Teaching Writing to Ip Learners Following The Genre-based Approach

Although in modern days the ability to write or being able to write has decreased in the sense that technology has taken over the book and pen. It is still being able to write that is important, being able to write with meaning that is important for learners to learn this ability. The reading by Pasquarelli and their research she completed had finding that after they had taught the learners to write according to the genre-based technique, they could see distinct improvements in 3 categories; The piece written wat addressed to a specific audience, it contained a consistent purpose in the entire written piece and their writing is organized and cohesive. Susan Lee Pasquarelli had suggested that the genre-based approach in teaching writing is an effective way to teach middle school learners to write. She used 8 of her students to develop a genre by genre-based learning to write process.

Calkins, Graves and Weaver, suggest three components when teaching a writing program, this includes; The recursive stages of the writing process – planning, drafting, editing, publishing and sharing. The English language arts conventions – grammar spelling and mechanics. The nature of each writing genre. Pasquarelli suggest that by teaching one genre at a time, one could combine all three components into a combined instructional process. Learners can be taught to plan, draft, revise and edit as they learn one specific genre. Below is the sequence of the traditional writing process stages and include the elements of a writing genre. Although teaching writing on a genre-based tasks time it does have a few benefits that include; it improves learners’ mentality towards writing, gives clarity towards the different element of a genre and improves writing in general.

1. Students are to read an ideal written piece in the genre you have decided to teach. This will help them to understand what the specific genre looks like.
2. The teacher then uses the inquiry method of instruction and have learners examine the elements and characteristics of the genre. They do this by going to the written piece and go through it and looking for various elements.
3. The teacher now must teach each learner to PLAN.

• • Topic selection
  • Purpose definition
  • Audience selection
  • Writing leads
  • Verbal rehearsal
  • Brain storming and recording ideas
  • All these topics should be done guided and independently
  • Planning takes place at any stage of the writing process.

Teach learners to DRAFT the piece they are writing

• • Learner to practice drafting by doing a guided and independent practice
  • Drafting takes place at any stage in the writing process.

Teach learners to REVISE their written piece.

• • Learners to be able to self-revise their work for ideas and engage in conferencing
  • Teach mini revision lesson as many as needed for learners to understand
  • Learners to work on several draft using the techniques they have been thought
  • Revision takes place at any time during the writing process.

Teach learners to EDIT their writing piece

• • Make sure learners know how to proofread for grammar mistake and have the learners engage in discussing this with peers to help with final editing
  • Repeat mini editing lessons as much as needed
  • Editing takes place at any point in writing process.

Teach learners to publish their written work

• • The learners make the final changes to their written work and prepare a title page, graphs and chart or any extra information to be included in their writing.
  • Learners are to be given an opportunity to share their written work.
  • Learners are given an opportunity to share their work aloud to the class/library or share in school newspaper.

Evaluate the writing piece

• Learners are to self-evaluate their work with a rubric provided by the teacher
• Teacher now to evaluate the learners work with a rubric scale
• The learner is to give themselves goals based on their evaluations.

Hayes (2000) suggests implementing a recursive process to produce a writing piece. The recursive process includes that as you are writing you sometimes stop drafting and return to work already written and revise and edit the piece. Once the overall draft is complete learners should go back and revise the entire piece to rethink word choice, sentences and their paragraph structure. This should be the final version, they’re after learners are taught to revise and edit again and this will then be the final edit or final proofreading. During the study it was made clear that the teacher notice that when learners are left alone to write they skip some important step, in planning and prewriting. Learners tend to just start writing their piece. It is of much importance that learners follow each genre when writing and this sequence of event should be taught until they do this naturally.

After reading Pasquarelli (2006) about genre and how to teach it or more implement it while you are teaching writing to your learners. After doing more research Dr Jeremy Koay, suggest that some learners and teacher think that anyone would be able to produce any kind of writing if they can produce grammatical sentences. He suggests that in some cases you will find difficulties, as when you are asked to write a certain genre, but you do not know what this looks like, what information is needed in the piece. Then teaching learners to write genre based shows a great advantage. They are given an example of what is expected of them and can always refer to this for guidance. As the genre base is a process of little tasks to finally produce a written piece. In my opinion teaching genre base is an important proses in teaching Intermediate Phase learners to write any piece. With completing my 3 practical’s I have realized that learner’s vocabulary and sentence structure is very disappointing. Learners given instructions to write a piece and seldom do they even listen to the instruction. They tend to write something just to get it done. Using the genre-based model the learners are forced to think, plan, draft, get feedback from peers, edit, re edit and finally produce a written piece.

Using the genre-based teaching you are helping your learners develop their writing skills and not setting them up for failure. The only negative point I have on genre-based teaching is the fact that it is very time consuming. In regard to the CAPS model it does make it difficult to cover all the elements. Teaching in this regard must be planned with lots of detail, making sure all topics are covered and learners feel comfortable in doing the task and knowing what is expected from them.