The Effect of Genre-Based Teaching of Writing on EFL Learners’ Writing

Achievement, Critical Thinking Ability and Learner Autonomy:

A Systemic Functional Linguistics Perspective

Ahmad Alibabaee, ahmadalibabaee@shbu.ac.ir, Sheikhbahaee University, Esfahan, Iran

Niloofar Daneshkhah, Niloofar.daneshkhah@gmail.com, Sheikhbahaee University, Esfahan, Iran

Abstract

This study sought to investigate the impact of genre-based teaching of writing based on the

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) Model on Iranian EFL learners’ writing ability, critical

thinking ability and learner autonomy. For this purpose, 40 male and female intermediate EFL

learners were selected from among 80 L2 learners based on their performance on the Oxford

Placement Test (OPT). They were then randomly assigned to two groups, one control and one

experimental, 20 in each. Before and after the 9-session instructional treatment, the two groups

took a test of writing ability and a test of critical thinking ability, each in one separate session.

They were also observed during the experiment through checking several pre-determined subset

criteria of learner autonomy. The results of the data analyses revealed that the experimental group

receiving the genre-based writing instruction outperformed the control group on the two tests.

Also, the results of observing the participants’ behavior showed that the frequencies of the

autonomous criteria increased in the experimental group. Accordingly, this study lends support to

the positive role the genre-based instruction can play in second language education.

Keywords: genre instruction, critical thinking, writing achievement, autonomy

1. Introduction

Writing is a complex communicative task in which meaning is socially constructed and like any

other mode of communication it presupposes a purpose, a context and an (or some) audience(s)

(Hyland, 2003, 2007; Kern, 2000). Learning to perform this social activity either in L1 or L2,

then entails learning the social and cultural conventions underlying text generation, the needs and

purposes for which the writing task has to be performed and finally choosing the appropriate

linguistic means needed for communication and message conveyance (Hyland, 2007; Silva &

Matsuda, 2002; Uso-Juan & Martinez-Flor, 2006). However, in traditional teaching methods,

according to Hammond (1987), students wrote only to practice grammar at sentence level for

getting high scores on tests; but even those who scored high on English tests, reported difficulties

in expressing themselves in writing and had poor performances on even small writing tasks. As

such, when L2 learners were asked to write, they had to wrestle with a lot of problems related to

what they want to say, appropriate word-choice, correct use of grammar, creating ideas, and

developing them into a proper systematic pattern. More importantly, “they had trouble using an

acceptable writing format that conforms to a target language and society” (Alidoost et al., 2014,

p. 98). Connolly (2000) further found that L2 writers were mostly dependent on their teachers in

different points of their learning process; they did not have any reflection on their learning or the

potential ways of improving their writing skill. This is in contrast with the utmost end of teaching

which is, as specified by Ellis (2004), to rear independent learners with strategy-oriented

behavior. Additionally, critical thinking ability which is considered to be the required skill for

students’ success in their higher-rank educational and occupational endeavors (Partnership for

21st Century Skills), and the desired outcome of learning (Lai, 2011) was not emphasized in

traditional ways of language teaching in general and writing skill in particular (Connolly, 2002).

In the same line, Kim and Kim (2005), questioned this traditional approach and claimed that

genre-based instruction can function as an appropriate remedy. Hyland (2007), also states that

genre instruction “assists students to exploit the expressive potential of society’s discourse

structures instead of merely being manipulated by them” (p. 150), and helps students learn to go

beyond merely structural language practices. This kind of text generation enables the translation

of social and rhetorical actions into a more systematic format through which the writers and

readers accomplish and communicate their purposes (Devitt, 2000; Troyan, 2014). There are

different approaches to genre-based instruction, namely Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL),

North American New Rhetoric and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) (Bawarshi & Reiff,

2010). The SFL approach which constitutes the groundwork of this study is based on insights

from Halliday’s (1985) functional grammar (Gebhard et al., 2014) and is the basis of the work by

Hyland (2007) who has, accordingly, proposed an SFL model for genre instruction. With this

model, Hyland (2007) claims that “even very young or elementary level learners can understand

the social purposes of these genres, the ways they are staged, and their significant language

features”, moreover, clearly defined stages and moves help “teachers to identify why weak texts

seem incoherent and to suggest clear remedies to assist learners” (p. 153). The model provides

the teacher with applicable means to instruct the text in the classroom at three well-defined stages

of genre instruction: 1. Purpose, 2. Structure (framework, steps and moves), and 3. Grammar (the

language features involved). The SFL model proposed by Hyland (2007) was, then used in this

study because of its feasibility of application and pertinence to classroom purposes. The SFL

approach and the other two will be reviewed in the remainder of this section.

