The final step in the workshop design was to help teachers consolidate their emergent understandings of the theoretical concepts, the pedagogical model of the SFL genre approach, and its instructional application in particular. The teachers and the researcher worked jointly on the researcher’s instructional design to decide the final plans for teaching the Discussion Genre in their subsequent classroom practice at the end of the second workshop. The emphasis of this step was to make genre features explicit for teachers, so that they would be better equipped to guide their students in more effective writing. A continuation of role-play activity was adopted with the teachers, but immediate discussions on the adjustment needs followed each activity in the researcher’s instructional plans.
In terms of the researcher’s instructional designs for the Modelling stage, the teachers generally agreed with the feasibility of the activities designed for instructing their students in the social purpose of the Discussion Genre, and how the schematic structure of the text worked for the purpose, but modification needs were suggested for instructions in linguistic features. The Modelling stage attempted to build up students’ knowledge about the social function of the topic, schematic structure, text organisation, and linguistic features of the Discussion Genre. Students were expected to be introduced to the significant textual features of a Discussion Genre text, which followed the genre concept from Paltridge (2001), Gibbons (2002), and Callaghan and Knapp (1989) in particular. As shown in Table 4.2, various activities and lists of questions were designed into the Modelling stage in the researcher’s instructional plans. They provided the teachers with a resource that could be readily used to guide their students to investigate and understand the social purpose and the textual features of the Discussion Genre.
Table 4.2
Activities in Modelling Stage
No. Activities Purpose
1 Individually read the model text Online Shopping To obtain overall information about the text content and structure
2 Discussions about Online Shopping 1) What is the purpose of the article? 2) Who may write the article? 3) Who is it written for?
4) When may you need to write or read a Discussion?
To explore the social context of the text
3 Discussion about: How to state the issue, present topic sentence of arguments and relevant points, and recommend
To explore the schematic structure of the text 4 Discussion about how to start the 1st paragraph and what does
each paragraph contain
To explore the text organization 5 Discussion about
1) How to open/start the introducing paragraph? 2) How to introduce another viewpoint?
3) How to summarize the viewpoints from two different sides? 4) How to introduce your recommendation?
5) How to write about the significance?
To explore the key features in the schematic structure of a
Discussion Genre text
6 Whole class to identify the use of the simple present tense in the model text
To explore the function of the simple present tense
7 Whole class to identify the use of conjunctions in the model text To explore the function of logical conjunctions
8 Discussion about the functions of different types of conjunctions in the text
The first five activities of the Modelling stage aimed to support students to investigate the social purpose and the schematic structure of a Discussion Genre text, Online Shopping. After having obtained the content information of the text (see Appendix 3) through individual reading in Ex.1, students were encouraged to explore, discuss and develop their understanding about how the text moved forward in stages to achieve its social purpose in the follow-up four exercises (Ex. 2-5). Identifying the specific social purpose that a text serves is the best way to identify it as a particular genre that differentiates it from others (Derewianka & Jones, 2012). In the process of answering questions with peers, students were guided to investigate how the Discussion Genre model text was arranged in stages for its social purpose. For instance, students were asked to seek information about the components of the schematic structure to answer questions in Ex. 3, such as “how does the writer state the issue”, “what are the recommedations”, and the topic sentences of ‘argument for’, ‘argument against’ and relevant points. On the whole, all teachers believed their students
could be effectively assisted to develop their understanding about the social purpose of the Discussion Genre and how the schematic structure worked to achieve the goal.
Nevertheless, suggestions for modifying the researcher’s initial design in regard to instructing students in the linguistic features were provided by the teachers for the final instructional plans. Rather than covering all of the four typical linguistic features in Callaghan and Knapp’s (1989) instructional model on the Discussion Genre (see Section 3.2.1.3), the functions of simple present tense and conjunctions were focused on in the final instructional plans for three main reasons. The first was in relation to the focus of the instructional design, which was placed on the pedagogy instead of the linguistic items included. In other words, particular attention of the instructional designs was on how to support students’ learning of writing in the genre pedagogy. The second was related to the time constraint, as it was impossible to cover every linguistic feature associated with the Discussion Genre within a limited time. The last reason drew on the teachers’ knowledge about their students’ language proficiency. In the consultation with the teachers, it was pointed out that although some features, such as the verb types of mental processes and rational, were quite useful in conveying the semantic association of verbs and their relations, the students had demonstrated their control in these areas. Yet some students might have difficulties in using the simple present tense, while the appropriate use of conjunctions might be even more challenging. As a result, instruction in the linguistic features covered verb tense (Ex. 6) and logical
conjunctions (Ex. 7-8) within the possible time and through whole-class work.
In the stage of Joint Construction of Text, students were asked to construct a new Discussion Genre text (either with peers or their teachers) entitled “Online Entertainment” (Ex.9), based on their knowledge of this genre developed from the deconstruction experience in the Modelling stage. Discussion about Ex.9 with the teachers focused on the strategies for helping students in this stage. For example, the teachers were asked about the information sources, activity styles and scaffolding strategies they could apply to further enhance their students’ understanding of the Discussion Genre in this stage. The teachers also learnt that in teaching practice, they could choose
to arrange students to collaboratively construct a text either in groups or as a whole class. The students were to discuss, share, and take notes about the topic using the fixed format of the Discussion Genre with their teacher’s immediate feedback and support.
In the final stage of Independent Construction of Text, students individually constructed a Discussion Genre text on “Recreational Activities” (Ex.10). However, depending on students’ needs, the teachers also might organize students to do further research on the topic or discuss with their peers (Derewianka & Jones, 2012). As such, the teacher participants would decide on the necessity of discussing the topic further or fully withdrawing their support. Eventually, students submitted their final writing products (Text 2) and the participants’ writing samples were collected for analysis.
To summarise, the workshop design was for the purpose of assisting teachers to make explicit links between the new concepts being introduced in the workshops and their own teaching experience. Explicit knowledge and instruction with appropriate assistance and opportunities for discussion are important pedagogical tools - reflected in the design of the workshops and the instruction in the Discussion Genre, as an instructional method to improve students’ learning of writing. In the context of teaching writing in China this workshop was innovative, because the impact of TC on pedagogical changes to the teaching of writing was rarely investigated there. The ensuing sections will discuss the research instruments used for data collection.