Supporting
Bilingual Learners through Genre-Based Pedagogy
Genre pedagogy offers bilingual students explicit instruction surrounding literary genres that supports their development as writers and readers. Instead of leaving the specific components of genres hidden, it demystifies the ingredients that make up effective pieces of writing. Many cultural dimensions of literacy learning remain implicit in instruction. For students who have home cultures that are different from the dominant culture, this can feel confusing.
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SFL genre pedagogy is an explicit approach to writing instruction that illuminates the (culturally) specific elements of writing--breaking down each genre into its purpose, organizational structure, and linguistic features. In this, all students are given the explicit tools to navigate many different types of writing that they encounter in schools.​
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Importantly, SFL genre pedagogy is not a tool for assimilation. It equips students with these tools while also helping them make informed choices about how and what they want to write based on who they are. ​​​Alongside explicit instruction, genre pedagogy leverages students' linguistic and cultural strengths in their development as writers.
Creating on Their Own Terms
Genre pedagogy helps students learn the "recipes" to different genres of writing.
SFL genre pedagogy supports students in learning the traditional text types they encounter in school (e.g., reports, arguments, fictional narratives, explanations). Just like when baking breads and desserts, these are cultural ways of engaging with language and texts. Typically, though, texts that students encounter in school have a monolingual, monocultural orientation.
SFL genre pedagogy is not simply aimed at students reproducing school-based forms of writing. The aim is for students to learn the basics of the “recipe” so that they can make creative choices with their own writing, bringing themselves fully to the task of composing. This is where the teacher plays an important role in elevating students’ multilingualism and multiculturalism in the process of writing.​​
Like baking, learning to be a strong writer in school contexts requires learning how to navigate a recipe. We wouldn’t just give bakers a bunch of ingredients and expect them to already know how to create pan dulce. Rather, bakers often learn by reading lots of different examples of recipes and trying them out, ideally with a more experienced baker. They do this until they master their bread or dessert and, ultimately, design their own recipes by making their own choices!​
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Genre pedagogy operates with the same approach. Through the Teaching and Learning Cycle, students learn the "recipe" of each genre including purpose, organizational structure, and linguistic features. They learn in supported, collaborative ways before they are expected to create a written composition independently.
Learning with Support
How does Translanguaging Complement Genre Pedagogy?
Both genre pedagogy and translanguaging pedagogy help students make informed choices while writing that align with their intended purposes and audiences.
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Genre pedagogy helps students learn the ingredients of specific genres to then be able to make their own choices as authors that align with what they want to achieve through a particular piece of writing. Students are able to choose specific organizational structures, words, phrases, and sentence structures suited to their purpose and audience. For instance, in a report, students consider the adjectives and prepositional phrases they use to "pack" information for their readers. In a personal recount, students use language that reflects the way they naturally tell stories about their lives and make linguistic choices that reflect this.
Translanguaging pedagogy also supports students to have this type of agency in their decision making process as authors and communicators. A key feature of teaching with a translanguaging stance is understanding that bilingual people constantly choose from their entire bank of language resources--their linguistic repertoire--to achieve their communicative goals. From the earliest ages, bilingual children express intentionality behind their language choices with peers as they choose to speak in their different languages or with features from both. For instance, they express awareness that through their language choices they can accommodate monolingual peers (Martinez Negrette, 2024) and align themselves with their friends’ language preferences (Bengochea & Gort, 2022).
Thus, understanding that bilingual people are constantly choosing specific features from their entire linguistic repertoire can be integrated seamlessly with genre pedagogy. Both support active choices regarding linguistic features to support children's communicative purposes as authors.​
Ask Students
Who is your audience?
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Is your audience your family? Kindergarteners? The school principal? Someone else?
What what linguistic features (words, phrases, language(s), and/or language varieties) will best communicate your message to them?
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How might your linguistic choices need to differ based on who your audience is?
When cultivating students' translanguaging practices, you can still guide students to produce written compositions exclusively in one named language. After all, this might align to their audience.
However, the learning process can nurture the translanguaging corriente and encourage students to use all of their linguistic resources along the way in service of their learning. All parts of the Teaching and Learning Cycle can encourage translanguaging.
Translanguaging in the Teaching and Learning Cycle Can Look Like
Joint Construction
In their discussion, students might use features from multiple languages to work together to make decisions about what words to use and how to spell them.
Building the Field
Students can read texts in multiple languages to learn about a topic before writing a report. They can take notes in both languages and use all of their linguistic resources as they learn content before composing a report.
Independent Construction
In writing a fictional narrative, students might choose to include bilingual dialogue to reflect the languaging practices of bilingual characters.