The application of genre-Based approach in teaching writing skill at Tran Mai Ninh secondary school

THANH HOA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
THE EDUCATION AND TRAINING CENTER 
OF THANH HOA CITY
INITIATIVE
 THE APPLICATION OF GENRE-BASED APPROACH
IN TEACHING WRITING SKILL
AT TRAN MAI NINH SECONDARY SCHOOL
Writer: Phạm Thị Hồng Vân
 Position: Teacher 
School: Tran Mai Ninh Secondary school, Thanh Hoa city
 Subject : English
THANH HOA YEAR 2017
TABLE CONTENT 
 Trang
1. INTRODUCTION	2
	1.1. 	Reasons for choosing the topic	2
 	1.2. 	Aims of the research	3
	1.3. 	Scope and research methodology	4
2. MAIN CONTENT	4
	2.1. 	Theoretical background	4
 2.1.1. The definitions of genre	4
 2.1.2. Genre-based approach	5
	2.2.	 Practical background	6
	2.3. 	 Solutions and methods for implementation	7
	2.3.1. Solutions	7
2.3.2. The tasks, objects and time for research	8
	2.3.3. The methods for implementation	9
	2.3.4. Some demonstrations for research	10
3. RESULT AFTER APPLYING THE RESEARCH	17
4. CONCLUSION	21
5. REFERENCE BOOKS	22
1.INTRODUCTION
1.1. REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE TOPIC.
 	For such a long time, writing, together with reading, has always been put priority. The product approach, the process approach and sometimes the product-process approach towards writing have been implemented in Tran Mai Ninh Secondary School where I am currently working as well as in many other secondary schools in Vietnam. However, most students find writing struggling, and many of them don’t meet the writing requirements. Moreover, many students in Vietnam cannot make distinction between different kinds of texts. This may result from traditional teaching method which focus on grammar, and writing is sometimes taught at sentence level. The genre-based approach towards teaching writing, in fact, has been implemented in many other countries for the last few decades; however, it is still new to Vietnamese teachers. I find genre-approach really interesting and I am really interested in trying out the new teaching approach to writing with the hope that I will help my students improve their writing skill. 
 	The motivation behind this research proposal comes from the researcher’s personal observations new approach to teaching writing she has learnt during a course on Professional Development for Vietnamese teacher trainers in RELC, Singapore. 
 	The goal of this study is to examine whether genre-base approach to writing instruction would help improve the quality of students’ writing and overcome their writing difficulties. The recount genre is chosen to keep the instruction relevant to the grade ten and eleven students who were the subject of the study. 
The research proposal focus only on the effectiveness of genre approach to teaching recount writing, and it designed to investigate the following questions: 
1. What is the quality of my students’ recounts?
2. What problems do my students encounter when they write recounts
3. Does using genre-based approach help improve the quality of my students’ writing when they write recounts?
As a teacher of English at high school, I myself always desire to find out and apply the new methods of teaching in order to meet the educational goal. From my own experiences, I finds this area important for further research because if the study proves the successful of genre-based approach in teaching recount writing, it will be a basic to investigate the effectiveness of this new approach towards teaching writing and other skills. This project seeks to investigate the effectiveness of the genre-based approach on teaching recount writing for students in grade 6th and 9th at Tran Mai Ninh secondary School, Thanh Hoa province, Viet Nam. The findings in this study are mainly based on data collected from students’ writing samples before and after teaching sessions. The writing samples will be analyzed based on raters’ checklists and then compare with the holistic analysis done on five sample compositions.
* Survey results before applying genre-based approach in writing
Class
Very good
Good
Average
Weak
8A 
( 40 students)
 2 students = 5%
6 students = 15%
22 students = 55%
10 students = 25%
1.2. AIMS OF THE RESEARCH 
To introduce how to apply the genre-based approach in teaching writing at high school.
To introduce the advantages of the application of genre-based approach in teaching writing. 
