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Date Posted: 16:54:00 07/18/03 Fri
Author: José Euríalo dos Reis
Subject: TASK 11

TASK 10 - GENRE-BASED APPROACHES

Textual genres have been present in teaching activities since ancient times, since reading and writing presupposes some textual types and communicative purposes. Besides, genres can be understood as categories of mediation in order to receive and convey messages, producing communication.

As much as the definition of genres is a complex question, the work based on them or the genre-based approach can be understood and used in different senses, but always presupposing social interaction. So, the approaches based on genres can vary a lot and allow the teacher to work with very different aspects of the target language, in a effective way, according to his/her experience and skills and to the learners` interests, demands and backgrounds. Lately, especially in Brazil, working the mother-language by exploring textual genres is a must, indicated by the so-called “Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais” (PCNs).

According to some scientists, there are at least three different views on such approaches: the Systemic Functional one (genre is taken as a staged, goal oriented social processes), the VESP perspective (genre comprises a class of communicative events linked by shared purposes into a community of people) and the New Rhetoric view (that emphasizes the action of communication). So, genres can provide the teacher with topics and functions to cover almost all the areas in which humans can use language, being shaped to work with very different groups of learners with varied purposes and interests.

CRITCHLEY indicates that genre-based approaches are often used in Australia, but not common in Japan, but have been deserved attention over there, concerning the teaching of language as a foreign language. His article presents some very practical examples of uses of these approaches, extracted from a seminar given by Dr. Derewianka and stresses the interests Japaneses have on learning how to speak a language, not how to write that (and it is worthwhile to remember we have spoken genres, not only literary written ones).

Personally, I think genres can be very useful for the teaching of a second or foreign language, because they can furnish basis for acitivities to help students to use the four skills in situations which are similar to real life uses of the language. They can enrich the apprenticeship with some external sources of input that the teacher can take from daily life, making the lessons less unrealistic and avoiding waste of time to "reinvent the wheel" while teaching.

Undoubtedly, the genre-based approaches may be very profitable, since they are used carefully by competent professionals who know that the knowledge is most useful and real when it derives from enriched reflexion, based on concrete experience, observation, conceptualization and personal contacts. The effective use of varied and well-balanced genres, originally designed and socially acceptable, however, relies on the test and validation that depends on the teacher experience and perception, whose role (I believe) is to help students to get the love for the language, in order to understand that the apprenticeship of a language must be a daily challenge, a daily conquest and an everlasting activity.

Bibliography:

Genre-based approaches (In:http://personal.cityu.edu.hk/~enhyland/lectures_1-10.htm )

Genre: Where art thou? Tracing the role of genre in the foreign language curriculum http://uccllt.ucdavis.edu/Events/papers/Crane,etal.Irvine2002Paper.htm

Adapting genre theory to EFL contexts http://www.encounters.jp/mike/professional/publications/
bevseminar.html

Writing across genres http://langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/jalt/pub/tlt/00/jul/
gallagher.html

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