Effectiveness of implementing the genre approach on non-English major students’ writing performance at University of Social Sciences and Humanities

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** TÔ THỊ MAI EFFECTIVENESS OF IMPLEMENTING THE GE

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

TÔ THỊ MAI

EFFECTIVENESS OF IMPLEMENTING THE GENRE APPROACH ON NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE AT UNIVERSITY OF

SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES (HIỆU QUẢ ỨNG DỤNG ĐỊNH HƯỚNG DẠY VIẾT THEO THỂ LOẠI ĐỐI VỚI KHẢ NĂNG VIẾT CỦA SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN TIẾNG ANH TẠI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC KHOA HỌC XÃ HỘI VÀ NHÂN VĂN)

M.A COMBINED PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Hanoi – 2015

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

TÔ THỊ MAI

EFFECTIVENESS OF IMPLEMENTING THE GENRE APPROACH ON NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE AT UNIVERSITY OF

SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES (HIỆU QUẢ ỨNG DỤNG ĐỊNH HƯỚNG DẠY VIẾT THEO THỂ LOẠI ĐỐI VỚI KHẢ NĂNG VIẾT CỦA SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN TIẾNG ANH TẠI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC KHOA HỌC XÃ HỘI VÀ NHÂN VĂN)

M.A COMBINED PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Dr Prof Hoàng Văn Vân

Hanoi – 2015

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the minor thesis entitled “Effectiveness of implementing the genre approach on non-English major students’ writing performance at University of Social Sciences and Humanities” is the result of my own work and effort in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at Faculty of Post- Graduate Studies, Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University The material in this research has not been submitted

to any other university or institution wholly and partially

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am indebted to many people without whose help my thesis could not have been completed First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Prof Dr Hoang Van Van for his invaluable guidance, insightful comments and endless support

I wish to express my deep indebtedness to Assoc Prof Dr Lam Quang Dong, Dean of the Faculty of English, University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS) for his great encouragement to me Also, my special thanks are due to Ms Lai Phuong Thao, Vice Dean of the Faculty of English University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS) and Ms Lam Thi Hoa Binh, Head of English Devision at University of Social Sciences and Humanity (USSH) for their kind assistance and valuable suggestions

My thanks are also extended to all my student informants at USSH, my colleagues at ULIS and USSH, and all the people who have assisted my research work

To all mentioned, and to many more, my heart extends the warmest thanks

ABSTRACT

The effectiveness of genre-based approaches to teaching writing has been widely acknowledged in a large number of experimental and theoretical studies; however, any detailed examination of this effectiveness on both students’ writing performance and their attitudes towards writing in light of genre approaches is still limited This study is an attempt to provide empirical evidence of the effectiveness of the genre-based approach in enhancing both the writing performance and attitudes towards writing of non-English majored students at University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Hanoi The study lasted 10 weeks, adopted the quasi-experimental design with one control group and one experimental group and used the writing pre-test/post-test and attitude pre-scale/post-scale instruments The results show that the genre-based approach helped students improve their writing performance in terms of content, communicative achievement and organisation, while their command of language did not show remarkable improvement Furthermore, the findings also reveal more positive attitudes of students towards learning writing when being taught in the genre-based approach Based on those findings, the thesis provides some implications for using the genre-based approach in teaching writing to low level students at university

