The Cambridge Introduction to Applied Linguistics

This chapter is not about an individual project in applied linguistics, but an entire approach to teaching spoken and written language that has been developed over many decades in the research tradition of systemic functional linguistics (SFL). The approach is known as genre-based literacy pedagogy. The term “genre” refers to the ways in which texts vary according to their social purposes. Stories engage and entertain readers; explanations explain sequences of cause and effect; procedures direct activities; arguments evaluate issues and points of view. Genre-based literacy pedagogy (or simply genre pedagogy) guides learners to recognize and use the text structures and language patterns of different genres in their reading and writing. This chapter starts with the SFL model of text-in-context. It then introduces analyses of two sets of genres in education. One set is the genres of educational curricula, such as stories, explanations, procedures, arguments. These are known as knowledge genres. The other is the genres of classroom teaching and learning. These are known as curriculum genres. Genre pedagogy is then exemplified with extracts from a science literacy lesson.