To explore the effectiveness of the genre-based approach to teaching recount
Writing.
- To assess the quality of students’ writing as well as finding out the problems they encounter when they write recounts and most importantly, the effect of the genre-based approach on the overall performance of students when they write recount texts. 
To make 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 (for both students and teachers)
To 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 and eventually to realize how authors organize their writings. 
1.3. SCOPE AND RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
	*Scope: Researching in the process of teaching English at Luong Dac Bang High school.
	* Research methodology: making survey, reading reference books, applying in teaching, observing and drawing out experiences.
2. MAIN CONTENT
2.1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.1.1. The definitions of genre
 As this lesson focuses on the genre-based approach, it’s necessary to understand the concept of “genre” What is genre? For Callaghan and Rothery, “genre is the way people make meaning with one another in stages to achieve their purposes.” (1993:35). Genre has the special characteristics as follow:
It is culture specific, and it develops and changes along with the culture.
It is goal-oriented.
It has distinctive stages: beginning, middle and end.
It contains particular linguistic features
 According to David Butt et al. (1995), genre, which relates to the purpose of the text, is one of the contexts of a text. The other context is register, which is made up of three variables: field, tenor and mode. Field refers to what is talked about or written about. It can be something that happened, is happening or will happen. Tenor is the relationship between the writer and the reader or between the speaker and the listener. Mode is the channel of communication, the kind of text that is being made to convey a message.
“Genre” refers not only to types of literary texts but also to the predictable and recurring patterns of everyday, academic and literary texts occurring within a particular culture (Hammond and Derewianka, 2001) In the western countries, genre, either spoken or written, is often identified/grouped according to its primary social purposes. According to Swale (1990) the genres which share the same purposes belong to the same text-types. Derewianka (1990) identified further six main genres according to their primary social purposes: 
+ Narratives: tell a story, usually to entertain.
+ Recount: to tell what happened.
+ Information reports: provide factual information.
+ Instruction: tell the listeners or readers what to do.
+ Explanation: explain why or how something happens.
+ Expository texts: present or argue a viewpoint.
+ Procedure: give instructions how to do/ make something
 These social purposes of the text-genres in turn decide the linguistic inputs of the text (i.e. their linguistic conventions, often in form of schematic structure and linguistic features). Specifically, schematic structure refers to internal structure or text organization of the text-type in forms of introduction, body and conclusion, while language features consist of linguistic aspects such as grammar, vocabulary, connectors, etc. that the writers have to use in order to translate information/ideas into a readable text.
2.1.2. Genre-based approach
 The genre-based approach to teaching writing is often referred to the Curriculum Genre or Curriculum Cycle. According to Hyon, “genre-based pedagogy, in all form, involves some kinds of classroom consideration of genres and the contexts in which they are found.” (1996: 697). In “Exploiting How Texts Works” (1990) Beverly Derewianka described the curriculum cycle, which includes four stages: 
 Stage 1.Building the Field: This gives the students time to gather information about what they will be writing. Teacher can introduce the text type by discussing the words connected to the text type, planning some activities to familiarize the students with the subject matter and the text type and locating sample texts for immersion and modeling. This stage, such activities are listening, speaking, reading, information gathering, note taking, and field trips can be organized. This stage ties in perfectly with Units of Inquiry. The students are already familiar with Unit, the concepts, and the vocabulary.
 Stage 2. Modeling the Text Type: This stage aims at preparing students for the next stage. Teacher explicitly introduces a model that is similar to the one to be written later as a joint construction by the class. The teacher may get students to discuss the purposes for the use of this text in the society/daily lives. Students have the chance to become familiar with the purpose, overall structure of the text, and linguistic features of the text type they are going to write. 
 Stage 3. Joint Construction: Before students write independent texts, it would be useful for them to participate in group writing. A text may be jointly constructed by the whole class, a group of students or the teacher and the students write a text together, considering both the content and the language. 