2. Review of the Literature

To define genre means to look at it from the vantage point of different schools of genre

theory (Bawarshi & Reiff, 2010). Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) or the Sydney School

mirroring the work by Halliday (1985), North American New Rhetoric studies, and English for

Specific Purposes (ESP), constitute the most outstanding traditions in this regards which due to

different educational contexts different pedagogical implications and applications are assigned to

each.

In SFL tradition, genre-based pedagogy is primarily aimed at helping the students achieve

the goals of school curriculum. To this end, school and workplace genres (reports, expositions,

explanations, discussions and narratives) are emphasized with this ideological motivation at

background that these explicit linguistic and typological resources empower students for later

social successes (Hyon, 1996). Moreover, this school of thought has its roots in Vygostkian

(1978) socio-cultural dimensions of language learning. As a result, the viewpoint towards

language and learning, in this tradition, is implemented within socio-cultural, functional, and

educational settings (Hyland, 2007) in which genre instruction offers “ways of contextualizing

what is to be learnt by basing instruction on how genres are sequenced and used in real-world

events” (p. 156).

On the other hand, as Yunick (1997) notices, the North American New Rhetoric tradition

is not engaged with instructional concerns and the teaching of linguistic features and academic

functions of genres. Instead, it is the “socio-contextual aspects of genre” and “its role in helping

university students and novice professionals [to] understand the social functions or actions of

genres” (Martin-Martin, 2013, p.331) which are central to this tradition. In the same line,

Bazerman (1988) maintains that writers need to have knowledge about the social context

encircling a text in order to be able to choose the appropriate rhetoric that suits their situations.

So in this tradition, rhetorical situation becomes disintegrated into its features, i.e. the purpose,

the audience and the circumstances of writing.

According to ESP research tradition, Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993, 2002), suggest that

genre application can help non-native speakers of English overcome the difficulties of learning

and mastering the functional, contextual and linguistic conventions underlying the texts they have

to write or read within their specialized vocational or educational context. In accordance with the

implications derived from this school of thought, Swales (1990), defines genre as “a class of

communicative events” with some shared communicative purposes. These shared purposes are

the constituting elements of different types of genres and “shapes the schematic structure of the

discourse and influences and constrains choice of content and style” (p. 58). As is asserted in a

plurality of studies on this issue (Amogne, 2013; Hyland, 2004; Johns, 1997; Swales, 1990,

2004), genres comprise a sequence of moves which are identifiable and can be taught explicitly,

primarily because genres offer explicit ways of understanding how target texts are structured and

why they are written in the ways they are (Hyland, 2004). According to another scholar in this

tradition, Bhatia (1993, 2002), we can distinguish, say narrative genre, from an argumentative

one in terms of its communicative functions, the moves and its linguistic differentials, “so that

non-English-speaking background students can learn to control the rhetorical organization and

stylistic features of the academic genres of English-speaking discourse communities.” (Martin-

Martin, 2013, p.332).

The ESP tradition is in congruence with the SFL tradition and at odds with New Rhetoric

perspectives in that it emphasizes the importance of adapting an explicit teaching approach

towards both the linguistic and rhetorical text features (Martin-Martin, 2013); however, the most

important feature all the three traditions agree upon is the relevance of social functions that genre

brings to the context of language use. This corresponds to the crucial role that language skills

play in developing learners’ communicative competence (Uso-Juan & Martinez-Flor, 2006), in

other words, explicit instruction of how target texts are constructed (Hyland, 2004) not only

alleviates the learning difficulties imposed on the learners by the complexity of the writing task

but also influences development of the learners’ overall communicative ability, i.e. the

communicative competence (Uso-Juan & Martinez-Flor, 2006).

