The Effects of Implementing the Sydney School Genre-Based Approach in a Thai Efl Writing Classroom

Abstract

This paper reports on students' writing improvements after the application of the Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) genre-based approach. The research participants were 37 students who enrolled in the English Report Writing Course. In this study, the approach was employed in the teaching of three genres (description, report, explanation). Similar findings were shown after analysing students' writing drafts of the three genres in that students gained control over the key features of the required genres, however, grammatical mistakes at clause level still existed. This paper discusses how the approach helps students improve their writing. Due to the limitation of space, students' writing on one genre (description) will be illustrated and discussed. This paper will also discuss some implications in terms of language learning and teaching.

Implementing Genre-Based Self-Regulated Instruction (GBSRI) to Enhance the English Writing Ability of Thai Undergraduate Students

“…Hyland (2018) claimed that during the early stages of genre-based writing instruction, explicit instruction about genre knowledge is essential to help students be well-prepared for independent writing. The modelling and analyzing of model text activities, with explicit guidance from a teacher, can thus scaffold or support students, especially novice student writers, so that they can gradually compose comprehensive independent pieces of writing with more confidence (Han & Hiver, 2018;Sritrakarn, 2020). From the findings of the questionnaire and the semi-structured interviews, it is evident that the students acknowledged that analyzing model texts with the teacher's explanation, in terms of distinctive language features and the schematic structures of the targeted genres, could assist them to better comprehend a text and get familiar with the crucial features before producing their own purposeful texts systematically and independently.…”

“…The findings of this study are aligned with the findings of Sritrakarn's study (2020) and Visser and Sukavatee (2020). The study of Sritrakarn (2020) revealed that SFL genre-based writing instruction could raise students' awareness and improve students' writing ability in terms of purposes, lexico-grammatical features, and schematic stages of focused genres. Visser and Sukavatee's work (2020) showed that Thai undergraduate students could improve their writing ability due to the fact that they had gained sufficient knowledge of textual structure and language features for specific genres during modelling and analyzing activities associated with a genre-based teaching-learning cycle.…”

“…These three aspects relate to language choices, which the writer exploits, in order to respond to a social purpose in each particular genre, for instance, explaining, describing, arguing, and so forth. In other words, the SFL genre-based approach promotes the importance of distinctive lexico-grammatical features, schematic structures or textual patterns and cohesive choices in responding to social contexts of different text types or genres (Chakma et al, 2021;Imsa-ard, 2020;Nagao, 2019;Sritrakarn, 2020). A group of texts serving the same purpose exploits a similar structure and is the property of the same genre, e.g., narrative, procedure, exposition (Hyland, 2004(Hyland, , 2018.…”

“…21-22) According to research and studies in L2 writing, many scholars and pedagogical practitioners have claimed that a genre-based writing approach can help students, especially those with limited language proficiency, to build up significant knowledge through explicit genre knowledge instruction, scaffolding, and collaborative learning. This may occur during the implementation of key stages of the genre's teaching and learning cycle until they can compose their own compositions independently and systematically with more confidence (Changpueng, 2012;Dirgeyasa, 2016;Han & Hiver, 2018;Hyland 2003Hyland , 2018Nagao, 2018Nagao, , 2019Sritrakarn, 2020;Thongchalerm & Jarunthawatchai, 2020;Visser & Sukavatee, 2020).…”

“…According to studies and research conducted on genre-based writing instruction in EFL contexts, it can be stated that the outstanding characteristics of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) genre-based writing instruction (the knowledge required to prepare for writing tasks along with explicit genre knowledge instruction, especially those pertaining to internal linguistic features and schematic structures of different text types), scaffolding and collaborative learning can help novice writers improve their writing ability. They can thus accumulate linguistic knowledge, content, ideas and writing skills through a systematic genre-based teaching-learning cycle to accomplish the communicative purpose of each genre (Dirgeyasa, 2016;Hyland, 2004Hyland, , 2018Nagao, 2018Nagao, , 2019Sritrakarn, 2020;Thongchalerm & Jarunthawatchai, 2020;Viriya & Wasanasomsithi, 2017;Visser & Sukavatee, 2020). These distinctive characteristics of SFL genre-based writing instruction seem to be suitable for EFL student writers, which in turn can encourage them to independently compose drafts of their writing with more confidence.…”