A Genre-Based Approach to Teaching EFL Summary Writing By Yuan-Shan Chen - Literature review Example

An Analysis of ‘A Genre-Based Approach to Teaching EFL Summary Writing’ By Yuan-Shan Chen and Shao-Wen Su An Analysis of ‘A Genre-Based Approach to Teaching EFL Summary Writing’ By Yuan-Shan Chen and Shao-Wen Su Introduction Producing an efficacious piece of a written work clearly involves competence within several connected scopes. There is the topic’s knowledge, audience’ knowledge, mostly the degree to which the author depends upon the student sharing information, and lastly there is language conventions’ knowledge. Both reading and writing are directly related. It has become mandatory for learning institutions to engage their students to activities such as reading and writing. A good example of a read and write activity is summarization. This paper is going to analyze Yuan-Shan Chen and Shao-Wen Su’s article ‘A genre-based approach to teaching EFL summary writing.’ Yuan-Shan Chen and Shao-Wen Su’s article features a study that investigated the effectiveness of the genre-based approach in teaching English as a foreign language summary writing. First, Yuan-Shan Chen and Shao-Wen Su define summary writing as the creation and organization process of concepts components into a structured series of correlated general concepts (Chen & Su 2012, p. 184). To summarize a text, the reader must comprehend the text; pick the crucial facts; ignore the minor details; syndicate similar concepts into categories, and write in her/his own words. Various approaches of direct instruction have been suggested to teach summarization to university students especially L1’s. Additionally, the approaches are incapable of distinguishing the expository, narrative, and argumentative source texts’ discoursal features that are said to exhibit differential effects upon student’s summary writing performance. The genre-based approach affords an alternative for English teachers to improve student’s summary writing abilities (Charney & Carlson 2005, p. 107) & (Benedict 2006, p. 45). According to Yuan-Shan Chen and Shao-Wen Su, Genre is connected to terms like short stories, novels, science fiction, satire, and fiction (Chen & Su 2012, p. 185). A genre is described as a group of texts depicted by an arrangement of pieces or ‘moves’. Each move achieves some portion of the whole communicative point of the text that endeavors to generate distinctive structural arrangements (Charney & Carlson 2005, p. 106). A genre is a text piece comprised of a package of linguistic components that affords the piece a consistent orientation and shows the discourse content within it. These encompass communicative object or the genre’s social purpose (for instance, entertaining, informing, or questioning) (Badger & White 2004, p. 67). It also includes the rhetorical purpose or major text structure (for instance, description, argumentation, and narration), content or topic, dominant as well as genre’s typical linguistic indicators. Genre analysis is crucial in comprehending the discourse of the subjects. Genre analysis refers to the investigation of how language is employed in a certain context. Genres vary as each has a distinct goal as well as they are organized differently to attain these objectives (Cope & Kalantzis 2003, p.45). The organizational phases of these genres may be independently classified. A genre bears a specific schematic organization: a unique start, middle and conclusion. It is this that comprises the text genre (Chen & Su 2012, p. 189). The objective of genre assessment is to determine how language features are picked by expert genre users to comprehend their communicative use and clarify these choices with respect to the psychological and social context (Charney & Carlson 2005, p. 100). The purpose of genre-based linguistic instruction is to cultivate learner’s cognizance of the linguistic features and the rhetorical organization closely linked to the genre (Derewianka 2006, p. 65). Genre assessment tries to disclose the comparisons amid texts composed for the similar reason (Benedict 2006, p. 47). By exploring how writers commonly sequence information to attain particular aims, students can start to illustrate characteristically schematic forms and demonstrate how they are achieved linguistically. This data may then be utilized by learners as replicas to cultivate writing skills (Charney & Carlson 2005, p. 99). Genre-based approaches in which learning and teaching focuses upon the understanding as well as production of particular genres of scripts are recognized major trends in ELT. However, learning and teaching in genre text has become progressively influential within mainstream English Language Teaching in several situations, encompassing: native English speakers, EFL and ESL learners. Genres offer a crucial setting of reference that assists both readers and learners to pinpoint, comprehend and infer texts (Benedict 2006, p. 50). The key psychological purposes of genre encompass those shared through classifying genres: for instance, reducing both linguistic and text intricacy (Chen & Su 2012, p. 189). Generic structures may operate to render types at least more lucid to those conversant with the category, foregrounding the key content of a given piece (Badger & White 2004, p. 68). Yuan-Shan and Shao-Wen Su’s study used pre-test and post-test evaluation to explore the instructional effectiveness of a genre-based tactic to teach summarization. 41 EFL college students in Taiwan were requested before-and-after the instructions to encapsulate an abridged version of ‘The adventures of Tom Sawyer’ (Chen & Su 2012, p. 186). The learner’s sum-ups on pre- and-post-tests were assessed against language use, content, vocabulary, and organization. In the study, Yuan-Shan and Shao-Wen Su discovered that the genre-based tactic had a positive effect upon learners’ general summary writing performance. Yuan-Shan and Shao-Wen Su also discovered that the students were very good at organization and content than in language use and vocabulary. Genres may act as a way of averting texts from disintegrating into ‘incomprehensibility and individualism’ (Charney & Carlson 2005, p. 90). Moreover, Genres afford a crucial way of categorizing and framing texts that assists understanding (Cope & Kalantzis 2003, p. 45) & (Badger & White 2004, p. 34). The improvements in organization and content in the Yuan-Shan and Shao-Wen Su’ study can be attributed to the students’ focus on instruction. Genre knowledge guides the genre’s readers towards proper attitudes, as well as expectations concerning a text that are crucial in making meaning of it (Chen & Su 2012, p. 191). Certainly, one approach of describing genres is like a series of expectations (Cope & Kalantzis 2003, p. 47). The most