THE INFLUENCE OF GENRE ANALYSIS ACTIVITIES ON STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

Tóm tắt

Studies of genres and genre analysis are more and more welcomed nowadays as the findings from studies on genres and genre features contribute not only to linguistic areas but to the areas of language teaching as well (Cheng 2006, 2008; Johns, 2015). Developing students’ awareness of various genres is essential in the sense that with such awareness, students will be able to produce texts of different genres in their future job contexts. In this study, genre analysis activities were introduced to 21 third-year students during 7 weeks of an English linguistic course. In the midterm and end-term assignments, students were required to evaluate and revise texts of one and the same genre. The texts that students produced were then compared in terms of the agreement between the language choices in the texts and the communicative purposes and contextual features of the texts to specify the changes in their English writing skills; observations and informal discussion were also conducted. The possible influences of genre analysis activities on students writing skills development were then discussed.