The Effect of Genre Awareness on the Development of EFL Learners’ Letter Writing Skills

The current study was undertaken to investigate the efficacy of genre-based instruction on the development of EFL learners’ writing skills. A quasi-experimental research design was used in this study in order to examine the qualitative aspects of students’ writing performances on three letter-writing tasks. The participants of this study were thirty four undergraduate students majoring in textile engineering at Yazd University who had enrolled in an ESAP course. The students were taught how to write three types of business letter namely, inquiry, reply, and order letter with the help of a genre-based technique highlighting the presentation of appropriate moves. The students’ writing performances across these writing tasks were graded based on Jacobs et. al’s (1981) scoring system. The data was analyzed by using repeated measure ANOVA and through SPSS software. The results from the analysis of students’ scores showed that genre-based approach could develop students’ letter writing skills. It can also be inferred from this study that conscious knowledge of genre-moves plays an important role in effective use of English while writing business letters.