Genre and Second Language Writing

5. Texts, Tasks, and Implementation

Chapter 5 Texts, Tasks, and Implementation In addition to providing writing teachers with a way of organizing their courses, the concept of genre also suggests a range of approaches to classroom teaching. Once again, while the students and learning contexts that teachers confront will vary enormously, a genre-based approach to teaching L2 writing always involves attending to the texts learners will most need to write beyond the classroom. This means making genres central to teaching: a talking point and focus for analysis to raise awareness of the interdependence of texts, of the resources used to create meaning in context , of the connections between meanings and social forces, and of ways to negotiate the genres of power and authority. This chapter will explore some genre approaches to these issues by looking at key notions such as scaffolding, collaboration , the teaching-learning cycle, and consciousness raising, showing how L2 writing teachers can use these to devise activities and sequence tasks. Scaffolding and Collaboration Genre-based writing instruction follows modern theories of learning in giving considerable recognition to the importance of collaboration, or peer interaction, and scaffolding, or teachersupported learning. Together, these concepts assist learners through two notions of learning: 121 • Shared consciousness—the idea that learners working together learn more effectively than individuals working separately • Borrowed consciousness—the idea that learners working with knowledgeable others develop greater understanding of tasks and ideas More specifically, genre-based pedagogies employ the ideas of Russian psychologist Vygotsky (1978) and the American educational psychologist Bruner (1990). For these writers, the notion of scaffolding emphasizes the role of interaction with peers and with experienced others in learning, moving learners from their existing level of performance (what they can do now) to a level of “potential performance” (what they will be able to do without assistance). Vygotsky termed this gap between current and potential performance the Zone of Proximal Development and argued that progress from one level to the other is not achieved only through input but rather through social interaction and the assistance of more skilled and experienced others. Research shows that students are able to reach much higher levels of performance by working together and with an expert than they might have achieved working on their own (e.g., Donato, 2000; Ohta, 2000). In other words, teaching anticipates competence and involves a dialogue between teacher and student, rather like an expert training an apprentice. Figure 5.1, taken from Feez (1998), represents the changing nature of this collaboration in response to the learner’s progress. Vygotsky’s ideas, therefore, offer a theoretical basis for genre-based writing teaching. The concept of scaffolding is mainly associated with SFL approaches to language instruction in Australia, but it is also implicit in much ESP genre teaching, which seeks to provide learners with the means to understand and then create new texts by a process of “gradual approximation” (Widdowson, 1978, pp. 91–93). Scaffolding takes many forms and can be provided in relation to cultural, social, contextual, and linguistic aspects of a target genre; it 122 Genre and Second Language Writing typically includes modeling, discussion, explicit instruction, and considerable teacher input to assist learners toward competence in a genre. The degree of teacher intervention and the kinds of tasks selected for students to engage with, therefore, play a key role in scaffolding writing, representing a cline of support from closely controlled activities to autonomous extended writing. Figure 5.2 represents a broad characterization of these tasks in the second language writing class. In SFL approaches, this theory has been elaborated into an explicit methodological model designed to support learning as a social process around the twin ideas of scaffolding and joint construction. As we have seen, scaffolding refers to the teacher providing initial explicit knowledge and guided practice while joint construction refers to teachers and learners sharing responsibility for developing texts until the learner can work alone. In ESP approaches, we find more varied interpretations of Vygotsky’s ideas—utilizing concepts such as consciousness raising, socioliteracy, and gradual approximation to refer to the ways learners develop an understanding of relevant genres and communities and work toward the creation of their own rhetorically skilled and situationally appropriate texts. Texts, Tasks, and Implementation 123 Scaffolding Learner progress Independent learner performance Potential performance Reduced teacher involvement Increased learner independence Zone of Proximal Development Considerable teacher contribution Learner’s entry level Existing competence Fig. 5.1. Teacher-learner collaboration (based on...