The genre approach "involves the direct teaching of a range of genres through a cycle that includes modelling, joint construction and independent construction". (Green and Campbell 2003, 209). This approach to teaching writing stemmed from a specific criticism of process writing- that students were producing a surplus of narrative genre to the detriment of developing writing competency in other genres. Critics in the 1980s and 90s claimed that "children needed to be taught explicitly about the structural and textual features of a large range of text types, or genres" (Green and Campbell 2003, 133) and thus the genre approach to teaching writing emerged.
The genre approach promotes a selection of text types that are "modelled, jointly constructed with the teacher and then independently written by the children" (Derewianka, 1990, in Green and Campbell, 2003, 133). This is a useful approach to take, because when planning a writing program for students, many aspects of writing need to be considered, including "the nature of writing, the relationship between writing and reading [and] the way the social purposes of writing change for different groups in our culture."
Teacher with students in Benin classroom
Student teacher in China teaching children English...
English: Jewish Children with their Teacher in Sam...(Green and Campbell, 2003, 132). Thus modelled, shared and guided writing have a fundamental role within the genre approach to teaching writing.
By way of example, the process a teacher could use to introduce 'expositions' is woven through this essay. Expositions could be incorporated into the writing and reading centres for free time reading and writing so that children are familiar with the genre and its purpose and they have had experience with using it. Expositions could also be integrated across the curriculum - an article for a science magazine, a mathematical argument, a topical debate for SOSE, so the students would be exposed to as many expositions as possible in varying circumstances.
Cambourne, an...