A focus on purpose: using a genre approach in an EFL writing class

摘要

This article shows how a genre approach has been used in an EFL high school writing course to teach the university application letter genre to students preparing for post-secondary studies. The authors discuss specific classroom materials to illustrate how a genre-based approach can be employed, not simply to teach static textual patterns but to help learners gain a richer understanding of the complex relationship between written texts and the social contexts in which they are situated. The article begins with a brief overview of L2 writing scholarship, and as the authors acknowledge, some overlap exists between contemporary genre-based pedagogies and earlier product approaches. The authors argue, however, that awareness of the (somewhat slippery) distinction between these approaches is essential, if teachers are to present genres as resources to be drawn on to help learners achieve specific social purposes rather than inflexible text templates to be prescriptively imitated.