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES viii

ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS ix

PART A 1

INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale for the study 1

2 Aims of the study 3

3 Research questions 3

4 Scope of the study 3

5 Methods of the study 4

5.1 Research method 4

5.2 Research instruments 4

5.3 Data collection 4

5.4 Data analyis 5

6 Design of the study 6

PART B 7

DEVELOPMENT 7

CHAPTER 1 7

LITERATURE REVIEW 7

1.1 Theoretical background 7

1.1.1 Different approaches to teaching writing 7

1.1.1.1 Product approach 7

1.1.1.2.Process approach 8

1.1.1.3 Genre approach 10

1.1.1.3.1 The concept of “genre” 10

1.1.1.3.2 Application of the genre approach 12

1.1.1.3.3 Merits of the genre approach 18

1.1.1.3.4 Comparison among the product, process and genre approaches 20

1.1.2 Theory of recount writing 25

1.1.2.1 Definition of recount 25

1.1.2.2 Generic concepts of recount 26

1.1.2.3 Grammatical features of recount 26

1.1.2.4 Types of recount 26

1.1.3 Corrective feedback and writing assessment 27

1.1.3.1 Corrective feedback .27

1.1.3.1.1 Feedback in the Product Approach 27

1.1.3.1.2 Feedback in the process approach 28

1.1.3.1.3 Feedback in the genre approach 28

1.1.3.2 Writing Assessment 29

1.1.4 Writing performance and writing attitude 31

1.2 Related studies 32

1.2.1 Effectiveness of genre-based approaches 32

1.2.2 Limitations of previous studies 36

CHAPTER TWO 38

METHODOLOGY 38

2.1 Research design 38

2.2 Setting and participants 39

2.3 Instruments 41

2.3.1 Genre-based approach syllabus of recount genre 41

2.3.2 Written English performance pre-test and post-test 41

2.3.3 Analytical scoring rubric 42

2.3.4 Pre-scale and post-scale attitude questionnaires 45

2.4 Lesson procedure 46

2.4.1 Lesson procedure in the genre-based approach 46

2.4.1.1 Building up the field knowledge 46

2.4.1.2 Modelling the text 47

2.4.1.3 Joint construction of a new text 48

2.4.1.4 Independent construction of a new text 48

2.4.2 Lesson procedure in the process approach 46

2.4.1.1 Lesson 1 46

2.4.2.2 Lesson 2 47

2.4.1.3 Lesson 3 47

2.4.2.4 Lesson 5 47

2.4.1.5 Lesson 6 47

2.4.2.6 Lesson 7 47

2.4.1.7 Lesson 7 47

2.4.2.8 Lesson 8 48

2.5 Data collection 51

2.6 Data analysis 52

2.6.1 Pre-test and post-test 52

2.6.2 Pre-scale and post-scale attitude questionnaire 52

CHAPTER THREE 54

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 54

3.1 Equivalence of the control and experimental groups before the experiment 54

3.2 Findings 58

3.2.1 Research question 1 58

3.2.1.1 Differences between experimental and control groups on the writing performance 58

3.2.1.2 Differences in the experimental group on the writing performance pre-and post-test 60

3.2.2 Research question 2 63

3.3 Discussion 65

3.3.1 Effectiveness of the genre-based approach in improving writing performance 65

3.3.2 Effectiveness of the genre-based approach in promoting students’ attitudes 67

PART C 69

CONCLUSION 69

1 Recapitulation 69

2 Implications of the study 70

3 Limitations of the study .71

4 Recommendations for further research 72

REFERENCES 74 APPENDIXES I

ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS

EFL English as a Foreign Language

USSH University of Social Sciences and Humanities

CEFR The Common European Framework of Reference for

Languages ESOL English for Speakers of Other Languages

EFL English as a foreign language

α significance level (a term used in SPSS)

t t value (a term used in SPSS)

df degree of freedom (a term used in SPSS)

sig significance (a term used in SPSS)

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure1: The model of process writing 9

Figure 2: Genre processes………12

Figure 3: Teaching and learning cycle in genre approaches 13

Figure 4: Procedure for a genre-based lesson 15

Figure 5: Comparison between the process and the genre approaches 21

Table 1: T-test results of the writing pre-test comparing both control and experimental groups in overall writing performance……….54

Table 2: T-test results of the writing pre-test comparing both control

and experimental groups in Content……….55

Table 3: T-test results of the writing pre-test comparing both control and experimental groups in Communicative Achievement ……….55

Table 4: T-test results of the writing pre-test comparing both control and experimental groups in Organisation……….56

Table 5: T-test results of the writing pre-test comparing both control and experimental groups in Language ……….56

Table 6: T-test results of pre-scale attitude scores between the control and experimental groups……… 57

Table 7: The t-test results of the writing post-test for overall writing performance …… 58

Table 8: The t-test results of the writing post-test in components of writing erformance 59

Table 9: The t-test results of the writing pre-post-test in overall writing performance… 61

Table 10: T-test results of the writing pre-post-tests of the experimental group………….62

Table 11: The t-test results of the attitude post-scale comparing both control and perimental groups ………63

Table 12: T-test results of the attitude pre-post-scale for the experimental group 64

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale for the study

There has been a well-established acknowledgement that writing is of paramount importance in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) According to Hoang Van Van (2010), writing helps learners to study better because while writing, learners consolidate their grammatical knowledge and develop their use

of language, have opportunities to employ what they have studied, and pay particular attention to express their ideas by frequently using their eyes, hands and brains; as a result, the close relation between writing and cognitive development makes writing an essential component of any English language programs

In assertion about the role of writing, there have been a range of dramatic changes in writing pedagogy in the last two decades, leading to paradigm shifts from product-based to process-based and then to genre-based approaches This calls for practitioners’ search for and implementation of a more coherent, comprehensive approach to the teaching of writing

However, writing is still perceived as the most difficult skill to practise for both professional writers and language learners For example, Raimes (1985) observed the difficulties which her students experienced when performing a writing assignment: they "chew their pencils, shuffle their feet, sigh, groan and stretch." Therefore, a number of teachers of English believe that teaching writing skill to EFL learners is more complex than teaching other communicative skills (Mazdayasna & Tahririan, 2001) and EFL learners often feel stressful and anxious when writing in a foreign language (Spratt & Leung, 2000)

In the case of Vietnam, writing classes in universities nowadays are still predominantly language-based writing classes that focus on sentence writing for sentence building tests, rather than focusing on creating compositions to serve the purpose of plurality of real readers outside the classroom context Also, the negative attitude from both teachers and learners has been escalating, especially

in the situation of students’ low results of writing tests at University of Social

Sciences and Humanities (USSH) in 2012 and in 2013 In fact, there has been insufficient time allocation for writing, accounting for only 12-14 class hours out

of 90 class hours in the syllabus Under this time constraint, a majority of teachers were observed to adopt the process approach to teaching writing, while some of them chose the product approach, and the manipulation of the lexico-grammatical information takes precedence over demonstration of writing skills

On one hand, the process approach to writing neglects the “socio-cultural context” of writing (Horowitz, 1986) On the other hand, the product approach has been criticized for being pedagogically weak owing to the insufficient attention it paid to the writing stages (Freedman, 1983) Moreover, it is argued that when the student-writer manipulates the linguistic components of writing, they do no more than “lock themselves into a semantic and rhetorical prison” (Raimes, 1983) Thus, the effects of these writing instructions on students’ writing at USSH have not been remarkable

