Genre Based Approach
Genre Based Approach
Abstract
The genre-based approach (GBA) has been used in different curriculum areas to develop learners’ meaning-making potential. Using the
text as the main unit of communication and pedagogy, this approach conceives of language learning and use as a social, textual, and goal-
oriented process. Thus, it constitutes a promising alternative to the practice –not uncommon in Colombian classrooms– of teaching EFL oral
communication through memorized dialogues with no realistic purpose. Based on a revision of recent literature and research, I argue that the
GBA may foster students’ oral interpersonal communication skills because it 1) involves them in meaning-oriented, text-based, and realistic
practice, 2) assumes an explicit pedagogy that discloses the lexical and grammatical resources needed for successful communication, and
3) facilitates learners’ increasing control of oral communication thanks to their appropriation of the necessary metalanguage to talk about the
process of making meaning in English. I also maintain that this approach gives teachers linguistically-principled tools for planning instruction
and assessing learning. Finally, I discuss various curriculum and syllabus implications resulting from the adoption of the GBA for EFL instruction
and suggest specific objectives and activities with a sample lesson based on Colombian standards.
Keywords: genre-based approach, oral interpersonal communication, EFL, learning, instruction
Resumen
El enfoque basado en género (GBA) ha sido utilizado en diferentes áreas curriculares para desarrollar el potencial de la construcción del
significado de los aprendices. Utilizando el texto como la unidad principal de comunicación y pedagogía; este enfoque concibe el aprendizaje
de idiomas y su uso como proceso social, textual y orientado a objetivos. Por lo tanto, constituye una alternativa prometedora a la práctica – no
es poco común en las aulas Colombianas- de la enseñanza de la comunicación oral del inglés como lengua extranjera a través de diálogos
memorizados sin ningún propósito real. Con base en una revisión de la literatura reciente y la investigación, sostengo que la GBA puede
fomentar las habilidades de comunicación interpersonal oral, ya que 1) los involucra en el sentido orientado a la práctica realista basada en
el texto, 2) asume una pedagogía explícita que da a conocer los recursos léxicos y gramaticales necesarios para una comunicación exitosa, y
3) facilita el control de la comunicación de los aprendices gracias a su aprobación del metalenguaje necesario para hablar acerca del proceso
de construcción de significados en inglés. También sostengo que este enfoque da a los maestros las herramientas lingüísticas de principios
para la planificación de la enseñanza y evaluación del aprendizaje. Por último, discuto varias implicaciones curriculares y del plan de estudios
resultantes de la adopción de GBA para la instrucción del inglés como lengua extranjera y sugiero objetivos específicos y actividades con
una lección de muestra basada en las normas Colombianas.
Palabras clave: enfoque basado en género, comunicación interpersonal oral, inglés como lengua extranjera, aprendizaje, enseñanza.
Résumé
L’approche fondée sur le genre (GBA en anglais) a été utilisée dans domaines différentes du plan d’études pour développer le potentiel
de la construction de la signification chez les étudiants. En utilisant le texte comme l’unité principale de communication et de pédagogie,
cette approche conçoit l’apprentissage de langues et leur emploi comme un démarche sociale, textuelle et orientée vers des objectifs. Par
Resumo
O enfoque baseado em gênero (GBA) tem utilizado em diferentes áreas curriculares para desenvolver o potencial da construção do signi-
ficado dos aprendizes. Utilizando o texto como a unidade principal de comunicação e pedagogia; este enfoque concebe a aprendizagem
de idiomas e seu uso como processo social, textual e orientado a objetivos. Portanto, constitui uma alternativa prometedora à prática
– não é pouco comum nas salas de aulas Colombianas - do ensino da comunicação oral do inglês como língua estrangeira através de
diálogos memorizados sem nenhum propósito real. Com base em uma revisão da literatura recente e a pesquisa, sustento que a GBA pode
fomentar as habilidades de comunicação interpessoal oral, já que 1) os envolve no sentido orientado à prática realista baseada no texto,
2) assume uma pedagogia explícita que dá a conhecer os recursos léxicos e gramaticais necessários para uma comunicação exitosa, e
3) facilita o controle da comunicação dos aprendizes graças a sua aprovação da metalinguagem necessária para falar sobre o processo
de construção de significados em inglês. Também sustento que este enfoque dá aos professores as ferramentas linguísticas de princípios
para o planejamento do ensino e avaliação da aprendizagem. Por último, discuto várias implicações curriculares e do plano de estudos
resultantes da adoção de GBA para a instrução do inglês como língua estrangeira e sugiro objetivos específicos e atividades com uma
lição de amostra baseada nas normas Colombianas.
