; Dudley-Evans & St John, 1998), specifically, probing into varied genres like

literature review, job applications, business letters, governmental documents, and so

on. What’s worth special mention is those who are located at the middle of this

continuum and find a place connecting the social cultural context with specific

linguistic features, that is, the school of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). This

group and the central concepts have greatly influenced the design of school

curriculum and syllabus and have become the mostly probed area regarding genre

study and genre-based English language teaching.

Approach: Theory of language and learning

In the tradition of genre theory, language is granted with practical connotations. In

general, language symbolizes a series of rhetorical choices regarding the particular

social cultural context within with it is used for communicative purposes. Choices,

therefore, are results of varied social aims competing with each other. The

particularity of the dealing with language in genre theory lies in its combination of

grammatical features with contextual factors. For example, when we make specific

grammatical choices, we tend to take into consideration three relevant notions, namely,

the themes of texts (field), interaction between participants (tenor), function of

language (mode). Hylliday (1975) initiated this system of grammatical features of

language in terms of early childhood language acquisition. Later he put forward a

model of language in order to argue the constructive role of language in people’s life,

which is termed as social semiotic (Halliday, 1978). This model stresses three facets

of role that language plays in social interactions. Accordingly, language serves a

systemic function in that it provides systems of linguistic resources to realize

meanings. This systemic function is mostly reflected in the system of mood, where

people find rich sources for making both imperative and indicative statements. Users

involved in varied roles and interactions with their counterparts make different

linguistic choices so as to construct varied meanings. Thus language is deemed to be

polysystemic because of these many linguistic systems engaged at the same time.

(Christie, 1999). Language serves a functional role in that it indicates the social

cultural purpose for which it comes into being undoubtedly. The school of systemic

functional linguistics further categorized the function of language into three

metafunctions, they are, “the ideational, to do with the experiences represented or

constructed within language; the interpersonal, to do with the nature of the

relationships of persons in using language; and the textual, to do with the organization

of language as coherent messages.” (Christie, 1999, p. 759) This symbolizes the

simultaneous linguistic choices as well as the three metafunctions realized when

people use language. Finally, language is taken as text that bears meaningful social

cultural purpose. Therefore, text can never be understood without looking at the

particular context. In other words, “text is known only because of the context that

gives it life; conversely, context is known only because of the text that realizes it.”

(Christie, 1999, p. 760) As Malinowski (1923) contended, the nature of a text is

decided by the context of situation.

Theory of learning genres originated from Bakhtin (1986) who attached learning

of genres with the acquisition of a first language. In other words, language acquisition

starts from the acquisition of a particular genre, where we obtain necessary ability to

process a communicative activity within the generic context. Genre theory of L2

learning has been fundamentally laid out by Melrose (1995) and Lock (1996), who

related L2 acquisition to learning the ability to process systemic choices and make

effective meanings in using a language that is different from one’s first language.

Therefore, it is a progressive journey from handling limited choices regarding lexis,

structures, and so on to constructing meanings with a larger number of options that

are preferable to varied contexts. Vygotskian learning theory put language learning

within a context of shared understanding. Pedagogically, teachers retrieve to a

scaffolding position during classroom instructions and guide learners gradually to the

linguistic resources that are deemed most necessary for them to take part in

communicative social activities.

Design: Objectives, syllabus, learning activities, role of learners, teachers, and

materials

The primary rationale for genre-based approach in English language teaching is its

strengths in teaching writings especially to ESL (English as Second Language)

students. Instead of emphasizing merely on the meaning of language, genre-based

approach combines text meaning with the practical operation of language at the text

level. It is also a development of the former phonemic perspective on language

whereby language meaning is separated from the social cultural context and confined

within the lexical and sentence level. In this sense, genre-based approach is embraced

as a promising methodology in cultivating learners’ communicative language ability

in the real social community. The general principle for practicing genre-based

approach lies in that learners are expected to be involved into various classroom

activities that can naturally guide students to make use of the genre knowledge they

have been exposed to. Therefore, one crucial role for the language teachers is to select

and create a particular context during the planning process so that students may be

encouraged to take conscious effort to learn the target genre.