Moreover, students at USSH have been studying writing skills based on the coursebook “New English File, by Clive Oxenden and Christina Latham-Koenig, Oxford Univeristy Press, 2010 to be qualified for B1-level according to The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) However, the separated activities from the coursebook have been found inadequate to foster the learners’ writing skill Consequently, students limitations on grammatical knowledge affect accuracy, and many of them show hesitation on writing These confronting problems urge the researcher to investigate for a more practical instruction assisting and guiding students how to write more effectively

Meanwhile, the genre-based approach is confirmed to be effective in a variety of studies by Henry and Roseberry (1998), Burns (2001), Hyland (2002), Swale (2004), Kim and Kim (2005), Matsuo and Bevan (2006), Cheng (2007), Chaisiri (2010), Lai and Tseng (2012), Elashri (2013), and Alidoost et al (2014) However, the body of research on the application of genre-based approach to teaching writing in Vietnam in general is still limited with only few studies by Luu Trong Tuan (2011) and Trinh Quoc Lap and Nguyen Thanh Truc (2014)

Studies that can be applicable to USSH situation are even harder to find This

research “Effects of implementing a genre-based approach on non-English majored students' writing performance at University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Hanoi” was, therefore, conducted with the hope of examining the

impacts of adopting the genre-based approach on writing performance of students at USSH

2 Aims of the study

This study aims at providing empirical evidence of whether there is any effectiveness of the genre-based approach in enhancing both the writing

performance and attitudes towards writing of students at USSH

4 Scope of the study

Due to the time limit, the researcher only studied on a limited sample of

60 students at USSH These students were in the second year at USSH and of pre-intermediate English levels

Furthermore, it was impossible to cover all genres in this writing course; hence, the researcher only chose recount genre to carry out the genre instruction

in the experimental group

5 Methods of the study

5.1 Research method

The study was designed as a quasi-experimental research through the use

of the control group and the experimental group The independent variable was genre-based instruction, and the dependent variable was students’ writing achievement

The measurements included a test and a post-test in writing; a scale attitude questionnaire and a post-scale attitude questionnaire

pre-5.2 Research instruments

The following instruments were used for the study:

- A recount genre-based writing syllabus covering recount genre

- Written English performance pre-test and post-test

- An analytical scoring rubric covering four parameters: Content, Communicative Achievement, Organisation and Language to assess students’ writing performance The score range in each parameter was 1 up to 5, which means the minimal score was 4 and the maximum score was 20

- Pre-scale and post-scale attitude questionnaires before and after the treatment

to investigate any changes in students’ perceptions of writing

5.3 Data collection

The data are collected mainly from two tests, the pre-test and post-test of students’ writing performance and two scales, the pre-scale and post-scale attitude questionnaires Before the treatment of the genre-based writing instruction to the experimental group and the process-based writing instruction

to control group, the pre-test was given to all participants

The participants for this study were 60 students (58 females and 2 males) who were randomly selected from over 100 volunteers to participate in the

experiment However, in order to be qualified to take part in the course, they had had to pass A2-level (CEFR) exams at USSH

Participants took the test to have scores of their writings In the test, the participants wrote one simple writing in the form of a story based on their prior knowledge At the same time, they were given pre-attitude questionnaires to scale their perceptions upon writing ability

pre-After that, they were randomly assigned into two classes; one of the class (30 students) was randomly selected as the control group and the other class (30 students) as the experimental group

Next, the experimental group were taught by using the genre-based approach for ten meetings; meanwhile, the control group were taught in the process-based approach After the treatment, the post-test, with the same writing question as that of the pre-test, was given to two groups, but the researcher asked them to create new writing products using the knowledge they had learnt after the course Finally, the post-attitude questionnaires were delivered again to both two groups to collect their perceptions of learning writing after the treatment

5.4 Data analyis

In analyzing data, descriptive statistics test was used to calculate the participants’ writing performance in the pre-test and the post-test of the two groups Then, the researcher applied the T-Test formula to compare the results of the mean differences in the writing performance of participants in two groups and in their attitudes about writing

6 Design of the study

The study is composed of three parts

Part A: Introduction

This part presents an overview of the study including rationale, aims, research questions and hypothesis, scope of the study as well as the methodology for the research

Part B: Development

This is the main part which consists of three chapters:

Chapter one: Literature Review

This chapter provides the theoretical background for the research

as well as reviews related studies in the literature This helps to establish a framework of investigation in this study

Chapter two: Methodology

This chapter presents the research method employed in the study in detail with a hope of reasoning its relevance to the study and the procedure of selecting the sample, conducting the experiment, and collecting and analyzing data

Chapter three: Results and Discussion

This chapter deals with the findings of the study in accordance with two guiding research questions and four hypotheses From the results, the researcher discusses some consistency and inconsistency with previous studies It also puts forward some suggestions for the teaching of English writing at university level

Part C: Conclusion

The final part presents a recapitulation of the study, implication of the study, limitations of the study, and recommendations for further research

Explicitly, Badger and White (2000:154) viewed writing as “mainly concerned with the knowledge about the structure of language, and writing development is mainly the result of the imitation of input, in the form of texts provided by the teacher” Generally the focus of such writing is on the written product rather than on how the learner addresses the process of writing This approach, therefore, is teacher-centred, as the teacher becomes the arbiter of the models used

In this approach, learning to write has four stages: familiarization; controlled writing; guided writing; and free writing First, the familiarization stage aims to make learners aware of certain features of a particular text Next, in the controlled and guided writing sections, the learners practise the skills with increasing freedom until they are ready for the free writing section

Proponents of this product approach argue that it enhances students’ writing proficiency since it recognizes the need for learners to be given linguistic knowledge about texts, and it understands that imitation is one way in which

people learn Myles (2002) insisted, “If students are not exposed to native-like models of written texts, their errors in writing are more likely to persist.”

