English Language Teaching in its Social Context

Chapter 12Anne BurnsGENRE-BASED APPROACHES TO WRITINGAND BEGINNING ADULT ESL LEARNERSIntroductionOMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CLT) HAS played its partC in revolutionising narrowly conceived theories of language learning and most languageteachers would say they no longer equate the learning of a second language with the learningof traditional grammar. At the same time, CLT has given rise to a sometimes confusing arrayof methodologies, some of which claim to be ‘the method’ by which second languages willbe acquired and all of which call themselves ‘communicative’. This has often led to a stateof affairs in the language classroom which seems to derive much of its pedagogical base fromintuition.More and more, researchers and educators have bcgun to question somc of theassumptions implicit in communicative approaches to secontl-language teaching which havefailed to take into account a well-formulated theory of language. Copc (1989) has arguedthat what is needed is an ‘authoritative’ pedagogy for the 1990s which will replace what heterms the ‘progressive’ curriculum which has existed since the mi& 1970s. Because of itsdiscovery learning, ego-centred base, progressive ESL pedagogy has failed to make explicitto learners the knowledge they need to gain access to socially powerful forms of language.It has emphasised inquiry learning, process and naturalism but has neglected to offer learnerssystematic explanations of how language functions in various social contexts.In recent years much attention has been given to socially based theories of languageand in Australia work drawing on systemic linguistics and notions of genre and registerdeveloped by Michael Halliday (e.g. Halliday 1985; Halliday and Hasan 1985) has provideda model for explaining language in relation to the context in which it is used, while atthe same time taking into account language at the levels of whole text. I would also arguethat systemic-functional approaches to language learning and teaching fit well withCommunicative LanguageTeaching, as they provide teachers and learners with a means ofexploring language use within a framework of cultural and social purpoTe.Although genre-based language theories have application to both spoken and writtenlanguage, much of the work done in educational settings has related to literacy developmentin the schools context (Martin and Rothcry 1980, 1981 ; Martin 1985). Thc Adult MigrantEducation Program (AMEP) Literacy Project organised throughout the National Centre forEnglish Language Teaching and Research (NCELTR) described by Hammond (1989) has