Abstract
Coherent writing skill is an important prerequisite for academic success, especially at the tertiary level. This work studied the effect of four-month teaching intervention of genre pedagogy with Reading to Learn (R2L) approach for developing coherence in argumentative writing. It was implemented on 40 undergraduate Pakistani English Language Learners (ELLs). Pre-test evaluation informed learning gaps especially at theme choice and theme progression strategies in their argumentative writings. These gaps were addressed while planning the R2L teaching cycle of ELLs’ experimental group. They were assisted through a process of scaffolding with an aim to enable them to write coherent argumentative essays independently after learning. Then functional analysis of lexical and grammatical features of their independent argumentative writings was conducted. Findings revealed that genre pedagogy had a significant effect on students' organization of argumentative writing. This study suggests genre pedagogy as a useful instructional technique, which can improve teaching and learning writing skills at the tertiary level in Pakistan.
Highlights
Writing skills acquisition is likely to be more demanding and laborious than other language skills (Ahmed 2010), in one’s second language context
Various works propose (Cheng 2008; Christe & Dreyfus 2007; Ho 2009) that to analyze the selection of theme-rheme and organization of theme progression (T/TP) is an effective framework to measure coherence in students’ texts
This research aims to apply genre pedagogy, which has already been implemented in the international educational context at all levels successfully for the last three decades (Gibbons, 2006; Martin, Christie, & Rothery, 1987; Paltridge 2001), on Pakistani undergraduate English Language Learners (ELLs)
Summary
Writing skills acquisition is likely to be more demanding and laborious than other language skills (Ahmed 2010), in one’s second language context. Students are required to take a stance and provide reasons to support that stance (Martin 1989b). Coherent and cohesive writing becomes a parameter to successful argumentation for communication in an academic context. Coherence (organization of meaning) in the discourse, according to Halliday and Martin (1993), is achieved through textual meta-function, which has Theme-Rheme structure as its lexico-grammatical structures, in SFG framework. It encodes semantic meanings and generic structures of the text. This work used SFL framework to study textual meta-function in Pakistani undergraduate ELLs’ writings to analyze if it is possible to improve level of coherence in ELLs’ argumentative writing through R2L genre pedagogy
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