Nonetheless, this approach is criticised for many weaknesses According

to Prodromou (1995), the product approach devalues “the learners’ potential, both linguistic and personal.” In this approach, the process skill such as planning

a text is given a relatively small role, and the knowledge and skills that learners bring to the classroom are undervalued

In short, product-based approaches see writing as mainly concerned with knowledge about the structure of language, and writing development as mainly the result of the imitation of input, in the form of texts provided by the teacher The weaknesses of this approach led to the re-assessment of writing nature and the pedagogy in which it is taught, the shift to writing as process

1.1.1.2 Process approach

To compensate for the product approach, process approach views writing

as predominantly doing with linguistic skills, such as planning and drafting, and there is much less emphasis on linguistic knowledge, such as knowledge about grammar and text structure Tribble (1996) suggests that process approaches stress writing activities which move learners from the generation of ideas and the collection of data through to the publication of a finished text

There are different views on the stages of producing a piece of writing, but a typical model identifies a recursive procedure of four steps: prewriting; composing/drafting; revising; and editing (Tribble, 1996) The following is a diagram taken from Tribble (1996), illustrating the recursive and unpredictable process of writing

Figure 1: The model of process writing

(Source: Tribble, 1996)

According to the process approach, in pre-writing, teachers would introduce techniques that help students discover and engage a topic Instead of turning in a finished product right away, students are asked for multiple drafts of

a work After discussion and feedback from readers, the students would revise the drafts Rewriting and revision are indispensable to writing, and editing is an ongoing multilevel process In this model, the primary elements are the writer, the content and the purpose, and multiple drafts

In process approaches, the teacher is primarily a facilitator in the learners’ writing, and providing input or stimulus is considered to be less important

The main advantages of the process approach are it understands the importance of the skills involved in writing, and recognizes that what learners bring to the writing classroom contributes to the development of writing ability

However, the process approach also has come under serious scrutiny because it has a somewhat monolithic view of writing (Badger and White, 2000) Regardless of the target audience and the content of the text, all writings are produced by the same set of processes In addition, it gives insufficient importance to the kind of texts writers produce and why such texts are

produced; and that it offers learners insufficient input, particularly in terms

of linguistic knowledge, to write successfully

Moreover, the process approach seems to narrowly focus on the skills and processes of writing in the classroom itself; consequently, it fails to take into account the social and cultural aspects that have an impact on different kinds of writing (Atkinson, 2003)

1.1.1.3 Genre approach

1.1.1.3.1 The concept of “genre”

From the perspective of systemic-functional linguistics, people do not merely write so as to express their own unique ideas born of nowhere As social members of a community, they create texts which conform to social norms depending on a number of contextual factors such as targeted audience, writing purpose, and discourse environment It is these rules that determine appropriate language and text organization in each occurrence In this regard, the notion

of genre has become central to teaching and learning EFL writing

Swales (1990:58) perceived a genre as “a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes” This definition offers the fundamental concept that there are certain conventions which are generally involved with a writer’s communicative purpose For example, a personal letter tells about the writers’ private anecdotes, and a personal letter starts with a cordial question in a friendly mood because its purpose is to maintain good relationships with friends

According to Hyland (2007:4), “genre is a term for grouping texts together, representing how writers typically use language to respond to recurring situations.” In line with this definition, Nunan (1999:308) also stated:

“Genre is a purposeful, socially constructed oral or written

communicative event, such as narrative, a casual conversation, a

poem, a recipe, or a description Different genres are characterized by

a particular structure or stages, and grammatical forms that reflect the

communicative purpose of the genre in question.”

The communicative purposes of the text determine the linguistic inputs of the text, often in form of structural features as mentioned above The structural features that genres are constituted of comprise both standards of organization structure and linguistic features Standards of organizational structure refer to how the text is sequenced As regards linguistic features, their common sets can make up a text type, a class of texts having similarities in linguistic forms irrespective of the genre Each text type, such as news report, letter, email, interview, promotional leaflet, newspaper article, encodes the purposes and meanings of the social institutions of a cultural milieu Text types are characterized by a relatively stable structural order (beginnings, middles and ends), a consistent way of organizing information (in paragraphs, in bullet points, sections), and lexicogrammatical features and structures that materially articulate the social purpose of each text

The language features of a text give shape to and are shaped by its course

of linguistic input They are usefully organized into five basic generic processes

by Knapp and Watkins (2005) (see Figure 2) Each one of these processes demands the use of different text organization and different lexicogrammar

However, Gibbons (2002:53) simply refers to ‘genre’ as different forms

of writing and the term ‘genre’ encompasses a broad range of texts, from transactional writing to narrative, descriptive, expository, procedural and argumentative Each genre has characteristics that distinguish it from other genres It has a specific purpose, overall structure and linguistic features that are recognised by members of a specific culture

GENRES SOCIAL PROCESSES THAT:

