Genre: ‘Verbal tailoring from ready-made cloth’?

Abstract

In recent years the notion of Genre and genre-based approaches to teaching in the classroom have become a significant topic of discussion in applied linguistics. Theoretically the basis is that of a systematic — functional model of language which explains how language works within different contexts. The focus on the relationship between language and the context means that the theory can account for language variation across different registers and across the different genres that students need to speak, listen to, read or write. It treats language at the level of text rather than simply at the level of sentence, as do many other approaches. It will be argued here that the concept of genre is not only useful in the first language but also in the second and foreign language classroom.