THE INFLUENCE OF GENRE-BASED ACTIVITIESON STUDENTS’ FOREIGN LANGUAGE WRITING

Thi Minh Tam Nguyen

Abstract


The findings from recent studies ofgenres and genre-related issues reveal that learners’ genre awareness couldenhance their linguistic knowledgeandtheir language skills as well (Cheng, 2006;Johns, 2015). Students’ awareness of various genres may allow them to produce texts of different genres, many of which would potentially appear in their future job contexts. In this study, genre-based activities were employed in an English linguistic class. During seven weeks, the students, after being lectured on linguistic contents, practiced the linguistic knowledege and skills they learned through genre analysis activities and then follow-up activities. In the mid-term and end-term assignments, students were required to produce two texts of one and the same genre. The texts that students produced were then compared in terms of the agreement between language choices and communicative purposes to specify the changes in their English writing; observations and informal discussion were also conducted. The possible influences of genre-based activities on students English writing were then discussed.


Keywords


Genre, genre analysis, genre-based activities, language teaching, writing skills

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References


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