In the same streams, Bountiful studies (Abrami et al., 2008; Case, 2005; Halpern, 1998;

Lai, 2011; Paul, 1992), have laid stress on the role of explicit instruction in developing learners’

critical thinking ability. Claiming that students' thinking skills are not enough to face the

problems students deal with either in education or in daily life, Fisher and Scriven (1997) state

that critical thinking skills are to be taught explicitly. Genre-based instruction, in this respect,

offers a rich ground of opportunities. The second point at issue is that learning genres involve

learners to go deeply into the social ideologies within the text and to use rules of language in

effective communication through the medium of written text which in turn fosters critical

thinking ability of the learners (Gibbons, 2002; Janks, 2009; Nel & Swanepoel, 2009; Skehan,

2001). Despite the existence of three distinct philosophical, psychological and educational strands

within the literature (Lai, 2011) which define critical thinking ability from different viewpoints,

this study sketches out the term with regard to the points of convergence. As a result, a critical

thinker is able to judge, make inferences, evaluate, test and try hypotheses, ask questions, look

for solutions, make decisions, solve problems and have reasoning power and can consider both

sides of a problem or issue (Case, 2005; Ennis, 1985; Facione, 1990; Halpern, 1998; Paul, 1992;

Tindal & Nolet, 1995; Willingham, 2007). It is conjectured that genre-based approaches furnish

the instructional setting with the chance to develop critical thinking abilities. The scaffolding role

of the teacher, however, in canalizing the students towards acquiring critical thinking ability in a

genre-based class should not be ignored (Hyland, 2004).

The idea of scaffolding teacher as one of the factors involved in learning enhancement

was developed by Vygotsky (1978), who states that there are two crucial developmental levels of

learning namely, “actual developmental level” and “level of potential development” and a stage

between these two which is called “Zone of Proximal Development” (ZPD). According to

Vygotsky (1978), students can achieve problem-solving and critical thinking abilities under the

guidance of scaffolding teacher and as a result can raise up their ZPD to the level of “actual

development”. On the other hand, the more the students’ potentials turn into actual knowledge,

the more they are developing independency. Hyland (2004) echoes the role of scaffolding teacher

in genre-based pedagogy and states that the degree of scaffolding depends on the learners'

development in writing and level of independency. This is in line with the concept of learner

autonomy as “the perception among pupils that they can exercise an appropriate degree of self-

determination and responsibility in the classroom” (Luftenegger et al., 2012, p. 29). As such

learner autonomy can be defined as the ability to take control over one’s learning and developing

the skills needed for independent and strategic action (Holec, 1988; Little, 1995).

The significance of learner autonomy as an essential part of learning has been studied by

many scholars and teachers within the field during the last decades (Guevara de Leon, 2010;

Jacob & Farrel, 2001; Luftenegger et al., 2012; Miller, 2009; Novak & Gowin, 1984; Zarei &

Alibabaee, 2013), and several studies have also been so far conducted on the effect of genre-

based approach on improvement of learners writing skills (Amogne, 2013; Chaisiri, 2010;

Gardiner, 2010; Kim & Ross, 2007; Lee, 2012; Lingzhu, 2009; Sidaway, 2006; Trong Tuan,

2010). However, to the researchers’ best of knowledge, there has not been any studies conducted

on the effect of genre-based instruction on learners’ autonomy and critical thinking ability.

Considering all the above, and after delving into the previous research studies about genre-based

approach, this research aimed at investigating the following research questions:

1. To what extent does genre-based approach in teaching writing improve EFL students’

writing ability?

2. To what extent does genre-based approach in teaching writing improve EFL learners’

critical thinking ability?

3. To what extent dose genre-based approach in teaching writing improve EFL students’

learner autonomy?

3. Methodology

3.1. Participants

In this study, 40 Iranian intermediate male and female participants aged between 20 and 30 were

selected from among 80 L2 learners (studying English at a Language Institute in Isfahan, Iran)

based on their performance on the Oxford Placement Test (OPT). They were then, randomly

assigned to two groups, one control and one experimental, 20 in each. It is worth considering that

all the participants had the experience of learning English at school, two hours a week for six

years. Moreover, all the participants’ L1 was Persian and none had the experience of living in an

English speaking country.

3.2. Instrumentation

3.2.1. Composition test

A writing composition test with three different topics which were the illustration of three

different genres (narrative, procedural and persuasive) was used to measure participants’ writing

ability. According to research findings of Department of Education and Child Development in

South Australia (2012), these three genres (narrative, procedural and persuasive) are among the

most common genres which students deal with during their learning processes and need for their

classroom purposes. Some examples include fictional, historical and personal texts for narrative

genre; recipes, science experiments and instructions for procedural genre; arguments and

discussions for persuasive genre.

