Designing an L2 Genre-Based Writing Course

Chapter 3 in Second Language Writing outlines how to construct a writing course, from a teacher's broad objectives to the individual lesson components. Stressed throughout this chapter is the concept of keeping goals and objectives for students (both general and specific) in the forefront of planning. Activity goals and objectives should build to meet lesson goals and objectives, which should lead to meeting unit goals and objectives. Unit goals and objectives should then, of course, be constructed to help meet course goals and objectives.  In planning all of these goals and objectives, an instructor should take into consideration all aspects of the course: learner backgrounds, aptitudes, and needs; the learning situation (the "where and when" of learning, as well as standards and materials fixed by the governing institution); learner evaluation and assessment (which should take place at all stages of the course, from an individual lesson through the entire course); and instructor self-reflection/assessment.

This chapter addressed course planning for writing courses in general, touching on just about everything I'd been taught about course, unit, and lesson planning as an English Education undergraduate. One of the concepts relevant particularly to L2 writing classrooms is that instructors need to constantly assess learners' needs. Hyland states, "Needs analysis, then, is always dynamic and ongoing" (67). At all points of student learning, instructors must gauge student needs, as they are variable from student to student and objective to objective as well as within specific lessons, chapters, and units. One thing I would add to Hyland's emphasis on continuous needs analysis is that instructors should be prepared to deviate from the syllabus or -- if necessary -- augment the syllabus as the course progresses in order to meet objectives as fully as possible.

One concept new to me was developing a syllabus based on teaching genres. Hyland provides models of syllabuses from both process-driven writing courses and genre-driven writing courses. What I had been taught involved the process approach to writing, so I was particularly interested in how to orient a course around the teaching of genres. Chapter 4 of Hyland's genre text expands on what he discusses in SLW and focuses on L2 learners. Again, he discusses learner needs and course/unit objectives, but he focuses on genre-based course design for L2 students. I appreciate that he contends that specific course material depends on the students' target writing needs, but I wonder how a FYC instructor would accommodate what might be a large variation of L2 students' "targets." Writing in the liberal arts is not the same as writing in fields of technology. Another aspect of the genre-driven course design for L2 students is the speaking component that Hyland incorporates. This is the first time in this course I have considered the correlation between L2 speaking and writing, and I find myself wishing Hyland would have gone into this more than he did in this chapter.  This interrelation between speaking, reading, and writing, though, would further complicate the students' needs (some L2 learners may read fluently in their L2 but have more difficulty speaking in that language, for example). Two paragraphs on this interrelation, however, left me hoping he would revisit this later in the text.