Palavras chave: enfoque baseado em gênero, comunicação interpessoal oral, inglês como língua estrangeira, aprendizagem, ensino.
concept implies that the stages are flexible and communication in which the genre occurs (e.g.
recursive, allowing instruction to start at any face-to-face or email). Using Monica’s lesson as
stage or return to previous ones depending on example, learners could discuss the purpose of
students’ familiarity with and mastery of the genre an ‘opinion’ text, the context(s) in which it occurs,
(Rothery, 1996). In contrast to Monica’s lesson, and the type of language it uses (e.g. evaluative
where students recreated an isolated dialogue on vocabulary).
their own, the cycle develops students’ ability to
During deconstruction, the first stage in
create whole texts3, oral or written, under teacher
Figure 1, learners analyze an authentic model
guidance. The model4 in Figure 1 shows the cycle
text belonging to the genre. In this stage students
and its stages5.
learn the rhetorical structure of the genre and the
lexico-grammatical (i.e. lexical and grammatical)
resources it uses to create meaning (Derewianka,
2003). It is during deconstruction that direct
language teaching is most likely to occur.
Following with our example, Monica could explain
the parts of an opinion dialogue (i.e. opinion,
reaction), or learners could compare several
dialogues to discover them. They could also
organize a jumbled opinion text, draw evaluative
vocabulary maps, or practice grammatical
patterns critical to this genre (e.g. be + adjective,
‘I think…’) (Feez & Joyce, 1998).
During joint construction, the teacher guides
learners to create a new text belonging to the
Figure 1. The teaching-learning cycle (Rothery and
same genre. This stage constitutes, as Callaghan
Stenglin, 1994, in Martin, 1999).
Knapp, and Noble (1993) note, an approximation
In Figure 1, setting the context and building by students to producing the genre thanks to
field activities 1 occur throughout the cycle teacher mediation. Mediation is possible due to
rather than as part of independent stages the shared metalanguage that students gained
(cf. Feez & Joyce, 1998) and seek to raise during deconstruction. For example, Monica
learners’ awareness of the social context and and her learners could construct a new opinion
purpose(s) of the genre under study. This text jointly, with Monica rewording students’
involves understanding what the genre is used contributions when necessary and explaining
for, its context, and its vocabulary; the roles and the reasons for doing so. Pair work activities to
relationships of the people involved (e.g. formal, create a new text, like the dialogue in Monica’s
informal, distant, or close); and the mode of lesson, could take place in this stage with more
teacher support.
3 Although the creation of meaning can also occur through
nonlinguistic signs, in this paper I use the word ‘text’ to refer to During independent construction, learners
meaning that is created linguistically due to the importance of
language in the EFL classroom. create another textual instance of the target genre
4 See Martin (1999) for a historical discussion of the different independently (e.g. an opinion text about a party).
representations of the cycle and what they entail.
5 For a more detailed description of these stages see Feez and However, they can still recruit the teacher’s help in
Joyce (1998).
interventions is another recurrent research finding. in FL situations like Monica’s. Specifically, this
For example, Colombi (2006; 2009) and Byrnes approach can raise learners’ awareness and
(2009a) provided robust evidence that learners’ control of how oral interpersonal communication
control of grammatical metaphor (i.e. the use is structured to respond to specific meaning-
of nominalization) improved during instruction; making situations (i.e. generic awareness) and
Cullip (2009) showed that secondary students’ of the varied lexicogrammatical resources those
L2 writing improved in use of clause types (e.g. situations allow. Since patterns of meaning are
relatively stable for each genre, oral or written,
declaratives, interrogatives), formality, modality
awareness and control of these patterns can help
(i.e. use of modal verbs), and conjunctions;
learners make predictions of how interpersonal
Banks (2000b) demonstrated that students
communication events will be likely to unfold,
improved their ability to ask for clarification and
facilitating their interaction and their use of
give feedback during L2 conversations. Research lexicogrammatical resources (Burns, 2010;
on teaching L2 conversation using a GBA, Burns, Joyce, & Gollin, 1996; Joyce, 2000).
although anecdotal and short of detail, suggests Below I elaborate on these ideas.
similar findings (Banks, 2000a; Butterworth,
2000; Reade, 2000). In contrast, Coffin’s (2006)
study and Hyon’s (1995) research on L2 reading The GBA and the development of
in college showed little gains on learners use of OIC skills in a FL context
specific linguistic resources, suggesting the need This section outlines a proposal for teaching
for more detailed GBA research. OIC in a FL using a genre-based approach.
