Text-based Instruction

Text-based Instruction (also called the genre-based approach or genre pedagogy) is an approach to language teaching that organises learning around text types (genres) — the predictable patterns of language that serve particular social purposes. Drawing on systemic functional linguistics (Halliday), it teaches learners to recognise, analyse, and produce the specific text types they need for academic, professional, or social purposes.

Core Idea

Every culture has recognisable text types — narratives, reports, explanations, arguments, procedures, recounts — each with characteristic structures, language features, and social purposes. A narrative has an orientation, complication, and resolution. A procedural text has a goal, materials, and sequenced steps. Text-based instruction makes these patterns explicit so learners can both comprehend and produce them.

The Teaching-Learning Cycle

The most widely used framework is the four-stage cycle developed by the Sydney School (Martin, Rothery, Christie):

1. Building the field. Developing knowledge of the topic and the context in which the text type is used.
2. Modelling and deconstructing. Analysing model texts to identify their structure, language features, and purpose.
3. Joint construction. Teacher and students collaboratively write a text of the target type, with the teacher scaffolding the process.
4. Independent construction. Students write their own text, applying what they have learned.

Strengths

• Makes implicit knowledge about text organisation explicit and accessible, particularly for learners from different rhetorical traditions.
• Directly addresses academic literacy needs — crucial for learners preparing for university study.
• Provides a principled basis for writing instruction that goes beyond "write about this topic."
• Widely adopted in Australian ESL education and increasingly in other contexts.

Limitations

• Risk of becoming prescriptive — reducing genre to a rigid template rather than a flexible resource.
• Critics argue it is too teacher-directed and product-oriented, potentially stifling creativity.
• Genres are culturally specific; the approach can impose dominant culture norms on learners from different rhetorical traditions.

Key References

• Martin, J.R. (1992). English Text: System and Structure. John Benjamins.
• Christie, F. & Martin, J.R. (Eds.) (1997). Genre and Institutions: Social Processes in the Workplace and School. Cassell.
• Feez, S. (1998). Text-based Syllabus Design. NCELTR, Macquarie University.
• Hyland, K. (2007). Genre pedagogy: Language, literacy and L2 writing instruction. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16(3), 148–164.