HOME PAGE
AN APPEAL FOR SUPPORT
- We seek your support to meet expenses relating to some new and essential software, formatting of articles and books, maintaining and running the journal through hosting, correrspondences, etc. You can use the PAYPAL link given above. Please click on the PAYPAL logo, and it will take you to the PAYPAL website. Please use the e-mail address thirumalai@mn.rr.com to make your contributions using PAYPAL.
Also please use the AMAZON link to buy your books. Even the smallest contribution will go a long way in supporting this journal. Thank you. Thirumalai, Editor.
BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!
- A STUDY OF THE SKILLS OF READING
COMPREHENSION IN ENGLISH DEVELOPED BY STUDENTS OF STANDARD IX IN THE SCHOOLS IN TUTICORIN DISTRICT, TAMILNADU ...
A. Joycilin Shermila, Ph.D.
- A Socio-Pragmatic Comparative Study of Ostensible Invitations in English and Farsi ...
Mohammad Ali Salmani-Nodoushan, Ph.D.
- ADVANCED WRITING - A COURSE TEXTBOOK ...
Parviz Birjandi, Ph.D. Seyyed Mohammad Alavi, Ph.D. Mohammad Ali Salmani-Nodoushan, Ph.D.
- TEXT FAMILIARITY, READING TASKS, AND ESP TEST PERFORMANCE: A STUDY ON IRANIAN LEP AND NON-LEP UNIVERSITY STUDENTS - A DOCTORAL DISSERTATION ...
Mohammad Ali Salmani-Nodoushan, Ph.D.
- A STUDY ON THE LEARNING PROCESS OF ENGLISH
BY HIGHER SECONDARY STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO DHARMAPURI DISTRICT IN TAMILNADU ... K. Chidambaram, Ph.D.
- SPEAKING STRATEGIES TO OVERCOME COMMUNICATION
DIFFICULTIES IN THE TARGET LANGUAGE SITUATION - BANGLADESHIS IN NEW ZEALAND ...
Harunur Rashid Khan
- THE PROBLEMS IN LEARNING MODAL AUXILIARY VERBS IN ENGLISH AT HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL ...
Chandra Bose, Ph.D. Candidate
- THE ROLE OF VISION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING
- in Children with Moderate to Severe Disabilities ... Martha Low, Ph.D.
- SANSKRIT TO ENGLISH TRANSLATOR ...
S. Aparna, M.Sc.
- A LINGUISTIC STUDY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE CURRICULUM AT THE SECONDARY LEVEL IN BANGLADESH - A COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT by
Kamrul Hasan, Ph.D.
- COMMUNICATION VIA EYE AND FACE in Indian Contexts by
M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
- COMMUNICATION
VIA GESTURE: A STUDY OF INDIAN CONTEXTS by M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
- CIEFL Occasional
Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 1
- Language, Thought
and Disorder - Some Classic Positions by M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
- English in India:
Loyalty and Attitudes by Annika Hohenthal
- Language In Science
by M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
- Vocabulary Education
by B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
- A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF HINDI
AND MALAYALAM by V. Geethakumary, Ph.D.
- LANGUAGE OF ADVERTISEMENTS
IN TAMIL by Sandhya Nayak, Ph.D.
- An Introduction to TESOL:
Methods of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages by M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
- Transformation of
Natural Language into Indexing Language: Kannada - A Case Study by B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
- How to Learn
Another Language? by M.S.Thirumalai, Ph.D.
- Verbal Communication
with CP Children by Shyamala Chengappa, Ph.D. and M.S.Thirumalai, Ph.D.
- Bringing Order
to Linguistic Diversity - Language Planning in the British Raj by Ranjit Singh Rangila, M. S. Thirumalai, and B. Mallikarjun
REFERENCE MATERIAL
BACK ISSUES
- E-mail your articles and book-length reports (preferably in Microsoft Word) to thirumalai@mn.rr.com.
- Contributors from South Asia may send their articles to
B. Mallikarjun, Central Institute of Indian Languages, Manasagangotri, Mysore 570006, India or e-mail to mallikarjun@ciil.stpmy.soft.net
- Your articles and booklength reports should be written following the MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.
- The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.
