Text genres and the teaching of foreign languages

Text Genres and theTeaching of ForeignLanguages

Genres

• French

• Latin

• Greek

Origin Aristotle and Plato

Literature:

Tragedy Poetry (Epic, Lyric and Drama)

Epic Drama

Comedy Prose

Parody

About Genres

“Each (genre) has certain

rules or conventions for its

manifestations...”

(Brown, Teaching by Principles, 2007, 3rd

edition.)

Purpose of ReadingOur “job as teachers is to

enlighten... students on features of...

genres to help them to develop

strategies for extracting... meaning

from each”.

(Brown, 2007)

Written LanguageCharacteristics Permanence

Processing time

Distance

Orthography

Complexity

Vocabulary

Formality

Permanence

Processing time

Distance

Orthography

Complexity1. Because or the frequent ambiguity that

therefore is present in a good deal ofwriting, readers must do their best toinfer, to interpret, and to “read betweenthe lines.”

2. There’s frequent ambiguity in a lot ofwriting. And so, readers have to infer alot. They also have to interpret what theyread. And sometimes they have to “readbetween the lines.”

Vocabulary

Formality

These characteristics will

help teachers in...

Diagnosing reading difficulty

Techniques specific objectives

Advantages of writing over speaking

Scholars’ take on

genre “...the main competence in language

education is discourse competence”.

(Celce-murcia et al. (1995))

“...genre-based approaches... have beenidentified as a major trend in Englishlanguage teaching (ELT) in the new millenium.”

(Rodgers, 2001)

Systemic Functional

Linguistics (SFL)

(Halliday & Mattiessen, 2004)

(Halliday & Hazan, 1989)

Field

Tenor

Mode

Presentation of different

text genres