 Stage 4. Independence Writing: Students write on their own texts on a related topic based on which had been given or discussed. Each student chooses his/her own topic and writes drafts, referring to the models. Then, the students consult with the teacher or their peers and receive their comments. Editing and publishing are the final steps.
2.2. PRACTICAL BACKGROUND
Writing skill is seemed to be difficult for all students in learning foreign language at high school. According to me, the difficulties include those in generating and organizing ideas using an appropriate choice of vocabulary and putting such ideas into an intelligible text. 
For my students, besides these difficulties, they also have to face many other obstacles when learning to write compositions in English.The first difficulty rests in the fact that English in Vietnamese secondary schools nowadays is treated primarily as a compulsory subject for studying and for exam-driven purposes rather than as a tool for communication. Students have been asked to do the multiple choice tests on their final exams, which include several sections on grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension and writing. In the writing section, students are asked to “rewrite” some sentences in another way but keep exactly the same meaning as the given ones. They are also asked to repair word order in jumbled-word sentences or fill in the blanks with the suitable verbs or verbal phrases. As passing exams is vital for students’ lives, most of the time in class, a large number of teachers may be in more favor of teaching such writing skills to help their students pass the exams.
 Secondly, the “so-called” teaching writing approach of composition deployed by teachers at present may expose some difficulties for students in the performance of the compositional writing skills. In terms of teaching English paragraphs, most of the teachers just focus on providing their student writers with vocabulary relating to the required topic and some guiding questions in order to help them shape their ideas into the completed paragraphs. Teaching writing in this way only benefits them to an extent that it can assist them in producing the error-free texts following the models of correct language. 
In addition, there was a tendency among Engish teachers in secondary schools to ignore teaching writing. Teachers provided students with less opportunity to practice writing English. In other word, the English teachers in general were more concentrate on teaching skills such as reading and listening , and language components such as vocabulary and grammar.
In short, writing classes at secodary school nowadays are still predominantly language-based writing classes that focus on sentence writing for sentence building tests, rather than focusing on creating paragraphs to serve the purpose of plurality of real readers outside the classroom context. 
2.3. SOLUTIONS AND METHODS FOR IMPLEMENTATION
2.3.1. SOLUTIONS
- Teacher should know the both advantages and disadvantages of the application of genre-based approach in teaching writing English as well as solutions to their problems.
- In order to apply the genre-based approach in teaching writing, teacher will need to do the following steps:
	1. Planning
	2. Drawing up a syllabus
	3. Selecting material
	4. Preparing activities
	5. Evaluating the teaching
- Teacher should minimize the difficulties in teaching writing, the exercise of writing is not directly writing paragraph or composing the text. It can be started by writing sentences. Students should be able to construct the sentences, overcome problem with sentence and write connected sentences.
- After the students have the ability to construct the sentences, the writing exercise is increased by giving experience to the students to write paragraph, the text or the whole text. This activity will have students to become independent writers.
- Teacher should be interested in teaching writing, because their suggestion instead that paying attention to what students say will show an improvement in writing. 
2.3.2. METHODS FOR IMPLEMENTATION
DATA COLLECTION PLAN
 a. Participants: Fifty five students of Class 8A at Tran Mai Ninh Secondary School, Thanh Hoa city were invited to take part in an experimental writing class in which I used the genre-based approach in teaching writing English in order to teach the student (participants) to write on the recount text. This extracurricular writing activity was conducted outside their regular class hours in order to offer the student participants a lot of opportunities to practice more in the writing skills. I saved time because I took the existing recount writing samples of the students to analyze. 
 b. Methodology
The researcher intends to use qualitative method to analyze students’ writing samples before and after the teaching sessions in two different ways. 
- The first way is to use rater’s checklist (see appendix 1). A rater’ checklist that highlights the features to be assessed is devised by the researcher. It is taken from a page from Oxford University Press. The students’ writing samples will be collected and given to two raters for assessment. Neither of them knew which sample are the existing writing samples and which ones are collected after the teaching sessions. Both of them are high school teachers who are familiar with the marking scheme for writing.
