Genre Based Approach In Teaching

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Since the mid-1980s, a great interest has been shifted from the process approach to the genre based approach to teaching writing, because of the dissatisfaction arisen from the use of the previous approach. A genre is defined by Swale (1990:58) as “a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes”. This definition implies that there are certain conventions or rules that are related to a writer’s purpose. In other words, the mainstay of any situation is the purpose, that is, different types of writing or genres are used to carry out various purposes. Besides, other features like the subject matter, the relationships between the writer and the audience, and the pattern of organization can affect…show more content…
Its main objective is to create students who have command on different genres which they need in their academic and professional environments and for their later communicative success (Hammond and Derewianka, 2001; Paltridge, 2004). The genre based approach views language as occurring in specific cultural and social contexts, and which cannot be separated from its context. It stresses the importance of investigating those contexts of language use when composing a piece of writing, as it is the context which determines the purpose of a text (Hammond and Derewianka, 2001; Hyon, 1996). Moreover, this approach argues that students should consider the context when composing a piece of writing so that this latter can be successfully accepted by a particular English language discourse community. Besides, this approach accentuates the importance of the readers’ expectations and the linguistic conventions that a piece of writing is required to pursue in order to be approved by its readership (Muncie, 2002). Another important point related to this idea, is the significance of the writer-reader interaction or written communication that this approach underlines. Reid (1995) declared that in this approach the writer is requested to bear in mind the existence of certain readers in order to choose the content, the language, and the level of formality, hence, addressing them appropriately. Likewise, the reader when reading a text should inquire about the purpose of the writing, the writer’s perception, and the language features and organization that the writer

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