Perceived benefits of learning text format

Most teachers appeared to have focused on the text format as the important content knowledge; however, the social communicative purpose of constructing texts received inadequate attention. For example, when talking about how modelling is useful, Kate explained: “[Students learned] what is needed at the beginning of the text…which is normally in the last sentence of the first paragraph. After that, they should...” (Kate, Int.2T). This quote indicated Kate’s attention to the text form when modelling. Similarly, Mike was able to compare the benefits of the Deconstruction stage with his previous instruction, and especially explained how beneficial it was for the purpose of imitating the text format:

What I introduced to them [my students] before may be too general. Text structures always include Introduction, Body and Conclusion regardless of the differences between various text types. Regarding the language features, only some cohesive expressions are provided to them. Sometimes, such provisions are very chaotic. On the contrary, modelling makes the concept of schematic structure very clear. If they encounter similar expressions, similar articles or writing topics of this text type in the future, it’ll be easier for them to carry out…There’s the need of normative model texts or templates for students to imitate…for example, the forms, sentences and vocabularies. (Mike, Int.2T) As can be seen from the above quote, Mike focused on three general stages of Introduction, Body and Conclusion in his previous instructions of text construction, and like Kate, he placed his attention on the text format. Nevertheless, Mike’s focus on those three text structure features demonstrated what Callaghan and Knapp (1989) refer to as some preliminary understanding of

the features of schematic structure. Meanwhile, Mike’s explanation seemed to have highlighted the importance of text forms, and his belief in learning writing by imitating and transforming those text features from a model text. This explanation reflected the important role of text forms in Mike’s subject matter content knowledge. From the pedagogical perspective, Mike’s belief mirrored the product approach to writing, which is primarily concerned with the proper forms of the final products (Silva, 1990). Yet, when talking about the benefits of modelling in the instructional experience, Mike did not mention how schematic structure worked for the social purpose in a text. This result might suggest that Mike did not consider this content knowledge as important in teaching a target genre. Very similar information was drawn from interviews with the other teachers.

Despite teachers’ common appreciation of modelling in explaining the text format, the social communicative purpose of the text construction, a primary principle in the SFL genre pedagogy, was not regarded as important in teachers’ subject matter content knowledge. Instead, teachers tended to avoid talking about the social purpose of producing a text. Patty, for example, stated that in order to avoid potential confusion about the differences between various text types, it was unnecessary to explicitly talk about the social purpose of a certain text type to students.

For them, Argumentation is Argumentation. It’s the text type required in CET4 and CET6 writing tasks. When using the term Discussion Genre to talk about this type of text, they may not be able to respond quickly…If they’re provided with many theories…for example, what are this type of texts written for, they may feel confused. In contrast, it’s easier to be accepted if you simply tell them that imitating the format of the model text will help them to achieve better writing…access to better CET results. (Patty, Int.2T) Patty’s statement above indicated that in her belief, it was not necessary to explicitly explain the social purpose of text construction. She assumed that teaching students the communicative purpose of a text structure would ‘confuse’ students. It is evident that the teachers commonly did not appreciate the importance of the social purpose as content knowledge when producing texts.

The subject matter content knowledge reflected in Patty’s statement was similar to that of other teachers, as discussed earlier in this section.

Similarly, the important pedagogical knowledge of ‘explicitly’ talking about the social purpose for producing different text types in writing instruction did not draw attention. This information suggested that Patty’s belief was contrary to a major principle of the genre pedagogy: That the teaching-learning cycle is marked by explicit instruction (Callaghan & Rothery, 1988; Hyland, 2007; Martin, 2000). Both the knowledge being taught, and the expectations of teaching in this instruction model, are supposed to be explicit (Martin, 1999).

The quote from Patty also indicated that, in her understanding, the Discussion Genre was synonymous with Argumentation. Patty pointed out the Discussion Genre as the text type that was most frequently tested in the CETs, which was understood as Argumentation. This point suggests that, in Patty’s subject matter content knowledge, the production of these two types of genres was for the same social purpose. However, researchers argue that the Discussion Genre focuses especially on the arguments from both sides of a topic issue, with recommendations for the topic from the author’s perspective, while Argumentation aims to support only one viewpoint with logical reasons (Callaghan & Rothery, 1988; Derewianka, 1990). The Discussion Genre is a category of the Argumentation (Derewianka & Jones, 2012). These principles revealed Patty’s misunderstandings of the two genres above in her subject matter content knowledge. In short, regardless of the emphasis on the principles of explicit teaching and setting the context in the training in the genre pedagogy, Patty, as well as most of the other teachers, did not seem to consider these principles as important pedagogical or content knowledge in teaching a genre. Teachers’ limited attention to the social purpose of the target genre was even more evident when they talked about the benefits of the genre pedagogy in more detail, with respect to text structure and language features, as discussed in the following section.