To assess the comprehensibility and quality of the instruction and the prompts and also

the time students need to take the test, five English learners with the background and proficiency

level similar to those of target participants were piloted on the composition test. The results

brought some modifications to the length of instruction and its word-choice. The final version

administered to the target sample read as follow:

This is a test of writing. You have 45 minutes to write at least one paragraph for each of

the following prompts. Please read the prompts carefully to see what you are going to write

about.

Write a travel diary of your childhood

Do you know how to cook a meal? Write one you are able to make

Is television a bad influence on children?

3.2.2. Critical thinking ability test

To fulfill the purpose of the study the Eniss-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test (1985) was used

to measure critical thinking ability of the students. This test is a letter to the editor of a fictional

newspaper. “In the letter, the writer makes a proposal and offers a variety of arguments in support

of it. Each argument appears in a separate numbered paragraph” (Ennis & Weir, 1985, p.2).

Totally there are eight paragraphs. In some of the paragraphs at least there exists one error or type

of reasoning. The participants were supposed to read the letter and then write a nine paragraph

essay to assess the argument of each eight paragraphs separately and also the letter as a whole.

The time which was considered for the test was almost 40 minutes. 10 minutes to read and

ponder the letter, and 30 minutes to write the nine paragraph, analyzing and evaluating the

argument of the letter. This test in fact, presents a situation which has problems. These provided

problems make chances for evaluating important areas of participants’ critical thinking ability.

The same five individuals who were piloted on the composition test, participated in the

piloting test of critical thinking ability. The elements of time, instruction and wordings were

taken into consideration. The results showed instances of misspelling and language problem

which were modified before administering the test to the target groups of the study. Moreover,

three university professors examined the test for validity and as such, the final version of the test

prepared for the purpose of data collection.

3.2.3. Observation

Luftenegger et al. (2012), sought the determinants of lifelong learning (LLL) and autonomy

within the educational context and found the factors affecting on them. The factors affecting LLL

were posed to be three: 1. motivational beliefs including interest, goal-orientation, and self-

efficacy, 2. performance/volitional control including monitoring and strategies, and 3. Self-

reflection including assessment and criticism. In addition, two more factors were considered as

the ones affecting autonomy which are 1. Individual autonomy while learning and 2. Joint social

responsibility. Based on the criteria given by Luftenegger et al. (2012), Zarei & Alibabaee (2013)

designed a questionnaire to examine Iranian learners’ perception of learning in an autonomous

educational context. It is worth considering that the construct validity of the questionnaire was

established through confirmatory factor analysis procedure.

Therefore, to observe the relevance of instructional procedures applied in the present

study to autonomous behavior of students, a special checklist was prepared based on

Lüftenegger’s criteria (2012) and Zarei & Alibabaee’s (2013) questionnaire. This checklist

included five measures relating to monitoring, individual autonomy, criticism, social

responsibility and confidence (see Appendix A).

3.3. Procedure

3.3.1. Data collection

The data collection process took a total of 13 sessions. At the first two sessions and before

the treatment, the participants in both experimental and control groups were asked to take the

composition and Eniss & Weir (1985) critical thinking essay tests as the pretest, each in one

separate session. To exclude the probable effects of ordering and participants’ inattentiveness the

prompts for the three genres were put in different orders and the students in each group received

the test of composition in different orders. The same tests were used as the post-test at the last

two sessions to measure any difference in performances of the participants after the treatment.

The counterbalancing design was applied for the post-test of composition, too.

Participants’ autonomous behavior was also recorded using a checklist containing five

general criteria (monitoring, individual autonomy, criticism, social responsibility and

confidence). These checklists were the same for both groups and provided the researchers with

the information about any behavioral changes with regard to learner autonomy. During the

treatment sessions the teacher was asked to put check in front of each participants name if any of

the criteria was observed. For example, if the teacher observed that one of the participants

presents his/her opinions about instruction, she could put check in front of his/her name under

that specified criterion in the check list. Thus, the possible improvements of the learners’

autonomous behavior could be checked during the study.

During the nine-session treatment procedure three genres (narrative, procedural and

persuasive) were taught to the participants in the experimental group based on the SFL model. In

this model each genre is made up of three main components: Purpose, structure (framework,

goals and moves), and grammar (the language features involved). Accordingly, the teacher had to

bring each component to the attention of the participants. As such, three sessions were allocated

for instructional purposes of each genre. The treatment sessions started with teaching of narrative

genre first because it seemed easier and more familiar to the learners than the other two.

