The Relevance of the Genre Approach in the context of the tertiary level students of Bangladesh

Abstract

The genre approach to teaching writing, although a more recent approach when compared to the process or the product approach, has received considerable attention in teaching writing. Several factors contribute to its wide acceptance including its strong theoretical underpinning, its focus on students’ needs, and the context of writing. In the case of second language (L2) writing instruction, the genre-based approach has strong implications as it clearly states what learners need to learn and provides a logical framework for studying language as well as the context in which the language is produced. At the tertiary level, writing is often deemed as the most important language skill because students at higher learning institutes are mostly assessed through their writing performance. However, for second language learners, academic writing may seem to be a daunting task if they do not have prior academic writing experience or if they lack proper linguistic knowledge.  For these novice student writers, genre-based writing instruction is often considered appropriate as this approach draws learners’ attention to the formal and functional features of the text making them understand why the linguistic features and conventions are used to elicit the desired communicative goals. This article explores the relevance of genre-based instruction in the tertiary level second language writing instruction of Bangladesh and the ways in which this approach can be integrated with the tertiary level academic writing programs of the country.