A genre-based approach to the teaching of report-writing

Abstract Part of the EST/ESP teacher's task is to help students acquire the formal schemata required to produce scientific texts. But the teaching of explicitly structured writing (e.g., report-writing) is important not only as a means of teaching students how to express and present information effectively. It is also a means of facilitating the development of scientific thinking. When marking a technical report, the teacher must examine the extent to which the student is able to utilize schematic structures to communicate his or her scientific/engineering thinking. This article investigates the application of the genre-based approach in the teaching of scientific and technical writing to L2 students, and also demonstrates how a genre for feedback on written reports can be “created” and implemented with the aid of a “small expert system.”