The Effect of Genre-Based Teaching on EFL Learners' Speaking Performance

The present study examined the effect of genre-based tasks on EFL learners'speaking performance and probed whether genre-based tasks may empower EFLlearners to perform better on speaking tests. A further concern of the study was toexplore whether the effect of genre-based tasks on speaking ability of EFL learnersvaried across different age groups, i.e. teenagers (13-16 years old) and young adults(24-27 years old). To this end, some generic based consciousness-raising tasks(CRT) were adapted from the model proposed by Benedict (2006) to developcontrol of a genre used as the treatment procedures. Two different speaking tests ofdifferent genres (e.g. recount, report, review, etc.), used as pretest and posttest,were administered to 120 senior university students majoring in English languagetranslation. The results indicated that consciousness-raising tasks significantlyaffected EFL learners' speaking performance. However, the effect of generic-basedCRTs did not vary across different age groups. Overall, the findings providedempirical support for the facilitative effect of generic-based consciousness-raisingtasks on speaking performance of EFL learners. The findings may promiseimplications for EFL speaking syllabuses and provide guidelines to designers toaccommodate the insights derived from the genre-based instruction perspective.

کلیدواژه ها:

Genre ، Consciousness-Raising Tasks ، Speaking Fluency ، EFL Learners