Another finding common to almost all the At the curriculum level, I discuss the view of
language, FL learning, and oral communication
previous studies is that learners and teachers
that the proposal implies. Next I describe syllabus
developed a shared metalanguage for talking
aspects like objectives, activities, materials and
about texts. In other words, they became
assessment using Monica’s situation as context.
increasingly able to use a student-friendly version
of SFL’s terminology to describe, monitor, and
improve the texts students produced or read Curriculum Level
(see also Christie, 1992; Martin, 1999; Unsworth, Rather than a collection of rules to judge
2000). The use of language to monitor one’s own correct use (like in Monica’s case), the GBA
activity, linguistic or otherwise, is an important sees language as a system of interlocking
step in development, as sociocultural research and stratified resources for making meaning
in L2 has shown (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006). In through texts (Halliday & Hasan, 1989). In other
this sense, shared metalanguage became an words, whenever we use language in social
important mediational tool (Kozulin, 2003) for communication, this occurs in coherent units
promoting content and language learning in of meaning-in-context called texts. In turn,
genre-based teaching. texts are made up of interrelated contextual,
semantic, and lexicogrammatical choices from
As this short review has shown, genre- the different systems of language (e.g. systems
based instruction promotes learners’ ability for representing the world, for relating to other
to use language to create meaning. Despite people, and for organizing messages) (Halliday &
addressing writing mainly, this research provides Matthiessen, 2004). Since texts integrate all these
reasons to anticipate that the GBA can also systems into a visible functional unit, they provide
contribute to students’ development of OIC skills a model for learners’ to understand what meaning
as structures, functions, or language tasks (Feez, currently promotes. One such objective can be
2002; Feez & Joyce, 1998). to “enable learners to start, develop, and close a
Syllabus objectives and contents. Colombian conversation to buy food items in a store.”
educational goals aim to promote learners’ ability
The GBA espouses a stratal (i.e. multidimen-
to “communicate in English at internationally
sional) view of language. This means that any
comparable levels” (MEN, 2006, p. 3, my
translation). To achieve this goal, Monica’s ninth instance of communication involves choices at the
graders should be able to “participate in everyday cultural, situational, textual, lexico-grammatical,
communicative situations” and “start, maintain, and expressive (i.e. graphology and phonology)
and end simple conversations about familiar dimensions of language (Halliday & Matthiessen,
topics” (MEN, 2006, p. 23, my translation) by 2004). This view, as Feez and Joyce (1998)
the end of their school year. Due to its focus suggest, provides a heuristics for defining syllabus
on purposeful language use in communication,
objectives and contents, as shown in Table 1 for
objectives defined through a GBA seem more
a unit on factual and transactional conversations
likely to suit Colombian EFL educational goals
in the Colombian EFL context.
than the grammar-based objectives Monica
Colombian standards
- Participate in everyday communicative situations –Start, maintain, and end simple conversations about familiar topics
Curriculum goal
Discourse semantics (text) • Take turns appropriately within simple exchanges • The relationship between turns: (e.g. adjacency pairs
to buy food items in a store (e.g. question/ answer, in shopping exchanges).
request/compliance).
Lexicogrammar (clause) • Recognize and use the key features of a simple • Expressions and vocabulary related to quantity of
conversation to buy food in a store. food and numeratives (e.g. ‘a pound of’, two, three’,
‘how much’, ‘how many’, ‘half a dozen’).
• Shopping expressions and structures (e.g. ‘give me
three please’, ‘how much are they?’, ‘do you have
any milk?’
Expression (graphology and • Build pronunciation skills and strategies, specifi- • Intonation of questions vs. statements; pronunciation
phonology) cally in the areas of intonation and pronunciation of food vocabulary.
of key words.
Stages Activities
1. Teacher-guided discussion about students’ shopping experiences in their L1 and the reasons why
people use language in a store.
2. Students visit a ‘tienda de barrio’ (convenience store) in their neighborhood and collect information
about shopping exchanges in their L1, their structure, purpose, participants and their relationship,
their topic, etc. A checklist is provided by the teacher.
3. Presentation and practice of vocabulary related to food items (e.g. matching picture with word, build-
ing word maps from a vocabulary list, listening and identifying key vocabulary) and quantities (e.g.
matching representation of quantities with quantity expressions).
4. Reading and listening to a short conversation in English that takes place in an American convenience
Deconstruction
store. Students compare this conversation with the information they collected in activity 2 and draw
intercultural conclusions.
5. Teacher and students construct an explanation of how conversations to buy food items in a store are
organized. OHP presentation of this organization by the teacher using the model conversation and
a graphic representation of its stages.