INSTRUCT

through the process of logically sequencing actions or behaviours

ARGUE

through the process of expanding a proposition to persuade readers to accept a point of view

NARRATE

through the process of sequencing people and events in time and space

Procedures Instructions Manuals Recipes Directions

Essays Expositions Discussions Debates Interpretations Evaluations

Personal recounts Historical recounts Stories Fairy tales Myths Fables Narratives

Figure 2: Genre processes (Source: Knapp and Watkins, 2005:27)

Confronted with a variety of conception about “genre” above, the researcher, in this study, opts to adopt the notions of “genre” by Hyland (2007:4) and Nunan (1999:308) as presented above because their concepts reflect the comprehensible theory to apply genre approaches to teaching and learning writing in the research situation

1.1.1.3.2 Application of the genre approach

The introduction of genre pedagogies is a response to the still widespread emphasis on a planning-writing-reviewing framework which focuses learners on strategies for writing rather than on the linguistic resources they need to express themselves effectively

Martin (1992) defines the teaching of genres as a goal-orientated process that is conducted through stages which are each characterised by purposeful activities that ultimately allow learners to become engaging members of the target discourse community

Teaching and learning cycle in genre approaches

Hyland (2003:22) shows the teaching-learning cycle model in the genre approach (see Figure 3) It includes three stages: modelling, joint construction and independent construction of a text:

Figure 3: Teaching and learning cycle in genre approaches

(Source: Hyland, 2003:22)

Each of these stages seeks to achieve a different purpose, and as a result,

is associated with different types of classroom activities and different learner roles (Hyland, 2004)

teacher-The cycle is one way of understanding the Five E’s concept long familiar

in science teaching, helping learners to engage, explore, explain, extend, and evaluate (Trowbridge & Bybee, 1990) The cycle is intended to be used flexibly,

allowing students to enter at any stage depending on their existing knowledge of the genre and to enable teachers to return to earlier stages of the cycle for revision purposes

The key purpose of the cycle is to ensure repeated opportunities for students to engage in activities which require them to reflect on and critique their learning by developing understandings of texts, acting on these through writing

or speaking, reviewing their performance, and using feedback to improve their work The model, therefore, allows vocabulary to be recycled and the literacy skills gained in previous cycles to be further developed by working through a new cycle at a more advanced level of expression of the genre

Later, Widodo (2006) proposed a procedure for the genre-based lesson including two main teaching-learning cycles in standard genre-based writing teaching: writing with the class and writing independently Each of these cycles has associated activities

Writing with the class involves:

(1) building knowledge of the field, (2) exploring the genre,

(3) joint text construction,

Writing independently includes:

(1) building knowledge of a similar field, (2) drafting, revising, and conferencing, (3) editing and publishing

Each stage has different purposes in terms of the writing process Such a genre-based writing cycle can be illustrated in Figure 4 below:

Figure 4: Procedure for a genre-based lesson

(Source: Widodo, 2006)

Writing-with-the-class stage

The writing-with-the-class stage has four main purposes:

1) activating students’ schema about a topic they are going to write on; 2) encouraging students to organize their ideas about the topic;

3) providing input about the nature of a composition that the students need to write;

4) providing scaffolding to the students about the way to write a particular composition (for example, an essay)

Building knowledge of field (genre)

The first purpose of the writing-with-the-class phase is implemented in a stage of building knowledge of field Activating students’ schema is essential for students to know something about the topic so that they are able to develop it easily into a complete essay Activating the schema engages student writers in a brainstorming activity that encourage them to think of what they already know about the topic they are going to write on To do this, a teacher might ask leading questions or provide students with some information in the form of brochures, newspapers or web-pages to read in order to help them get more information about what they already know or even what they do not know yet

Importantly, schema activation encourages students to arrive at determining a purpose, organization and readership (Paltridge, 2001) To reinforce students’ schema activation, the teacher is required to get them to share what they already know so that idea-sharing among them encourages their active participation in the writing class

Thus, the stage of building knowledge of genre is fundamentally intended

to activate the students’ schema about the topic that they will write on

Exploring the genre

Exploring the genre elates to two main constructs: text types and text forms (Derewianka, 1993 and Lin, 2003) The former refers to the purpose of the writer, while the latter deals with the medium or the physical format that text types are found in Generally, text types may be grouped into:

- narratives: to tell stories to entertain readers;

- recounts: to reconstruct past experiences by retelling events in original sequences or to tell what happened both personally and factually;

- instructions/procedures: to show how processes or events are achieved

or how something is done;

- explanations: to tell how or why something work;

- information reports: to present factual information about a class of things and their characteristics; and

- arguments/expositions: to provide reasons for a state of affairs or a judgment

In the classroom, the teacher provides a sample text or displays it on the screen This activity aims at exploiting the text To help students investigate the text, the teacher provides a certain graphic organizer (for example, mind mapping or outlining) Then the teacher asks such leading questions as:

- What text-type is used?

- What is the purpose of the text?

- Who is the reader of the text?

- How do you find such text?

