Applying Genre-based and L2 Pragmatic Instruction to Teaching Oral Presentations on the Web

Genre And Genre-Based Instruction

In the last two decades, conceptions of genre have expanded from a system of classification used to define literary works to ‘complex oral or written responses by speakers or writers to the demand of a social context’ (Johns, 2002, p. 3). Scholars in ESP and new rhetoric studies generally believe in the power of teaching genre knowledge and discourse regularities explicitly to help language learners grasp the context and purpose of communication (Freedman & Medway, 1994; Flowerdew, 2002; Hyland, 2004; Johns, 2002). By providing learners with rich, authentic sample texts (spoken or written) and guiding them through analyses of textual regularities, communicative functions, and contexts of use, genre-based language instruction aims to provide learners with not only ‘the knowledge and skills they need to communicate successfully in particular discourse communities’, but also to ‘access to socially powerful forms of language’ (Paltridge, 2001, p. 3).

The upsurge of interest in genre analysis (e.g. moves/schematic structure, lexico-grammatical patterns) for ESL/EAP pedagogical purposes has mainly centered on written genres. Research efforts have been dedicated to familiarizing students with both non-academic genres (i.e. emails and letters) (e.g. Sachiko, 2011) and academic genres (i.e. doctoral dissertations, research articles, academic essays, examination/quiz responses, summaries, and reports) (e.g. Dudley-Evans, 2002; Flowerdew, 2002; Paltridge & Starfield, 2007; Swales, 2004; Swales & Lindemann, 2002).