Copyright © 2004 M. S. Thirumalai
|
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF GENRE-BASED APPROACH TO DEVELOP WRITING SKILLS OF ADULT LEARNERS AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR DESIGNING A SYLLABUS Sumaiya Haq, M.A.
Equipping Learners to Choose Appropriate Words and Structures
I attempt in this paper to find out if the genre-based approach to writing can be of any use to the students. As texts of the same genre have certain basic structural similarities, serving the same general social purpose, so does genre-based approach equip learners to choose words and structures for making meanings about experience in certain situations for an example, telling stories, trying to persuade people with strong arguments, describing a thing, showing procedures. It also helps the students to be aware of and careful to show relationship in the perfect manner appropriate to the situation. Finally genre-based approach is helpful for learners for arranging the whole meaning into a full text, which is compatible with the situation.
A Contrast and My Goal
- Most of the time in the conventional classroom it is seen that, learning activities focus on using correct language, as a result the students' participation lessens; sometimes they turn into passive receivers; on the other hand, if the teacher does not intervene to show structural patterns of different genre, does not demonstrate where it should be used, and the learning is based on communication only then the students will not be confident of using it properly . To solve this problem some language practitioners prescribe that there should be a cycle of teaching and learning, which consists of context exploration, explicit instructions, joint construction using the newly gathered knowledge.
- I want to find out if the activities in writing in the classroom maintain teaching-learning cycle, the cycle of modeling, teacher-student joint construction and independent construction.
- Language is a psychological and social tool, through it we communicate with others . People have different social relations with others, and the repertoire of languages changes according to social class, formality, surrounding and age. So, can textbook help student complete practical task? Does the understanding of different genres give the learners a outline of language used for certain purpose using certain structural patterns?, giving them ability to relate it to other contexts, which might be very far away from the text book contexts?
- If a different type of syllabus is required for developing writing what might be included to enrich the writing skills and make the adult learners confident enough to use it in other places than only exams.
The Rationale and Main Conceptual Themes for the Investigation
During my service as a teacher, teaching Basic Skills, most of the time I have found that even adult learners prefer to practice writing skills at home rather than doing it in the class. Even if they do participate , they are reluctant to read aloud their ' independent construction' . They fear that they haven't used language in a correct manner, more than that they cannot make up their mind how to start and how to finish. As English is not the learners' mother tongue, sometimes they are short of words. As a result, writing is most often done as homework and some of the learners do not submit their work. The summative evaluation is that learners are unable to develop the writing skills. I hope to find out if studying genre-based writing can help to equip the adult learners to improvise writing activity on any topic with confidence. Martin developed the concept of genre based on Halliday's theory of form and purpose of the text and the social context, in which it is produced. Texts, which share the same underlying structural pattern and the same purpose, are of the same genre.
Another Underpinning Idea for My Project
Another reading underpinning idea for the project derives from Hewings and Hewings, 'Disciplinary Variation in Academic Writing.' '… The genre-knowledge can be of preliminary use, students should be aware of discipline specifics, what to emphasize and what to exclude according to their discipline and subject matter and beliefs about knowledge.
Methodologies deployed in writing, can influence the written structure. As an example there is difference stance in hard discipline of science where attributive hedges like 'partially,' 'approximately' are often used to assert agreed knowledge, and in soft discipline of social science and arts where problems are less clearly defined, hedges are used extensively to write qualitative analysis rather than quantitative analysis. The teacher should explain text structure metadiscoursal feature, grammatical elements of the specific discipline together with why they are used.
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN A PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.
Sumaiya Haq
Communication Across Castes | The Hells Envisioned in the Divine Comedy and Bhagavtam | Telugu Parts of Speech Tagging in WSD | Practicing Literary Translation: A Symposium Round 10 | The Effectiveness of Genre-based Approach to Develop Writing Skills of Adult Learners and Its Significance for Designing a Syllabus | Structural Predictability of Malayalam Riddles | Parsing in Tamil - Present State of Art | HOME PAGE OF AUGUST 2006 ISSUE | HOME PAGE | CONTACT EDITOR
Sumaiya Haq, M.A.
Department of English Language and Literature
International Islamic University
Chittagong
Bangladesh
sh39392000@yahoo.com
|
- Send your articles
as an attachment to your e-mail to thirumalai@mn.rr.com.
- Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknolwedged the work or works of others you either cited or used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian scholarship.
|