The teaching of academic writing to English as second language students: a functional genre-based approach

Abstract

This paper reviews how genre-based pedagogy has been conceived byresearchers in the different scholarly traditions, and offers a particular view ofgenre-driven pedagogy and its practical applications in the English as a SecondLanguage student classroom. This view of a genre-based teaching approachlargely consists in a prior discussion with students of the socio-cultural contextin which a particular academic genre occurs. This discovery process of the socialcircumstances that surround a genre can help students understand more readilythe communicative purpose of a specific genre. A second complementary stageshould be the explicit teaching of functions and language structures of typicalacademic texts, with a special emphasis on cross-cultural variation. By makinglearners aware of the similarities and differences in the rhetorical strategiespreferred by the members of different disciplinary communities, L2 writers mayfeel more confident about the rhetorical options they can choose depending onthe context and type of audience they are addressing.