The teacher further leads students to investigate the generic structures of the text This activity is indispensable for providing students with input about the organization of a text that they are going to write Afterwards, the teacher gets students to look over grammatical features (tenses, modals, passive or active voices, or types of clauses) employed in the text Lastly, the teacher has the students conduct peer- and teacher-student conferences about the investigation’s findings in respect of the generic structures and grammatical features found in the text To sum up, at the stage of exploring genre, a teacher provides students with input about the purpose, organization and audience of the text

Exploring the genre cooperatively along with student-student and student conferences: Exploring the genre cooperatively encourages students to share ideas about what they already know of the features of a text such as text-type, author’s purpose/tone, text readership, text-form, text organization and grammatical items (for example, transitional signals which are commonly used

teacher-in a certateacher-in text-type – teacher-information reports with a certateacher-in organizational pattern – comparison and contrast)

Joint text construction

In a stage of joint text construction, the teacher serves as a co-writer with students The teacher shows the students the way to write a text using a certain text-type, like information reports, along with a particular organizational pattern The teacher reinforces the use of generic structures and grammatical features in the meantime

Independent writing stage

Building knowledge of a similar field

This stage is basically similar to that of building of genre at the with-the-class phase In this case, students form the group, and brainstorm and outline ideas

writing-Outline conferencing

Once each group has outlined their ideas for the essay assigned, students have to present their outlines to the class Basically, this activity is intended to encourage students to share and review ideas with one another and to provide an opportunity to rework their outlines before the outlines are developed into an essay

After this process is completed, the teacher can comment on each group’s outline and help the students see how they can further develop their ideas into a completed essay

Drafting: Once students have reworked their outlines, they are required to

develop their own ideas into a complete essay consisting of an introductory paragraph, body paragraph(s), and a concluding paragraph using a certain text-type along with a particular development of an essay

In this study, the researcher adopts the model by Widodo (2006) to apply suitable stages and activities in teaching writing in light of genre-based approaches

1.1.1.3.3 Merits of the genre approach

The genre approach has several merits to teaching writing First, students generally appreciate the models or examples showing specifically what they have to do linguistically Thus, studying a given genre provides them with an understanding of why a communication style is the way it is through a reflection

of its social context and its purpose In this context, the genre approach is very beneficial because it brings together formal and functional properties of a language in writing instruction, and it acknowledges that there are strong associations between them

Genre pedagogies promise very real benefits for learners as they pull together language, content, and contexts, while offering teachers a means of presenting students with explicit and systematic explanations of the ways writing works to communicate Based on Hyland (2004), the main advantages of the genre pedagogy are summarised below:

- explicit: makes clear what is to be learned to facilitate the acquisition of

writing skills

- systematic: provides a coherent framework for focusing on both

language and contexts

- needs-based: ensures that course objectives and content are derived

from students’ needs

- supportive: gives teacher a central role in scaffolding student learning

and creativity

- empowering: provides access to the patterns and possibilities of

variation in valued texts

- critical: provides the resources for students to understand and challenge

valued discourses

- consciousness raising: increases teacher awareness of texts and

confidently advise students on their writing

Perhaps the most important feature is that the genre-based writing instruction offers students an explicit understanding of how target texts are structured and why they are written in the ways they are This explicitness gives teachers and learners something to shoot for making writing outcomes clear rather than relying on hit or miss inductive methods whereby learners are expected to acquire the genres they need from repeated writing experiences or the teacher’s notes in the margins of their essays (Hyland, 2003)

As Bhatia (1993, cited in Kim & Kim, 2005) recommended, it is meaningful for writing instructors to tie the formal and functional properties of a language together in order to facilitate students’ recognition of how and why linguistic conventions are employed for particular rhetorical effects (p 6) If the rhetorical structure of content is analyzed by students in the genre approach, some common patterns can be identified in each genre Naturally, these patterns

will form a kind of background knowledge students can activate in the next learning situation Eventually, the prior knowledge will make it easier for students to produce acceptable structures in their writing tasks Therefore, an assigned genre seems to serve as an influential tool for both the learning and teaching of writing Furthermore, the genre approach encourages students to participate in the world around them, to comprehend writing as a tool that they can utilize, and to realize how writers manage content to promote logical organization It also allows students to become more flexible in their thinking, to realize how authors organize their writings, and to produce written work with confidence

Although this approach is criticised to undervalue the skills needed to produce a text and neglect learners’ self-sufficiency (Byram, 2004), some proponents have indicated that the genre approach is suitable for learners at beginning or intermediate levels of proficiency in a second language rather than those at advanced levels, in that it releases students from deep anxieties about their writing tasks When people learn something new, they commonly want to find some cases that they can refer to or consider as samples There is no doubt that writing tasks can be more demanding than other language skills, so students

at low level of proficiency absolutely need something that they can rely on since they have little exposure to English writing (Kay & Dudley-Evans, 1998)

1.1.1.3.4 Comparison among the product, process and genre approaches

As noted by Badger and White (2000), there are similarities between the product approach and the genre approach, which, in some ways, can be considered an extension of the product approach Like the product approach, the genre approach views writing as predominantly linguistic The genre approach, however, places greater emphasis on the social context in which writing is produced At the heart of the approach, therefore, is the view that writing pedagogies should “offer students explicit and systematic explanations of the ways language functions in social contexts” (Hyland, 2003) In short, like the

product approach, the genre approach regards writing as pre-dominantly linguistic but, unlike product approaches, they emphasize that writing varies with the social context in which it is produced

Regarding the similarities and differences between the process and genre approach, Hyland (2003) proposes a table that illustrates the differences and commonalities between the process approach and genre approach as follows: (See Figure 5)

Main idea Writing is a thought process

Concerned with the writing process

Writing is a social acitivity Concerned with the final product

Teaching focus Emphasis is on learner’s

individual expressions

Emphasis is on audience’s expectations and the end product Advantages Explicitly teaches writing

Disadvantages Does not differentiate

between specific writing processes of various genres

Can ignore the step-by-step processes of writing production

as focus is on end product

Figure 5: Comparison between the process and the genre approaches

Stage 1: Generating ideas

Teacher gives students the recount title: My favorite summer vacation and pieces

of scrap paper

Students have 3 minutes to work alone, writing one idea on each piece of paper, before comparing in groups Each group can then present their three best ideas to the class It doesn't matter if the ideas aren't used in the final piece of writing, the important thing is to break through the barrier of ' I can't think of anything to write.'

