The genre-based approach has been recognized as an important step forward to improve second language (L2) writing. Since it blends the best practices from the fields of applied linguistics, and rhetoric and composition, it offers students and instructors a powerful pedagogical L2 writing tool (Johns 2011). Although it has been used extensively in ESL, few studies have empirically and practically validated it (Hinkel 2010). Paltridge (2001) claims the genre approach allows students to increase their awareness of different ways of organizing information in writing. By discussing distinctive features of purposeful texts, learners systemically acquire L2 metalinguistic awareness, which empowers them to manipulate information and accomplish different purposes through writing. In L2 Spanish courses, writing takes place across a range of settings and contexts and for a variety of purposes. Nevertheless, the genre-based approach has been remarkably overlooked and its research is underrepresented in the literature.
This study reports the results of an investigation that analyzed the implementation of the genre-based approach in U.S. L2 Spanish writing classes. It specifically examines the impact and effectiveness of this approach on L2 Spanish writing skill development. Forty-four undergraduate students (N=44) were engaged in carefully designed genre-based tasks, and two sets of quantitative and qualitative data were collected to examine students as L2 Spanish writers: surveys and written texts.
Results showed that learners made progress not only in their L2 genre awareness, but, most importantly, in their ability to integrate their L2 linguistic knowledge in their own repertoire of writing skills and strategies. This study discusses that a combination of genre and task can create a crucial pedagogical link between communicatively situated writing performance and choices of language use, which is expected to be an important element in the L2 students' writing skill development.
References
Johns, A. M. (2011). The future of genre in L2 writing: Fundamental, but contested, instructional decisions. Journal of Second Language Writing, 20 (1), 56-68.
Hinkel, E. (2011). "What Research on Second Language Writing Tells Us and What It Doesn't." In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of Research in Second Language Teaching and Learning, Volume 2 (pp 523-538). New York: Routledge.
Paltridge, B. (2001). Genre and the Language Learning Classroom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
