THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GENRE KNOWLEDGE AND WRITING PERFORMANCE

Kutay Uzun

DOI Number
-
First page
153
Last page
162

Abstract


Genre knowledge can be defined as the type of knowledge that is required to communicate within a discourse community. As an integral part of the academic community, students are also expected to conform to the conventions of particular genres in their assignments, reports or presentations. However, the literature relevant to Genre Knowledge in the Turkish higher education context appears to be indicating a gap regarding if and how the knowledge of a particular genre is related to the written composition profiles of learners. In this respect, the present study aims to find out if genre knowledge is related to writing performance in terms of content, organization, vocabulary, language use and the mechanics of writing. To meet the aims of the study, a quantitative and cross-sectional study design was employed in the setting of a compulsory English Literature course in an ELT department, during which course students are frequently assigned to write literary analysis essays. Since the study is of a correlational nature, 30 literary analysis essays were collected from second-year ELT students with low, middle and high levels of genre knowledge, which was assessed by means of a checklist, developed and validated by Uzun (2016) in the same context to assess the level of adherence to the genre conventions of literary analysis essays. The ESL Composition Profile of Jacobs et al. (1981) was used to assess essay writing performance. The relationship between genre knowledge and writing performance was sought for through correlation analyses. Group comparisons were made by means of Kruskal Wallis and Mann Whitney U tests. The findings are discussed in the conclusion section.


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