Assisting Pre-University ESL Learners to Gain Control of the Report Writing Based on Graphical Data: A Genre-based Approach

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effectiveness of the genre-based approach to teaching report-writing based on graphical data to pre-university students. It employed a mixed method approach where data were gathered using quantitative and qualitative method. The quantitative data was aimed at obtaining information on the effect of the genre-based report writing training based on the performance of students in whereas the qualitative data was obtained to elicit respondents’ opinions on report writing from graphical data. The sample consisted of 62 Form Six students who were studying English for university entry known as Malaysian University English Test (MUET). The English proficiency of the students is generally of low to average level. Most of them are of Dusun and Bajau ethnics background, of Sabah, Malaysia. Findings from the study showed that there is significant difference between the experimental and the control groups in terms of organization, development of ideas and vocabulary. Analysis of the students’ responses to the open-ended questions seems to indicate that vocabulary is still the main problems students faced in writing the reports. Conclusions drawn from the findings of the study imply that the Genre-based approach to writing structure of a four-stage training cycle, namely the context exploration, text exploration, joint construction, and the individual application stages adapted from Derewianka (1990) and Butt et al (2001) do assist these learners to gain control of the report-writing genre.

Key words: genre-based, report writing, graphical data, Pre-University ESL learners.