Stage 2: Focusing ideas

This stage involves thinking about which of the many ideas generated are the most important or relevant, and perhaps taking a particular point of view Students in groups put the ideas generated in the previous stage onto a 'mind map'

The teacher then draws a mind-map on the board, using ideas from the different groups At this stage he / she can also feed in some useful collocations - this gives the learners the tools to better express their own ideas

Learners then compare together what they have written, and use a dictionary, the teacher or each other to find in English any words or phrases they wrote in their first language

Stage 3: Organising ideas

Teacher present a sample of recount writing and helps students understand how the recount is developed Once learners have seen how the ideas are organised in this typical example, they can go about organising their own ideas in a similar way

Students in groups draft a plan of their work

Stage 4: Drafting

Students write the first draft This is done in class and frequently in pairs or groups

Stage 5: Revising and Editing

Drafts are exchanged, so that students become the readers of each other's work

By responding as readers, students develop an awareness of the fact that a writer

is producing something to be read by someone else, and thus can improve their

own drafts Drafts are returned and improvements are made based upon peer feedback The teacher can also respond at this stage by commenting on the content and the organisation of ideas, without yet giving a grade or correcting details of grammar and spelling

Stage 6: Re-writing

Students write their final version Students once again exchange and read each other's work and perhaps even write a response or reply

Genre-based writing lesson

Stage 1: Building knowledge of field - Introduction to the text

Teacher displays the sample recount of Our Trip to the Blue Mountain (Appendix 4) Teacher tells the students that the text is a recount This recount tells us what happened on the trip of a girl and her mother to the Blue Mountain Teacher asks questions about when and where the events took place Then teacher talks about the purpose of a recount Teacher asks them to recall the events in the sequence in which they happened

Stage 2: Exploring the genre - Text Deconstruction

Teacher tells the students that together they are going to look at each part of the text Explain that this will help them when they write their own recounts Teacher explicitly teaches students the structure of a recount: title, orientation, sequence of events, reorientation or personal comment

Copy the text onto four cards – title, orientation, sequence of events and personal comment Reinforce the students’ learning by asking them to order the cards as they share their understanding of the structure of a recount

Teacher directs students’ attention to the language features – nouns and pronouns, past tense verbs, time and sequence words

Stage 3: Joint text construction

Teacher asks students to write a recount about their favorite summer vacation Teacher introduces and explains one Recount Graphic Organiser Teacher solicits student input and models writing information from the combined class

experience on the graphic organiser Teacher models the writing of this experience as a recount on a whiteboard

Teacher reads the completed text with the students, encouraging their feedback Teacher draws students’ attention to the text structure of a recount and revisits the language features that have been identified in previous stages

Teacher, then, invites one of the students to recall the events that he/she experienced in his favorite trip

Teacher records the events as a recount on a whiteboard

After that, teacher asks questions that reinforce their understanding of the text structure and language features of a recount As the writing proceeds, teacher involves the students when refining their sentence structures

Teacher reads the completed text with the students and evaluates the writing by revisiting the text structure and language features of a recount

Stage 4: Independent Writing- Building knowledge of a similar field

Teacher has students choose a topic for their own personal recount Students form the group, and brainstorm and outline ideas

Teacher gives students the graphic organiser and asks them to fill in information about events and details on their organiser

Teacher invites students to share their topics Students discuss events that they could write about and people whom they could write to

Stage 5: Drafting - Revising – Editing

Students are provided opportunities to write their recounts independently

Teacher invites students to share their process for completing their first draft Then teacher asks them to tell how they used their graphic organiser as they wrote, how they decided which ideas or details to include in their writing, and whether they read and then rewrote as they were writing

Teacher reviews what to check for writing with students and uses the revision checklist to model how to revise the draft of the class personal recount

Teacher invites students to share their writing of recount texts and does model constructive feedback

Teacher also introduces and explains the guide for editing students’ writing

Teacher reads the class personal recount aloud to students While reading, teacher uses the editing guide to model how to check for mistakes or errors After that, students use the editing guide to self-edit their personal recount draft After all, students are encouraged to write the final draft based on their revising and editing work

Stage 6: Sharing and Publishing

Teacher establishes an area in the room where students’ recounts can be displayed

Teacher has students copy their revised and edited papers into a presentation format Teacher encourages students to present their stories in such formats as a paper, a podcast or a multimedia story

To summarize: the genre-based approach sees writing as essentially concerned with knowledge of language, and as being tied closely to a social purpose, while the development of writing is largely viewed as the analysis and imitation of input in the form of texts provided by the teacher Apparently, compared to the other writing approaches, the genre approach shows significant benefits to EFL learners, especially those who are of low English levels and struggle to write in English The important advantages of the genre approach lead the researcher to examine possible effects of this approach to teaching writing in the researcher’s context where both the product and process approaches were observed not to be effective enough to foster students’ writing performance

