A GENRE-BASED APPROACH TO TEACHING ACADEMIC WRITING: A METHODOLOGY FOR ABSTRACT AND LITERATURE REVIEW WRITING TO EFL STUDENTS

This article proposes and examines a systematic, genre-based methodology for teaching two critical academic writing genres—the abstract and the literature review—to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students at the tertiary level. Recognizing the significant challenges EFL learners face in mastering the rhetorical, linguistic, and structural conventions of these genres, this study advocates for an explicit pedagogical framework grounded in Genre-Based Instruction (GBI). The methodology integrates elements of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and the Teaching-Learning Cycle (TLC), moving from deconstruction and modeling of exemplar texts to joint construction and independent writing. A quasi-experimental design was employed with an experimental group (n=30) receiving the genre-based intervention and a control group (n=30) following a traditional product-oriented approach. Pre-test and post-test analyses of students’ writing, alongside semi-structured interviews, revealed that the experimental group demonstrated statistically significant improvement in rhetorical structure, lexical appropriateness, and metadiscoursal features. The findings suggest that explicit genre awareness, coupled with scaffolded practice, empowers EFL students to produce more competent and confident academic writing. This paper contributes to the field of EFL pedagogy by providing a replicable framework for genre instruction.