English for Specific Purposes
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PEDAGOGIC GENRE ANALYSIS: A MODULE FOR COPY-WRITING

Hajibah Osman

Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Genre analysis has established its place in linguistic research on academic and professional genres but applications of the findings have not been maximised in language pedagogy. This paper attempts to establish pedagogic genre analysis with the main objective of demonstrating how the results of genre analysis can be successfully employed in language instruction. The analysis is based on Bhatia’s framework for identifying generic moves followed by a grammatical analysis on a corpus created from 20 print brochures from Malaysian universities. The results were presented in a detailed module specifically developed for teaching copy-writing for corporate brochures, a genre-based instruction (GBI) in ESP. The module was pilot-tested, improved and used with groups of students in the faculty of communication studies in a Malaysian public university. Findings of the pilot study and the actual study reveal the success of the module and hence GBI in improving students’ writing skills thus creating interest in the ESL/ESP classrooms. The main contributing factor to the success is the genre knowledge that the teacher possesses.

Keywords: genre analysis, pedagogy, public relations, copy writing, module

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