Effects of Genre-Based Framework on Students’ Writing

Effects of Genre-Based Framework on Students’ Writing

VARAPRASAD, Chitra

According to Hyland [1] genre has become “one of the most important and influential concepts in language education (p 5). There have been several approaches to genre Hyon [2], Paltridge, [3], Johns [4], however the ESP approach has been widely used, especially with advanced L2 graduate students Johns [5]. Even though, one of the important goals of genre analysis is to improve students’ writing, few studies have focused on how students analyze and produce genres in genre-based writing classes Cheng [6]. The studies by Henry and Roseberry [7], Pang [8], Swales and Lindemann [9] did examine students’ writing performance. However, they did not provide in depth insights into how the students analyzed the target genres before they engaged in the writing tasks Cheng, [10)] The objective of this presentation is to explain a genre-based framework for teaching thesis writing, particularly the introduction, and to explore its effect on graduate students’ writing performance. A modified version of Swales’ ESP genre analysis framework formed the basis for students’ engagement with the target genre. In addition, students engaged in tasks from the course textbook “Research Writing: A Workbook for Graduate Students” by Lee, W.Y.; Ho, L. & Ng, E.T.M. [11] for a further application of the concepts taught. Besides, students in their discipline–specific groups also analyzed extracts of thesis introductions for a further reinforcement of these concepts. Students then went on to write the components of the introduction chapter, as part of their writing assignments. The presentation will be in two-parts. The first part will present the genre-based framework used for teaching and its application to tasks and texts with reference to thesis introductions. In the second part, using the same framework, samples of students’ writing will be analyzed to show how students applied these concepts in their own writing. The presentation will conclude by discussing the implications for teaching and learning.

Article
PeerReviewed

IBU Publishing

2013-05-03

1725