Origen de la Caldera de Las Cañadas

Because of the limitations of the product and process approaches, another popular writing theory, the genre approach, needs to be considered. The genre approach views writing as a social and cultural activity in particular contexts for particular communicative purposes. Both teaching and teaching expectations are made explicit. To some extent, the genre approach appears to integrate

both the product and the process approaches. The genre approach is an extension of the product approach with the same predominant emphasis on linguistic knowledge (Badger & White, 2000). However, different from the idea of learning from the ‘assisted imitation’ in the product approach (Pincas, 1982), the purpose of Modelling in the genre approach is to promote students’ understanding regarding the necessities of responding to other writings of the same text type (Martin, 2006). Giving considerable recognition to peer interaction in genre writing instruction (Hyland, 2007) is one of the most important principles of the process approach in which writing is learned through many activities with peers (Susser, 1994). Yet teachers in the genre approach make more flexible decisions in the learning stages, which are directly based on learners’ needs (Martin, 1999). The students are not restricted to the same set of processes as they would be in the process approach (Badger & White, 2000).

In China, the teaching of writing remains very traditional (Martin & Rose, 2007). There is an increasing body of literature on the potential usefulness of the genre theory in teaching writing to Chinese EFL students. It is generally accepted that the genre approach is helpful to support Chinese students’ writing development, verified in papers published in English (e.g. Ji, 2009; Na, n.d.; Tian, 2010; C. Wang, 2013; Zhou, 2009) as well as in Chinese (e.g. Fu, 2014; He & Wei, 2012; Wang & Li, 2012). However, most of the discussions are theoretical. For instance, Ji (2009) introduced a curriculum package for teaching factual writing which is designed on the genre approach. Without actual classroom implementation, Ji then drew the conclusion that the genre approach is beneficial in helping students’ learning of structure and language features. Similarly, Fu (2014) concluded that the genre-based pedagogy had outstanding advantages compared with the traditional teaching methods, and therefore, it is valuable to apply it when teaching English to Chinese learners. However, Fu’s conclusion was drawn on analysing the mode of the teaching- learning cycle and the benefits in the genre pedagogy rather than from real applications in actual teaching practice. In other words, the benefits reported are only the hypothesis resulted from Ji’s theoretical analysis of the genre approach. This limitation is commonly reflected in most of the literature on the genre approach in the Chinese EFL context. To date, very little literature (e.g.

Tian, 2010; C. Wang, 2013) has been found to report on systematic implementation of the genre approach in real classroom teaching.

There are currently three most recognized genre theories which have been developed and applied to diverse classroom contexts worldwide (Hyon, 1996). The genre theories include English for Specific Purposes (ESP) (Dudley-Evans, 1994; Flowerdew, 1993; Swales, 1990), North American New Rhetoric (Bazerman, 1988; Miller, 1984) and Australian SFL (Derewianka, 1990; Derewianka & Jones, 2012; Martin, 1997). Although all three traditions of the genre approach emphasize the appropriate use of meaningful language for situational communicative purposes in professional and academic contexts (Hyon, 1996), researchers have distinguished them from various influences such as the types of learners (e.g. native or non-native), writing purposes (e.g. academic or professional) and teaching focus (e.g. forms or meaning-making).

The key differences lie in the extent to which they focus on the linguistic forms and language functions when producing texts (Kress, 1993). Researchers in ESP regard genre as a tool to teach language to non-native speakers (Flowerdew, 1993; Swales, 1990). Attention in ESP is paid to the “formal, staged qualities of genres”, but detailed pedagogical instruction for genres is missing (Hyon, 1996, p.701). New Rhetoric differs from ESP in having placed emphasis on the situational contexts of genres in L1 teaching (Miller, 1984) rather than on the linguistic forms. In SFL, genre is defined as “staged, goal-oriented social processes” (Martin, Christie & Rothery, 1987, p.59). Of all the three genre theories, the SFL genre approach is not only concerned with how language functions to achieve our social purposes (Derewianka, 1990; Derewianka & Jones, 2012; Martin, 1997), but also emphasizes explicit instruction of genre knowledge (Martin & Rose, 2007). Moreover, relatively more discussions exist on how to successfully implement the SFL genre approach into the classroom (Hammond, Burns, Joyce, Brosnan, & Gerot, 1992; Hyon, 1996).” Consequently, the SFL genre approach was employed in the present study for the following three major reasons. Firstly, of the three genre schools, “the educational impact of the genre is most readily measured in systemic functional contexts” (Hyon, 1996, p.710). The SFL genre approach

impacts most obviously on teaching writing (Wells, 1999). Secondly, there have been increasing discussions about its effectiveness in non-native English speaking contexts. Its model of text in context embraces contexts, schematic text structure and linguistic features which are oriented to support students’ writing development. However, discussions on the genre pedagogy in the Chinese context seemed to be mainly conceptual and rarely considered teachers’ perceptions. And thirdly, “classroom applications of genre are an outcome of communicative approaches to language teaching” (Hyland, 2007, p.150). All four language skills are integrated to have discussion of their “cultural context, staging and linguistic features” (Martin & Rose, 2007, p.72). Thus, employing this SFL genre pedagogy to teach writing to Chinese students is beneficial to students’ writing development, as well as to the improvement of their overall communicative competence, which is set as the main goal of the national CECR.