Biodata
Laura Flores
Is a teacher of English language and literature at the National Teacher Education Institute in Uruguay. She has an MA in English, specializing in Anglo-American Literatures, from the National University of Córdoba, Argentina (2013) and a Diploma in Education from FLACSO (2002). She has recently been admitted as a doctoral student in Linguistics at the PUC, Chile. Her research interest centres on the pedagogical potential of genre theory based on systemic-functional linguistics.
Cecilia Prieto
Is a teacher of English as a Foreign Language who graduated from the Instituto de Profesores Artigas, Montevideo, Uruguay. Her language teaching experience includes work in both public and private Institutions, where she taught English as a Foreign Language and supervised teachers in the collective design and implementation of syllabi that both met the National Educational Standards and conceived language from a genre based perspective. She is currently teaching EFL to adult learners in a state school, acting as a pedagogic consultant in a private school and working in syllabus design and implementation in three vocational schools in Montevideo.
Serrana Echenagusía
Has a bachelor degree in Humanities (Universidad de Montevideo) and a postgraduate qualification in Education (Universidad ORT, Montevideo). She also holds a diploma in TESOL (Institute of Education, University of London). She has worked as a language teacher in private institutions and in a public vocational school. She has been a teacher coordinator and is currently a pedagogic assistant for the English learning programme at Plan Ceibal.
Boosting meaningful learning and achieving measurable improvement in students with a basic level of English through a genre-based approach
Serrana Echenagusía, Laura Flores and Cecilia Prieto
As language teachers, we aim to enhance the potential of our syllabi, become effective mentors of our students, and build theory from our teaching experience. With a view to reaching these aims, we implemented an English language pilot programme in three Uruguayan schools. With ten other teachers we collectively built our syllabi from a genre-based perspective. This paper explores our action research approach, examining how and what a 'genre approach' can contribute to language achievements of students at A0-A1 Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) levels, as evaluated by instruments designed from the CEFR criteria.