1.1.2 Theory of recount writing

told in order in which they happened” Sharing with Anderson’s idea, Derewianka (1990:14) states:

“In a recount we reconstruct past experience A recount is the unfolding

of a sequence of events over time We are using language to keep the

past alive and help us to interpret experience”

The tense that used in recount texts is past tense Social purpose of recount is to reconstruct past experiences by retelling events in original sequence The samples of recount can be in personal letters, police report, insurance claims, and incident reports

1.1.2.2 Generic concepts of recount

Mukarto et al (2007) states that the rhetorical features of a recount text consist of three parts:

- Orientation: it gives reader background information of the story As the

opening paragraph, it should answer the questions: who, what, where, when, and how

- Record of series of events: it tells a series of events in a chronological

order and describes what happened

- Reorientation: it consists of a type of conclusion with a comment or a

summary and evaluation about the topic of the story

1.1.2.3 Grammatical features of recount

As stated by Hyland (2004:135), the common grammatical features of recount text are:

- Use of nouns and pronouns to identify people, animals, and things involved

- Use of actions verbs to refer to events

- Use of past tense to locate events in relation to speaker’s or writer’s time

- Use of conjunctions and time connectives to sequence of events

- Use of adverb and adverbial phrase to indicate place and time

- Use of adjective to describe nouns

1.1.2.4 Types of recount

There are three types of recount:

- Personal recount: retelling of an activity that the writer or speaker has been personally involved in oral anecdote and diary entry

- Factual recount: recording the particulars of an accident such as report

of a science experiment, police report, news report, and historical account

- Imaginative recount: taking on an imaginary role and giving details of events such as a day in the life of a roman slave or how I invented

Event 1: On Saturday we saw the Three Sisters and

went on the scenic railway It was scary

Then, Mummy and I went shopping with Della We went to some antique shops and I tried on some old hats

Event 2: On Sunday we went on the Scenic Skyway

and it rocked We saw cockatoos having a shower

Reorientation: In the afternoon we went home

1.1.3 Corrective feedback and writing assessment

1.1.3.1 Corrective feedback

1.1.3.1.1 Feedback in the Product Approach

In the product approach, the emphasis of feedback on students’ writing is

on structure and lexis, and is known as corrective feedback Feedback can take

the form of written or oral comments Ellis (1994) explains that the focus on form is done by providing corrective feedback

The grammar correction method pays attention to students’ structural errors by either directly providing the correct form of a structure on students’ scripts or indirectly guiding students by underlining or circling the incorrect forms and leaving it to students to look them up Another method is using codes such as ‘WO’ to indicate a word order error, ‘WW’ to indicate a wrong word error or ‘T’ to indicate a tense error

1.1.3.1.2 Feedback in the process approach

The focus of the process approach is to develop the students' planning, writing, and reviewing This is done through a number of feedback tools such as one-to-one conferencing, peer feedback, audiotaped feedback and reformulation (Hyland, 2003)

Revision is an essential element in the process approach (Wallace and Hayes, 1991) because it helps students make changes to their writing One of the main revision methods followed is peer feedback Students evaluate their peers' writing and offer comments and suggestions Paulus (1999) argues that peer feedback (also referred to as peer revision) encourages students to revise and improve their writing Hyland (2003) claims feedback enhances students’ critical thinking and evaluation However, there are situations where students do not trust their peers' feedback such as the situation at USSH where the level of their English is low and they prefer the teacher’s feedback

Teacher-student conference is another feedback method through which the teacher meets with the students face-to-face individually or in groups to discuss their writing problems and clarify issues related to their performance However, this method consumes time and might require the teacher to cancel classes and schedule appointments with students

1.1.3.1.3 Feedback in the genre approach

Feedback in the genre approach may not be so different from other approaches, except in drawing students' attention to genre conventions Since genre knowledge and conventions associated with community are emphasized, feedback is provided to make students aware of these two elements when they write Thus, teacher feedback focuses on all aspects of writing, from structure and organization to content and presentation However, it is not necessary to tackle all these aspects in each draft Group discussions can be used to give broader attention to most of these aspects and this may benefit all students because their writing involves the same terminology and text features (Hyland, 2004)

Genre-based feedback not only assigns a grade to students' writing, but also justifies it and explains what needs to be done for improvement (Hyland, 2004)

One example of genre-based feedback is given by Feez (2002:131) where

a specifically designed checklist is used to provide feedback on students' writing The checklist includes a set of criteria to evaluate the fulfillment of different aspects of the writing task For example, it examines whether a number of elements were accomplished in the writing, such as the purpose and staging, the text unity (lexical sets, conjunction, reference), the clause grammar (noun groups, verb groups, prepositional phrases, and so on) and other aspects

1.1.3.2 Writing Assessment

Assessment is an integral aspect of the teaching-learning process and central to students’ progress towards increasing control of learners’ writing Genre-based approaches bring several advantages to the assessment of writing, and, in particular, they take more seriously than many other approaches the following basic principles (Hyland, 2004, p 163-166):

- Explicit: They provide explicit criteria for assessment and feedback

- Integrative: They integrate teaching and assessment

- Relevant: They are directly related to learners’ writing goals