- The second way is to use holistic rating of writing samples (see appendix 2). This holistic assessment is based on the recount rubric of Department of Education and Children’s Service, Government of South Australia. In this ways the writing samples of students will be assessed based on three main categories: structure, grammar and writing features, and they will be classified as weak, average, good or very good depending on how they meet the demand of the criteria.
c. Data collection procedure
 Prior to the teaching sessions using genre-based approach to teaching, I will collect five existing writing samples of five grade ten students at random. 
 I intend to teach students on recount writing based on genre approach in four lessons. Four ninety-minute lessons will be taught during the treatment period, probably starting in February, 2015. The students were taught at sometime outside their normal curriculum time. The lessons are planned to progress in this order: 
Lesson 1: Building knowledge of the field 
Lesson 2: Modeling the text
Lesson 3: Joint construction
Lesson 4: Independent construction
 After the teaching treatment, I asked students to write a recount, and then I collected five writing samples from the same students whose writings were collected previously.
 The writing samples was assessed by the two raters and I based on the rater’s checklist and the holistic assessment table.
2.3.3. Data analysis
I planned to analyze the data in order to answer the three questions:
1. What is the quality of my students’ recounts?
2. What problems do my students encounter when they write recounts?
3. Does using genre-based approach help improve the quality of my students’ writing when they write recounts?
When the raters finished their checklist, if the results were too different, the researcher would ask the two raters to work together to compare and make the final decision. I intended to answer the questions based on both the results of the rater’s checklists and the holistic assessment.
Based on the checklists and the holistic assessment on the students existing writing samples, I found the answers for the first and second questions. I would assess the quality of each student’s recounts before teaching sessions as well as the general quality of all the student’s recounts.
The same thing is done with the writing samples collected after the teaching sessions, and based on that, I would assess the quality of each student’s recounts after teaching sessions as well as the general quality of all the student’s recounts. 
2.3.4. Some demonstrations for the application of genre-based approach in teaching writing English.
Model 1: a sample for writing a paragraph.
UNIT 9 	NATURAL DISASTERS
PERIOD: 76 SKILLS 2 ( Part: Writing )
A. OBJECTIVES: By the end of the lesson, Ss can:
- Listen for general and specific information about natural disaster in a news report. 
 - Write a new report on natural disaster. 
B. AIDS: Posters, pictures
C. TEACHING AIDS: TV programmes, textbook, hand outs, pictures
D. PROCEDURE: 
Teacher’s Activities
Student’s Activities
Stage 1: Building the field
 Activity 1: Show some pictures of natural disasters. 
Ask students to answer.
Lead in the advantages and disadvantages of the television
Stage 2: Modeling the composition text
Activity 2: Read the paragraph about a natural disaster and answer the questions.
Nghe An province was badly affected again when a typhoon hit the area last night. The storm began at around 11p.m. and raged throughout the night. Dozens of people were seriously injured and hundreds of others wereleft homeless. The severe winds caused extensive damage to property, including homes and business, particularly in Cua Lo, a coastal town in nghe An. The storm had already weakended by the time emergency workers arrived in the area. Rescue operations have started and many people trapped in collapsed or damaged buildings have been freed. Workers are now clearing up the debris left behind by the severe storm. The government has already sent rescue equipment to Nghe An, as well as food and medical supplies. People left homeless have been taken to safe areas, where temporary accommodation will be built to house them. The weather bureau has issued flood warnings for Nghe An and nearby provinces as heavy rain is expected to continue over the next few days. 
Questions:
What is the text about?
What type of the natural disaster ?
Where and when did it occur ?
What are the effects of this disaster ?
What has been done to help the victims of the disaster?
- The paragraph is a text presenting an issue.. It can be a spoken or written text of such kinds as a speech, an advertisement, a review,