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Researchers have promoted several instructional frameworks to implement the SFL genre approach. The model from Sydney’s Disadvantaged Schools Program (Callaghan & Rothery, 1988) has become the most widely recognized instructional framework, and was developed from the notion of “guidance through interaction in the context of shared experience” in the SFL genre approach (Martin, 1999, p.126). In this model, a teaching-learning cycle including Modelling, Joint Negotiation of a Text and Independent Construction of a Text is mapped to describe the process of genre instruction in many contexts. Originally designed for native English-speaking children and adult immigrants, this Australian genre pedagogy has been increasingly discussed in terms of its effects when being implemented in non-native English speaking contexts (e.g. Agustien, 2006; Chaisiri, 2010b; Lin, 2006; Myskow & Gordon, 2009).

Most researchers assert that the SFL genre pedagogy has many merits and could be applied most readily. For example, in an Indonesian tertiary level context, Emilia’s (2005) case study revealed that the adoption of the genre approach in her 11-week program was most significantly successful in achieving enhanced control of a target Argumentative Genre. This approach was also highly

valued for teaching Argumentative writing in Rozimela’s (2005) study, especially from the perspective of giving students a sense of the structure of the target genre and developing their arguments. Positive results also can be found in case studies (Kongpetch, 2006; Krisnachinda, 2006) and in mixed methods studies (Chaisiri, 2010a, 2010b) conducted in Thailand, and also in case studies conducted in Japan (Myskow & Gordon, 2009).

Although most of the above studies employ a case study approach to explore the potential of the genre pedagogy, and do so via programs in tertiary level contexts over a similar time period (8-12 weeks), they have different foci. Emilia (2005) has particular interest in the values of developing students’ critical thinking and the interactive curriculum, while Rozimela (2005) is concerned more about teachers’ and students’ perceptions regarding this pedagogy in the teaching of Argumentative writing. Krisnachinda (2006) pays attention to students’ attitudes, however, her study was based on the teaching of the Recount Genre. Kongpetch (2006) designed a teaching unit and was involved in teaching it as ‘the participant as a researcher’, when the pedagogy was implemented for teaching Exposition. Kongpetch’s particular interest lies in exploring the teachers’ perceptions of the pedagogy and its related implementation consequences. This confirms Chaisiri’s (2010a, 2010b) research focus on teachers’ perceptions and concepts with regard to their current writing approaches and the consequences of implementing the genre approach. Myskow and Gordon’s (2009) study is the only one conducted in a high school context. The genre approach was employed to develop learners’ understanding of the relationships between texts and social contexts when producing written texts.

There are a number of studies investigating the SFL genre pedagogy in the Chinese context and the researchers seem to advocate the approach. These studies, however, are mainly conceptual and not empirically researched. For example, Ji (2009) designed a curriculum package focusing on teaching of factual writing (Recount, Information report, Explanation, Instruction, Exposition and Narrative) to 30 university students as a one-semester writing course. Three lessons were allocated for the teaching of each genre: Two lessons concentrated on generic structure and the linguistic

features of each genre; in the third lesson, students constructed a text of the same genre jointly and then individually. It is argued that the SFL genre pedagogy makes the purpose, structure and the language features of different genres explicit to students, which is more likely to improve students’ abilities in independent writing. However, this conclusion about the effectiveness of the genre pedagogy is drawn from Ji’s belief rather than from real implementation teaching practices. Two studies have so far been found which apply the SFL genre pedagogy in a Chinese context, and are therefore worth noting. One study by Tian (2010) employed specific perspectives in which writing is taught through reading assisted by a blackboard learning system5. Tian suggested some procedures for implementing the teaching-learning cycle to teach the Narrative Genre in a tertiary context, and then stated that this pedagogy is a beneficial tool to assist students to achieve learning efficiency. Nevertheless, the recommendations Tian made were based on her own observations. There was no systematic documentation of what worked and what did not work. The other study which applied the SFL genre pedagogy in a Chinese context was conducted by C. Wang (2013), focusing on the value of this pedagogy in promoting Chinese EFL students’ genre awareness and writing competence. In this 16-week long mix-method research study, two classes of CE students participated in an optional course to learn practical English writing and were randomly set as the control group and the experiment group respectively. Collected data included students’ pre- and post- writing products, questionnaire, and interviews. The research findings indicated that the genre pedagogy is beneficial for Chinese students in enhancing genre awareness, integral writing quality and lexical density. The current study has a research interest similar to that of Wang’s study, examining the potential of the genre pedagogy. It is hoped that the findings of the present study could enrich Wang’s research findings in several aspects, such as focusing on teachers’ perceptions and in normal CE classes.

5 _{“The Blackboard System is a Web-based server software platform. Its main purposes are to add online elements to} courses traditionally delivered face-to-face and to develop completely online courses with few or no face-to-face meetings” (Tian, 2010, p.602).

Rather than being on the basis of systematic implementation, some studies have been devoted to particular elements of the SFL genre pedagogy in the Chinese context. For instance, Zhang (2006) conducted a study focusing on ‘writing conferences’ as writing instruction. The result from the survey of 30 college students indicates that the ‘writing conference’ is especially effective in large- size classroom situations. Similarly, in Zhao’s (2010) study, attention was paid to the different effects that teachers’ feedback has compared to the effects peers’ feedback provides. Moreover, developing students’ understanding of teachers’ feedback was also regarded as important in Zhao’s study.

To sum up, the literature concerning the Chinese contexts has clearly identified the existing problems with teachers, contextual factors (assessment and class size), and teaching style: Teachers’ lack of training and misconception of the CECR; test-oriented teaching in large-size classroom situations and the adoption of traditional teacher-centred methods. The L2 writing theories have also been examined in-depth. However, the studies reviewed here do not actually operationalize a theory in a systematic way in a classroom context. In contrast, as discussed earlier in this section, the application of the genre pedagogy has blossomed and resulted in success in many other non-native English speaking contexts. In relation to the need for clear instruction for the teaching of English writing in the Chinese tertiary level context, it is concluded that this sound framework might also be suitable for assisting Chinese EFL students to develop their writing competence.