The objective of the genre-based approach, in line with the concept of scaffolding

(Bruner, 1978), is to project ESL teachers and learners into a classroom environment

featuring shared responsibility between teachers and learners through varied language

teaching processes. Concretely, teachers initiate classroom activities with a role of

introducing necessary knowledge and backgrounds, while students are positioned at

the beginning more in a knowledge receiver’s role. However, with the

teaching/learning process moves on, when students get more and more in control of

the target knowledge, teachers retrieve to the scaffolding role and at the same time

shift controlling power gradually to students so as to nurture students’ autonomous

learning.

In regard with the choice of materials, it is inevitably that teachers and learners

both bring with them rich and complicated prior resources of their own into the

classroom, yet effective genre-based instruction entails more systemic and engaging

materials that can provide students opportunities to develop contextual and linguistic

knowledge. Grabe and Kaplan (1996) classified such materials into “texts, media,

student generated resources, activities and discussions” (p.256). This classification

was later further summarized by Hyland (2003) as “input, content focus, language

focus, and task focus” (p. 101). For example, input, for a writing course, is mostly a

text, or it could also be a video, audio, picture, or others. The content focus will be

such concrete issues as a topic, a story, a piece of information or else, which helps to

trigger students’ mutual interaction. The language focus displays a text to students for

them to analyze and so to produce their own texts based on the analysis. The task

focus creates a ground where classroom activities can be implemented.

Procedure

Among the various forms of genre-based approach implementations, the

teaching-learning cycle originated by Feez (1998), which is based on several

renowned genre-based approaches to writing instruction (Tribble, 1996; Cope &

Kalantzis, 1993). The popular teaching-learning cycle has been cited by a good

number of researchers and it consists of the following phases:

- building the context;

- modeling and deconstructing the text;

- joint construction of the text;

- independent construction of the text;

- linking related texts.

In Australia, however, the most significant model is the curriculum cycle put

forward by Rothery and Macken based on the concept of scaffolding (Bruner, 1978).

Similarly, the curriculum cycle includes the following stages:

- developing an understanding of the field;

- familiarizing with the genre;

- developing control over the genre;

- independent construction;

- extending and critiquing;

- creative exploitation of the genre. (Derewianka, 2003, p. 146)

According to Derewianka (2003), during the phase of developing an

understanding of the field, activities are organized with the purpose of setting

knowledge background, activating students’ schema, relating to target vocabulary as

well as introducing different culture. This phase is said to be particularly important for

L2 students. The phase of familiarizing with the genre is also named as modeling the

genre, during which learners are displayed with the model text and several reflective

questions will be given to them too. This will be followed by teachers’ explanation of

the genre structure and students’ exploration on linguistic features under teachers’

instruction. For students with lower level of proficiency, joint construction seems

necessary as a learning support before they set out producing their own drafts. When

students get more familiar with and controlling upon the genre through rounds of

guidance and input activities, students are motivated to make use of their newly

gained knowledge to write independently, which devotes to the process of

independent construction. The extending and critiquing phase as well as the final

creative exploration of the genre are those phases when learners become convenient

enough with the genre and have gradually grown into autonomous learners.

In line with the above mentioned genre-based approaches, there are other similarly

practical, feasible and theoretically formed ones proposed by more recent researchers

(Paltridge, 2002; Johns, 2002). These approaches together provide insightful

suggestions for the genre-based pedagogy.

Conclusion

Genre-based pedagogy is being firmly established in various international

contexts in terms of syllabuses and curricula (Derewianka, 2003) due to its

significances in English language teaching classrooms. Specifically, it permits a

ground where social context and language mingle together and offer students repeated

exposes to the English-speaking culture and community, illuminating methods with

which they can construct meaningful relationships within a potential social area that

students are going to seek an identity.

Noteworthily, the pedagogical models provided by various scholars within the

same field is designed for guidance rather than constraints for classroom instructions.

Therefore, this genre-based approach values a flexible pedagogy that grants teachers

more freedom to decide which stage they should focus on (Martin, 1992).

Bibliography and further reading

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