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Date Posted: 13:38:10 07/18/03 Fri
Author: alexandra accoroni gonçalves
Subject: task 11 - genre approach

Universidade federal de Minas Gerais
Faculdade de Letras
Student: Alexandra Accoroni Gonçalves
Task 11

In order to start explain what genre approach is I had to look up in a dictionary what was the meaning of genre. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines it as: 1: KIND, SORT 2: a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form , or content. At first it wasn’t completely clear what was “genre” but as I read the texts I understood its mean.
The first site I visited was http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol33/no3/p41.htm. I thought it was confusing and didn’t help me understanding what kind of approach was that.
But the second and third sites were very clear and easy to read. That’s when I noticed what a genre approach could be.
It applies to written material, any kind, advertisements, papers, books, researchs, anything written and the way it’s written. Here in Brazil, we usually make fun of people who work with administration and economy because of their particular vocabulary. But if you read an economy newspaper you’ll see the same vocabulary there. It’s genre, the style things are written in some specific context, purpose and to an specific reader, someone who’s part of that environment. The same happens to advertisement environment and literary environment. Each one has its own vocabulary and style of writing and usually people who’s used to these context understands what’s the meaning and the goal of the writing. But how to teach ESL/EFL students to read and understand all of these different styles of writing?
Dr. Derewianka explained at his lecture a way to teach genre approach in public school in Australia. He says language is a social phenomenon and it differs from society to society. Through his theory the teacher models a particular genre and assist the students with joint construction of a similar text before asking them to produce their own texts independently. “Vocabulary and grammar appropriate to the genre are dealt with as required during the development of the text, which is organized in a structure appropriate to the intended social purpose.”.
Chris Gallager completes Dr. Derewianka theory saying that the genre approach to be successful is necessary to give the students the opportunity to be exposed to the genre they are supposed to produce texts in by reading, analyzing and discussing examples of those texts in class so they can have a model of how to write in that specific genre. He also calls attention to the matter that genre approach “is not a matter of applying formulaic prescriptions of how a text should be structured”. Students must have a model and them produce their first attempts on writing a similar text.
Genre approach is not only usefull in a college or university environment. Its goal is to make sure ESL/EFL students can deal with the variations of language in all kinds of writings, a skill a native speaker is well acquainted with.

REFERENCES
http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol33/no3/p41.htm
http://www.encounters.jp/mike/professional/publications/bevseminar.html
http://langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/jalt/pub/tlt/00/jul/gallagher.html

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