6. Teacher explains how the conversation develops in pairs of turns and how these are related.
7. Students complete a skeleton table of the genre with key-phrases and structures from each stage of
the conversation. Students practice using these phrases through cloze dialogues, picture-sentence
matching, micro-dialogues, etc.
8. As a class, students choose their favorite dish from two options the teacher provides. Then, they list
under different categories (e.g. vegetables, meat, grains, spices, etc.) the food items needed in order
to prepare the dish. Finally they identify where they can buy those items, the role language would play
there, the characteristics of the context, and their relationship to the vendors.
9. Students organize a jumbled dialogue, similar to the one presented in the deconstruction stage, where
a person their age buys one of the ingredients needed for the dish they chose.
10. Students complete a cloze dialogue where one turn from each adjacency pair in the conversation
has been omitted.
11. Students get in pairs and, using the diagram presented in activity 5, prepare a dialogue to buy any
Joint construction
of the ingredients needed for the dish they chose in activity 8. Teacher provides assistance with
pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar as needed.
12. Teacher and students discuss the importance of acting out dialogues in front of the class and getting
feedback from classmates, and how that favors learning.
13. Students act out at least one conversation per category of food items. As they listen, students ana-
lyze these conversations using a checklist provided by the teacher (see Figure 3 below). After each
conversation, teacher and students share their analyses.
14. Teacher provides additional focused language practice on expressions to indicate amount, food
vocabulary, and key structures.
15. Teacher sets up an unfocused task (Ellis, 2003) in which a third of the class will act as vendors and the
rest will act as shoppers. For this, a small ‘street market’ is set up outside the classroom, in a bigger
room or an open space. Shoppers make a list of the ingredients they will need for the dish based on
one of the categories identified in activity 8. Vendors set up stores for each one of these categories
using drawings and labels for prices. There will be at least two stores for each type of ingredients
and they will carry different items. As a reminder, teacher and students discuss the characteristics of
Independent construction
the social context of street markets.
16. Shopping time: The shoppers go to the different stores and buy the food items they need using
English. Support is provided through a poster of the stages and elements of the genre or through
teacher assistance. The teacher can use a checklist, like the one in activity 13, for assessing students’
appropriation of the genre.
17. The class discusses how their conversations would have changed if they had been buying the food
items in a big grocery store rather than in a market, or from a vendor they know closely.
Linking related text
18. Learners reflect on their ‘shopping experience’ in EFL during activities 15 and 16. They also reflect
on the unit as a whole.
As Table 2 shows, activities in the teaching- grammar based on the cultural and situational
learning cycle proceed in a top-down fashion, contexts in which they interact.
focusing on the cultural and situational context
Unlike current genre-based literature, Table
of conversations before attending to specific
2 includes activities that involve learners in
language features (Fawcett, in press). These
researching L1 use (e.g. activity 2), and activities
activities also provide repeated opportunities to
that prepare them to learn or make them reflect
engage learners with the genre and its features,
about learning (e.g. activities 12 and 18). Activity
supporting their awareness of how effective
2 includes an ethnographic component (Heath,
speakers make choices in vocabulary and
Finally, assessment needs to be continuous, 2000b; Burns et al., 1996; Joyce, 2000; Reade,
providing teachers with valuable information to 2000). However, this procedure is difficult to
tune assistance throughout the teaching-learning implement in large classes such as Monica’s.
cycle (Perret, 2000). As an alternative to overcome this practical
constraint, FL teachers can design assessment
In a GBA, data for assessing and researching
rubrics and checklists based on the descriptions
learners’ achievement comes from the texts
of genres available in the literature (Feez & Joyce,
learners produce (Perret, 2000). For assessing
1998; Joyce, 2000). These rubrics and checklists
the OIC objectives presented above, for example,
can be used for teacher, peer, and self-assessment
this data would correspond to the conversations
activities (see activity 16 and 18 in Table 2).
learners’ hold with other learners or with the
Figure 3, taken from Banks (2000b), shows one
teacher. Several authors suggest recording
example of a checklist used in peer-assessment
such conversations and then analyzing them in
of casual conversation.
detail as a means of assessment (Banks, 2000a,
In Monica’s context, students’ familiarity the metalanguage needed to talk about them,
with self and peer assessment procedures, as facilitating thus the new assessment procedures.
well as with the characteristics of appropriate
performance, can be a limitation to this alternative
Conclusions
approach. However, the repeated instances for
using language and reflecting about it provided I this paper I have highlighted the benefits of
throughout the cycle may develop learners’ using a GBA for promoting OIC skills in a second
familiarity with the genres being studied and language. I started with a description of this
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