SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This study aims to provide a theoretical and pedagogical insight into the effects of genrebased literacy instruction on Korean foreign language learners’ reading and writing development. The research into the effects of genre-based instruction on foreign language students’ development investigates whether genre teaching has the potential to improve the student’s reading and writing skills, as well as the presence and influence of genre knowledge and awareness in the language students. This study recommends that in order to aid in the development of a more sophisticated and advanced understanding of language use, students must be exposed to genre instruction across four different Korean genre categories such as academic theses, news articles, explanation texts and travel essays this allows for the development of genre awareness, knowledge of rhetorical features, improved lexicogrammatical choice, improvement in overall writing structure and comprehension of genre texts amongst the language students. While students are educated in the different genres this study will focus on how students’ perception of genre changed over time based on the Systemic Functional Linguistics school and the English for Academic Purposes school of thoughts’ approaches to genre, and the overall improvements in their reading and writing skills. Both the SFL and EAP approaches have influenced the design of the genre-based classroom used in the experiment, the theoretical framework underlying the understanding of genre-based instruction, and the development of appropriate genre-based class materials. The research was conducted through a quasi-experimental classroom study with four genre groups (two explicit genre teaching classes, one implicit genre teaching class, and a control group class with zero genre-based instruction) consisting of seventeen Korean language undergraduate and post-graduate students at the University of SOAS in London. My experiment included two explicit genre-based instruction classes and one implicit genre-based instruction class to determine the best approach to including genre in a foreign language classroom. And I included a control group class which received zero genre-based instruction to test the validity of genre-based teaching. The experimental classes were divided into four to five-person classes. The data consists of the participant’s responses during a pre-class interview, a post-class interview, writing assignments, and a reading test, and it is also accompanied by research journals for each class. To design a genre-based teaching plan I adopted the model of the teaching-learning cycle (Feez, 1998) to scaffold students’ writing and to build on genre knowledge, genre-based materials in which schematic structures and genre-specific language elements of the reading texts were presented to the students. The main findings from the experiment showed that through the comparison between the genre-based instruction experimental class groups in comparison to the non-genre-based control group classroom; the two groups of students who were instructed with the explicit genre-based approach produced higher quality genre writing than both the implicit genre-based class and the control group that was given no genre instruction. The implicit approach also affected students’ acquisition of genre knowledge and helped them to improve their writing, with the knowledge obtained from example genre texts. However, implicit genre instruction only improved the students’ use of vocabulary and their implementation of new grammar phrases in their writing. These results were shown in the way that the students made better lexicogrammar choices and correctly implemented the structural rules for each genre text. For the assessment of the student’s reading development, in the comparison between the groups, the explicitly taught genre-based students were able to identify more genre characteristics, understand the location of crucial genre characteristics within the text and showcased more confidence in reading comprehension than the implicitly taught students and the students who received no genre instruction. The results suggest that genre-based instruction, particularly explicit teaching instruction has the potential to be effective in improving foreign language students’ reading and writing abilities. In order to fully understand the effects of genre-based instruction I found that genre knowledge and awareness should be addressed as they play a significant role in the students’ learning by enabling them to fulfil the requirements of each genre text type. The pedagogical implications of this study provide recommendations for the framework for a genre-based literacy course design and the development of the participant’s materials for advanced Korean language courses in the UK.