A genre-based approach to teaching writing: report writing for english for science and technology (EST) / Lily Dripin

The research documents an initiative in introducing a genre-based approach to writing English for Science and Technology (EST) reports in the Malaysian secondary school context for Form 5. The genre-based approach to writing was adapted from the English for Specific Purpose (ESP), the Australian genre-based educational linguistics and the North American New Rhethorical Studies. The approach was distinctive as it sought to use the genre-based pedagogy with English as a second language (ESL) students who take up EST as a subject in school. The aim of this research is to illustrate how and why such as approach may be applied to English as a second language (ESL) teaching in Malaysian schools. The study employed a qualitative research design and the data were obtained from several sources, namely a writing programme over a period of six weeks; collection ofsamples of students’ pre-test and post-tests texts which were analysed using Swales’ Move as developed by Swales (1990), and pre-test and post-test scores.