EXPLORING THE RELEVANCE OF INTRODUCING GENRE-BASED APPROACHES TO TEACHING WRITING

Abstract

Genre has a great impact on how language teaching is understood (Derewianka, 2003). On the one hand, from the perspective of the research aims, this article is intended to offer a brief overview of how genre is understood in linguistics, as well as of several genre-based approaches in applied linguistcs, with special reference to language teaching. On the other hand, from the perspective of teaching aims, this study attempts to investigate the students’ awareness regarding various genres that are relevant for their age group and language proficiency level, prior to explicit genre teaching. The results of this small-scale study have confirmed that genre-based approaches to teaching help raise the students’ awareness of genre features and are conducive to more effective reading, in preparation for purposeful writing.