Genre-based pedagogy helps to develop students' writing ability and critical thinking abilities as compared to the traditional teaching approaches. Outside Asia, many schools have incorporated the genre-based approach but in Asia, it is still under expansion and implementation. It is now after 30 years that genre-based education started making an impact all across the world; it was started in Sydney School, Australia. Most of the research work has been done between 1979 and 2021. The genre-based approach has gained momentum in primary and secondary colleges in Australia, Canada, China, Malaysia, Singapore, the United States and many more regions of Asia.
How do Students Get Benefited from Genre-Based Approach?
Genre-based pedagogy helps students to know, how patterns depicted by any language are used to produce purposeful writing. GBL comes from the theoretical works of Michael Halliday. Students under the guidance of teachers learn how to choose language patterns according to their prospect, keeping in mind the cultural and social context. The overall aim is to prepare students such that they are capable of writing and constructing a meaningful and purposeful piece of writing in any context they want.
Genre-based approach (GBA) has mostly to do with writing a piece of content. For example, say if the student comes up with an idea on which he or she has to write something then GBA helps the student to build a framework and organize the work.
As we know writing is an important aspect of any language which a student must learn. The writing process is already difficult for learners because it involves grammar, vocabulary, construction of ideas. Students face difficulty in compiling an idea and developing content which is meaningful and informational. All these problems need a method and way of teaching which helps students to get rid of these problems
Let’s discuss the whole cycle of the genre–based learning. Firstly, Students explore the cultural aspects and become familiar with the grammar and vocabulary. So they know various genres and their functions in a cultural context. After that students create and analyze model texts, which serve as a guide for the students to follow when they want to write any content. Then students build their texts taking the help of teachers with the entire class. And, in the final stage students are ready to develop their text individually they can create their texts without teachers' help.
The genre-based approach is a product-process approach. It consists of four stages: Building Knowledge of the Field, Modeling of Text, Joint Construction of Text, and Independent Construction of Text. If students go through these stages, they will get more time to make drafts and revise those drafts. The genre-based approach seems to be effective for students with low competence and low motivation. It helps to motivate learners and make them confident in writing as well as reading and understanding texts.
Recent studies show that genre-based pedagogy is effective as it helps students increase their linguistic accuracy along with the improvement of vocabulary level and the ability to develop the content and helps to organize the text rhetorically. The product-oriented approach helps students to use accurate vocabulary, and syntax while the process-oriented approach engages students with drafting and editing the content. But GBA is a combination of both processes, it helps students to understand the linguistic features, and rhetoric strictures, and also suggests why the context is written, for whom it is written, and what message it wants to convey.
Genre-Based Approach Improves Critical Thinking Ability of Students
Learners get more clear ideas in their minds about why they have to write, how to write, and what are the means to express their ideas. Genre-based theory guides students to shape and build a picture in their minds about what they want to write, which in return enables them to analyze and evaluate different texts.
For example, they have to think about what language features to include in their writing or content to match the genre they are dealing with, keeping in mind the reason for writing the content.
In a recent activity conducted by the professors of the City University of Hong Kong says that the genre-based approach can address the learning requirements of students by working with local schools to develop a school-based curriculum for delivering a language-focused teaching approach to students with varying English abilities.
Future of Genre-based Learning
Researchers should pay more focus to this field because, in the coming years, English academic writing will become very important for higher-degree students. Students from non-native English-speaking countries are pursuing higher degrees in English, for them it is very much important. As of now, research in this field is very little. So to improve this more research has to be conducted. English writing skills will become better. Statistics say that GBAs are now used worldwide mostly in the top six countries: China, the United States, Japan, Thailand, Sweden, and Hong Kong.
Conclusion
As we have seen in the article, students gain the ability to write independently without the support of teachers. Genre-based learning is a new concept for Asian countries but it is the time for schools and universities to incorporate GBL in the curriculum so that the students should get the idea of communicating the ideas in well-written form. Nowadays students are moving far away from writing good content, they prefer only verbal communication. But nothing can compete with a better piece of written information. Hope this Article helped you in understanding the aspects of genre-based learning.
