The impact of a genre pedagogy implementation on students’ writing of opinion argumentative texts

Abstract

This study gives an account of action research that analyzed the impact of the Sydney School Genre Pedagogy on students’ writing of opinion texts in the city of Barranquilla, Colombia. The study adopted the Systemic functional linguistic theory to approach language usage, learning, and analysis. It made use of qualitative instruments for data collection including class observations, teacher journals, class documents, and text analysis. The teacher was also the researcher while the students were adult EFL learners who participated voluntarily in a 20- hour writing course. The results of the study highlight the impact that the Genre Pedagogy (GP) has on students’ increased control of generic structure and lexicogrammar features of this genre. They also serve as a reference for implementing this pedagogy in other teaching and learning environments.