Therefore, the teacher started with the purpose of this genre (to tell an imaginative story; it may

be based on facts) then, stretched out the framework (the title, setting, initiating events, problem,

resolution, and examples) and finally introduced the corresponding language features or the

grammar stage (usually past tense, defined characters, dialogue, descriptive language to create

images, linking words to do with time). In the second session a clear example of narrative texts

was provided to the participants. By considering the genre, they were asked to recognize the

purpose, structure and grammar stages. In the third session, they were asked to write a similar

example. The other two genres were taught and practiced, each in three sessions and in the same

way. Learners’ compositions of both experimental and control groups were corrected by the

teacher and handed over to the participants to consider their mistakes, strengths and weaknesses.

Finally, the last two sessions were devoted to the administration of the posttests of writing and

critical thinking for both groups.

3.3.2. Data Analysis

To analyze the data, two raters scored the writing tests based on the Jacob’s scoring

criteria (1981) which include the rating of content, organization, vocabulary, language use and

mechanics. Each criterion was graded from excellent to very poor. For example for the content

criterion: Excellent to Very Good (30-27 scores: knowledgeable, substantive, thorough,

development of thesis, relevant to assigned topic), Good to Average (26-22 scores: some

knowledge of subject, adequate range, limited development of thesis, mostly relevant to the topic,

but lacks details) Fair to Poor (21-17 scores: limited knowledge of the subject, little substance,

inadequate development of topic) and very Poor (16-13 scores: does not show knowledge of

subject, non-substantive, not pertinent, or not enough to evaluate). In this way the total score in

criterion of the content was 30. The same procedure was applied for the other criteria however,

the total score for organization and vocabulary was 20, for language use 25 and for mechanics 5

(See Appendix B) which made an overall of 100.

With regard to scoring of critical thinking ability test, the raters had to focus on the

quality of participants’ power of thinking and reasoning, rather than their style of writing and

language structure. With this in mind, if the participants understood the particular problem of

each paragraph, or pointed to them indirectly, the raters would gave him/her 1-3 scores based on

the scoring criteria (See Appendix C). However, the raters had leniency to assessing the

responses. Any faulty or bad judgment would resulted in score extraction. Additionally, for the

purpose of autonomy criteria the frequency of each observed behavior during the nine sessions of

treatment was calculated.

The results obtained from statistical analysis of the participants’ performance on

pre/posttests of writing and critical thinking ability were fed into SPSS (IBM SPSS statics,

version 16.0) and for the purpose of the comparison of scores t-test procedure was used. The next

section illustrates the results.

4. Results

The results obtained from the statistical analyses of the collected data are reported as follows.

Pre/posttest scores of composition test were analyzed using independent t-test procedure with

regard to the participants’ writing performance on narrative, procedural and persuasive genres.

Table 1 below illustrates the results obtained from pre/post-test scores on t-tests.

Table 1. Descriptive and inferential results for the performance on pre/post-tests of writing

ability for three genres

Experimental Control T-tests (pre-test) T-tests (post-test)

Narrative MeanSD

64.6510.46

65.908.20

df: 38t: -.42sig: .67

df:37t: .25sig: .80

Procedural MeanSD

64.8511.37

67.756.91

df: 38t: -1.48sig: .14

df: 38t: -.441sig: .662

Persuasive MeanSD

58.0511.82

58.256.05

df: 38t: .04sig: .96

df: 38t: .000sig: 1.00

As shown in Table 1, in each genre the mean score of the two groups were almost the same (in

narrative: 64.65 and 65.90; in procedural: 64.85 and 67.75; in persuasive: 58.05 and 58.25,

respectively) and the results of independent t-tests showed that there were no significant

differences between the experimental and control groups before and after the treatment: before

the treatment (the narrative t: -.42, Sig: .67; the procedural t: -1.48, Sig: .14; the persuasive t: .04,

Sig: .96) and after the treatment (the narrative t: .25, sig: .80; the procedural t: -.44, sig: .66; the

persuasive t: .00, sig: 1.00).

Therefore, to investigate the effects of the treatment, the participants’ performances on the

pre and post-tests of composition in each genre were compared using paired sample t test. The

table below shows the results.

