Reading and writing genres

We can use many different types of texts in the classroom. Exploring a range of genres—texts with different styles, formats, and audiences—helps learners develop their reading and writing skills.

Many genres provide opportunities to practise specific reading skills such as identifying topic and supporting sentences. We can also use different genres to show examples of cohesion. Cohesive devices are words that ‘glue together’ words in a sentence or sentences in a paragraph and make texts easier to follow and understand.

Reading and writing genres

This unit looks at different reading and writing genres.

Part 1 highlights how genres are exploited in the classroom, helping learners to identify the purpose and intended audience of a text and how this affects format, style and language.

Part 2 shows an example of how a teacher exploits a model text for a film review.

Part 3 looks at how a teacher uses authentic texts to introduce her learners to the genre of advertising.

Procedure

• Download the session notes below. The notes contain discussion, video-viewing and reflection tasks.
• Follow the tasks by going through the video in sequence.
• The video and session notes are designed as self-study resources to be worked through together. Techniques are transferable to other classes in other contexts.

Download the session notes