This document discusses the genre-based approach to teaching English as a foreign language. It examines how textbooks and other classroom materials expose students to various genres like letters, advertisements, and news articles through both written and visual examples. However, it notes that classroom genres are adapted forms of real-world genres and may not fully represent their true purpose, structure, or linguistic features. The document also emphasizes the need to develop students' multimodal communicative competence so they can understand how words and images convey meaning individually and together. Overall, it considers how textbooks organize and sequence language topics but may present a reduced version of genres that does not mirror their authentic social or professional uses.

1. HERMAIS, Barbara. Genres in English language course books: teaching words and images. GONÇALVE, G. R; et alii
(orgs). New Challenges in Language and Literature. Belo Horizonte: Faculdade de Letras da UFMG, 2009.p 67-79.
GENRE-BASED APPROACH TO EFL TEACHING
Exposure to genres through teaching materials
 Acquire genre knowledge
 Genre recognition
 Understanding of genre structure and linguistic code
 Awareness of genre context
 Produce the genre for professional, academic or social purpose.
 Genre purposes.
 Audience expectations.
 Discursive practices preferred in discourse communities.
THE TEXTBOOK- A CLASSROOM GENRE
 It functions communicatively as a source of instruction and information about
how people do things in society (Davies).
 It assures that learning actually happens in school. (Soares)
 It is a tool for teaching the knowledge that is understood to be necessary for
learner participation in society.
 The ELT course book- what needs to be learned about language is
organized and sequenced in the book in language topics or grammar
points. It is arranged and illustrated in a series of sub-genres.
 It contains a number of genres or sub-genres (letters, advertisements,
postcards, forms, news articles, etc.).
 Some of the genres are in written form and some are images.
 Genres with graphic features (font type, size, page layout, etc.)
 Genres are used as a support for teaching and learning (topics for
discussion).
 Genres used in a direct relation to a language topic (language items
practice).
CLASSROOM GENRES

2.  They are not just ways of communicating but also objects of teaching and
learning.
 They carry out activities in the genre system of the university (formal
schooling, grades and diploma).
 Their purpose is not to help learners perform in professional capacities.
Instead, they should help learners become involved in the language learning
system or in recognized language learning practices used in a discourse
community of teacher and learner (Russel).
 Classroom genres X Genres used in original social or professional
contexts
 Format and linguistic conventions may be adapted.
 Genres may be presented in an incomplete form.
 Learners will not understand the structure, purpose or linguistic
features of the genre.
Classroom activities can be unrelated to “real life”.
MULTIMODAL AWARENESS
 “Learners need to develop a multimodal communicative competence in order
to be enabled to deal with the demands they encounter in the use of English”.
(Terry Royce).
 Books seem to depend on the visual appeal. They reflect the post-modern
image-laden society.
 The perspective of multimodality
 Observe the characteristics that formatting, photos, graphics, colors,
drawings and layout all have for making meanings.
 Understand the intentions that inform visual representations and meanings
in course book images.
 Words and images can make different meanings.
 Image realizes the same systems of meanings as words do, but the images
do so “by means of its own specific forms, and independently”. (Kress and
van Leeuwen)
 Pedagogical functions of the images
 What meanings are offered in the images on the pages of the books?
 Are meanings explored in the activities of the book?
 How are the images related to the meanings in verbal texts in the
books?
 What do the images actually contribute to the learning process?

3.  Use of images in course books
 Images sometimes seem to merely complement the verbal text.
 Activity with a tourist guide book genre- Visual features of images
are excluded. Chances for learning about the meaning of an image
are unexplored.
Learners’ perception of the learning process
 A course book task may guide the learner toward a particular
language point or it may present a reduced version of a genre.
 Learners may understand that the language learning experience
is more controlled than they imagined and is about tasks rather than
about genres.
 The challenging for teaching English language would seem to
be to identify the teacher’s role in the transfer of pedagogical
genre knowledge to social and professional knowledge of genres.