Table 2. Descriptive and inferential results for paired sample t-test

Mean SD t-tests

Narrative Pre-testPost-test

65.2766.95

9.308.65

df: 39t: -3.61sig: .001

Procedural Pre-testPost-test

68.0269.65

9.399.12

df: 39t: -3.60sig: .001

Persuasive Pre-testPost-test

60.1761.00

10.1110.67

df: 39t: -2.23sig: .031

Table 2, shows that post-test mean scores were higher and that each pair performed significantly

different after the treatment: Narrative (t: -3.61; Sig: .001), Procedural (t: -3.60; Sig: .001), and

Persuasive (t: -2.23; Sig: .031). This indicates that teaching writing skill through genre-based

approach specially in these three genres have a statistically significant effect on the EFL learners’

writing ability in the view of the fact that the Sig. value is lower than 0.05 in all the three genres.

Table 3 below demonstrates the results of analyzing the scores obtained from performance of

participants on pre/posttests of critical thinking ability.

Table 3. Descriptive and inferential results for the performance on Critical thinking ability test

Experimental Control T-tests

Pre-test MeanSD

4.703.75

3.203.34

df: 38t: 1.33sig: .191

Post-test MeanSD

5.553.60

3.352.85

df: 38t: .2.14sig: .039

As Table 3 shows even with a higher mean score of experimental group on pre-test (4.70 > 3.20)

both groups performed approximately the same, (t: 1.33; Sig: .191). Though, the performance of

the participants in experimental group was significantly different (t: 2.14; Sig: 0.03) on the post-

test with a higher mean of 5.55. This means that the application of genre-based approach has had

positive impacts on EFL learners’ critical thinking ability in the experimental group, so they

outperformed the control group in the critical thinking ability test.

Table 4 is the illustration of the frequency of the observed autonomous behavior of the

participants.

Table 4. Frequency of five criteria of learner autonomy’s observations

The first 3 sessions The second 3

sessions

The third 3 sessions

Monitoring 79 82 89

Individual

autonomy

66 80 81

Criticism 91 76 61

Social

responsibility

74 72 86

Confidence 59 45 73

Total score 369 355 390

Total mean 73.8 71 78

The scores in table 4 are the indication of increasing trend of frequency of each of

observed criterion but the criticism (91; 76; 61) which has had a descending growth. Based on

these findings, the researchers came to the conclusion that the instructional procedures positively

affect the autonomous behavior of the participants in the experimental group.

The results obtained in this study showed that with the application of a genre-based

approach to the teaching of writing the experimental group achieved higher levels of writing and

critical thinking ability, and also exhibited higher frequencies of autonomous behavior. This

speculation is discussed and elaborated in details in the next chapter.

5. Discussion

As the results indicated, the experimental group receiving a genre-based writing instruction based

on SFL model (Hyland, 2007) outperformed the control group on the two tests of writing and

critical thinking ability. Moreover, the results confirmed the positive role of the training program

on the autonomous behavior of the participants in the experimental group. To this extent, this

conclusion is possible that the instructional procedure, i.e. application of SFL model, positively

affects the performance of the experimental group.

The findings of this study, thus, support the claim that genre-based pedagogies provide a

lot of “real benefits for learners as they pull together language, content, and contexts, while

offering teachers a means of presenting students with explicit and systematic explanations of the

ways writing works to communicate” (Hyland, 2007, p.150). Through genre-based writing

instruction learners have a clearer map at their disposal based on which they can be more certain

about why to write, how and with what means to express their ideas. The SFL model (Hyland,

2007) which was applied in this study was beneficial for producing meaningful passages. The

guidelines and principles that it offers pave the way for students to achieve their classroom and

school objectives. This is in line with the goals of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)

tradition of genre instruction which asserts that the primary goal of genre-based pedagogy is to

help students achieve the goals of school curriculum. Moreover, the chance that genre-based

instruction provides for acquainting the students with the purpose of writing helps them

recognize the functional and socio-cultural dimensions of writing task and as such get ready for

successful involvement in later authentic educational or/and vocational situations where these

genres have to be used (Bhatia, 1993, 2002; Hyon, 1996; Swales, 1990).

