Improvement of Teaching and Assessing the Skill of Writing Cohesive Texts

Effects of Using Genre-Based Learning, Practice and Assessment Tasks

Abstract

The improvement of teaching and assessing the skills of writing cohesive texts has been one of the pressing matters for English teachers in Japan. Surveys conducted in 2015 show that most of the Japanese junior high school students do not have enough confidence in their ability to write cohesive English texts and that their teachers find difficulty in teaching the writing skills of such texts (AEON, 2015; MEXT, 2015a). In order to find solutions to the issue, a small-scale research project was carried out in a municipal junior high school for about six months in 2014. A Japanese female English teacher taught 34 second-year students how to write cohesive texts using genre-based writing instruction (GBWI) and genre-based writing assessment (GBWA). The teacher explained the features of the genre and text type of a model text, and her students wrote parallel cohesive texts, first being guided, and then on their own. She used learning, practice and assessment tasks in her teaching-learning and practice-assessment cycles. Other scaffoldings she provided include assessment criteria, self- and teacher-assessment opportunities and conferencing. The results of a questionnaire completed by the students show that they appreciate GBWI and GBWA and that they have more confidence in writing cohesive texts than before.