influential devised genres are those grammatically and generically very far from orality. Frames afford the support to aid students to changeover from verbal to written linguistic use (Benedict 2006, p. 48). Writing is essential as speaking, listening, as well as reading within English competence even though it undertakes a great deal of effort and time to attain high-level expertise (Charney & Carlson 2005, p. 89). In Taiwanian universities of studied areas, learners tend to elude writing even before giving it a try (Badger & White 2004, p. 56). Limited acquaintance to English particularly writing skill within the English context as a Foreign Language in Taiwan) makes students to have no confidence in writing in English. Test-driven studying also renders them to ignore the essential course of writing within such circumstance (Dudley-Evans 2007, p. 32). Students write simply to learn grammar on a sentence-level to getting high marks on tests. Consequently, when they are requested to write, students are faced with numerous problems in communicating what they desire to say, choosing proper words, generating ideas, using accurate grammar, and cultivating them into proper structural pattern as seen in Yuan-Shan and Shao-Wen Su’s study (Chen & Su 2012, p. 191). The pre-test revealed that the students presented vague story lines and digressions. Furthermore, students have trouble expending a standard writing format, which corresponds to a focus language, and they endeavor to maneuver appropriate language types for diverse writing objectives (Dudley-Evans 2007, p. 36). For instance, the students in the study could not distinguish minor and major events within the story (Chen & Su 2012, p. 187). It is very crucial for the EFL learners to understand the whole familiarity of writing as diverse genres to abide by string of fundamental concepts within their writings (Derewianka 2006, p. 45) & (Chen & Su 2012, p. 185). This means the knowledge that is not just restricted to sentences but generally covers any discourse within any set text degree. EFL learners are trained from the very start how to compose sentences plus are subjected to numerous unnecessary grammatical formulations that render them to disregard the whole depiction, negotiation of connotation and context-based texts, lack of cohesion and coherence (Dudley-Evans 2007, p. 40) & (Badger & White 2004, p. 45). The reasoning and explanation for embracing a genre-based model is that it expedites and sustains clear linkages to the learners reasons for writing outside the writing classroom (Benedict 2006, p. 47). In the post-test, Yuan-Shan and Shao-Wen Su discovered that the students could organize their summaries effectively through focusing on major events (Chen & Su 2012, p. 189). The primary aspects in a curricular selection ensure equilibrium of text forms, to permit students to accomplish a broad variety of social objectives for writing in English, and choosing of particular genres grounded on the learners’ immediate academic demands (Charney & Carlson 2005, p. 44). Using genre-based approach in classroom scenery in EFL circumstance like Taiwan is beneficial. The students are trained to organize moves within any type of writing particularly in writing description and narration that are essential issues in perfecting the learners’ ability (Derewianka 2006, p. 34). Genre-based approach assists English learners to attain higher marks in writing lessons and a substantial upsurge in creation of paragraphs (Chen & Su 2012, p. 187). In addition, EFL learners have inadequate knowledge of writing past the sentence -level, and therefore, they lack confidence particularly when in a basic level class (Christie 2009, p. 760). Learners in EFL settings need to attain language knowledge, for instance vocabulary and grammar, to write precisely what they intend to say. Comprehension of language forms along with their purposes is the basis of writing to attain specific goals in student’s future (Derewianka 2006, p.36). Students should similarly understand how texts are structured in a conventional manner (Chen & Su 2012, p. 187). The genre-based approach handles these needs for learners in EFL settings. The genre-based approach does not disregard linguistic awareness as a basis of writing for learners with little linguistic ability (Chen & Su 2012, p. 188). It underscores learning rhetorical arrangements of diverse genres to compose in socially acknowledged ways that helps learners attain the writing purpose (Cope & Kalantzis 2003, p. 47). Conclusively, using the genre-based approach Yuan-Shan and Shao-Wen Su fostered learners to have a contextual understanding of the objective genre through concentrating upon the aim of the texts. Through focusing on the background in which the writing transpires, along with the elements, which make individuals accept a particular type of writing for what it is expected to be (Chen & Su 2012, p. 191). After cultivating this awareness, the learners moved to deconstructing the standard text-genre and began to write independently .The findings can be beneficial for both teachers and practical linguists to take note of the function of genre-based approach in a classroom set (as curriculum) to realize the aptitude of studying writing skill (Benedict 2006, p. 46). Genre-based tactic can be employed to improve L2 learners writing skills in organization, vocabulary, language use, and content. Genre-based tactic assist students in content development along with rhetorical structuring than lexical diversity and linguistic accuracy. References Badger, R & White, G 2004, ‘A process genre approach to teaching English’, ELT Journal, vol. 54, no. 2, pp. 20-67. Benedict, L 2006, ‘Genre-based teaching and vygotskian principles in EFL: the case of a University Writing Course’, Article 11, vol. 8, pp. 30-80. Charney, DH & Carlson, R 2005, ‘Learning to write in a genre: what student writers take from model texts’, Research in the Teaching of English, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 88-156. Chen, YS & Su, S 2012, ‘A genre-based approach to teaching EFL summary writing’, ELT Journal, vol. 66, no. 2, 184-192. Christie, F 2009, ‘Genre theory and ESL teaching: a systemic functional perspective’, TESOL Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 4, pp.759-763. Cope, B & Kalantzis, M 2003, The powers of literacy: a genre approach to teaching writing, Falmer Press, Bristol, PA. Derewianka, B 2006, Exploring the writing of genres, minibook Series, vol. 8, Reading Association, United Kingdom. Dudley-Evans, T 2007, Genre model for the teaching of academic writing to second language speakers: advantages and disadvantages, In T. Miller (ed.) Functional approaches to written texts: classroom applications, United States Information Agency , Washington DC. Read More