Explicit instruction of purposes, structures and grammar of the genres, on the other hand,

sets the grounds for the learners to shape a mental picture about the writing task which in turn

enables them to analyze and evaluate different texts and also their own writing performances

(Hyland, 2009). For example, they have to decide what language features to include or exclude

from their piece of writing so as to match the genre they are dealing with; or they have to keep

constant the context and the purpose for which they have started the writing task. In this way, the

critical thinking ability is exercised and the inadequacy of students’ thinking skills which was

emphasized by Fisher and Scriven (1997) is compensate for. As was confirmed by the findings of

this and other studies (Abrami et al., 2008; Case, 2005; Halpern, 1998; Lai, 2011; Paul, 1992),

explicit instruction, now of genres, had positive impacts on the students’ critical thinking ability.

Furthermore, this framework, if thought in this way, gives teachers a central role in scaffolding

students’ learning and creativity, an issue supported by Vygotsky (1978) and some of genre

pedagogy advocates (e.g. Hyland, 2004). The more the students’ skills improve in constructing a

systematic framework about moves, features and purposes of different genres, their functions and

correlations to social contexts the more they act independently. Put it another way, the teacher in

genre-based pedagogy has a central role in helping students’ knowledge in ZPD flourish and

become in-service ability (Widodo, 2006).

This central role defined for the teachers in genre-based pedagogy has tendencies towards the

importance of promoting learner autonomy understood as the ability to take control over one’s

learning and to develop learning strategies (Holec, 1988; Little, 1995). In an autonomous

language classroom, too teachers move towards acting like a counselor and a facilitator whose

position is to manage the activities in the classroom and to provide learning environments where

learners are encouraged to view learning as a lifelong process (Jacobs & Farrell, 2001; Lowes &

Target, 1999; Luftenegger et al., 2012). This study, as well, claimed for the effectiveness of

genre-based writing instruction on promotion of autonomous behavior, in which the positive

impacts were significantly confirmed.

It is too strong and boasting a claim, nevertheless, to say that this limited research could help

EFL students gain full writing ability, critical thinking ability and autonomy enhancement;

though, the findings might shed light on some ways of bringing critical thinking ability and

learner autonomy into consideration and highlight the hidden and useful aspects of these

important factors of teaching and learning. This study might make the learners and teachers

change their attitudes towards writing ability as a communicative and purposeful social activity

and affirm that genre-based approach is better to be a part of curriculum if lifelong learning is the

goal. Thus, through applying this approach we can expect improvement in students’ writing

ability, critical thinking ability and learner autonomy in an EFL pedagogy setting. A genre-based

instructional program also can provide the learners with an optimal learning situation in which

meaningful and systematic learning is emphasized and encouraged.

6. Conclusion

The main concern of this research was teaching writing ability through genre-based

approach and investigating the effects of this instruction on participants’ writing ability, critical

thinking ability and learner autonomy. The study tried to address the shortcomings of traditional

teaching methods with regard to writing instruction and propose an effective teaching way

instead. Explicit genre instruction and SFL model of genre instruction supported by Hyland

(2007) were considered as the frameworks of teaching during nine sessions of treatment. The

results proved that the students in the experimental group who had the chance to become familiar

with different genres and had the opportunity to move towards independency outperformed the

ones in the control group and thus provide the study with the evidence of an effective teaching

approach. The findings of this study verified the advantage of genre-based teaching over the

traditional approaches as a way of improving writing ability, critical thinking ability and learner

autonomy.

However, in the way to carry the study there were some limitations. Firstly, the small

sample size investigated in this study makes it less possible to generalize the results to all the

population of Iranian EFL learners. Second, if the study could be conducted in a longer period of

time and there was any possible way to administer delayed post-tests of writing and critical

thinking ability, the study could achieve more reliable and generalizable results. In addition, any

desired outcome from the instructional program regarding learner autonomy enhancement

requires long-run periods of practice which was beyond the facilities of this study. The

participants’ autonomous behavior could also be measured using additional means such as self-

reports on part of participants; “self-reports can measure important aspects of subjective action

space” (Luftenegger et al., 2012, p. 34). Self-reports may also signify those individual factors

affecting the determinants for autonomy. Due to limitations of this study only the effects of

instructional context could be measured. Lastly, the inaccessibility to more up-to-date tests of

critical thinking ability forced the researchers to use the 1985 test. Also, further empirical

researches are needed to replicate and confirm the effects of this approach on participants from

different levels of proficiency and to practice the effects on genres other than the ones involved in

this study. Finally, in future studies, the genre-based approach can be applied to consider the

insights of ESP tradition for the frame of reference and instruction.

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Appendices

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C