Students learning to write in L2 need to be aware of
text genres: not simply of generic conventions, but of
genre in the wider sense of communicative events or
acts. This article claims that transforming texts from
one genre to another, using information and ideas in
the source text to create new texts for different
audiences and purposes, helps students to become aware
of and take into account genre-related features such
as writer-reader relationship, purpose of writing, and
medium. As well as discussing the advantages and
drawbacks of using text transformation tasks on a
writing course, both from theoretical and practical
viewpoints, the article outlines how work on such tasks
may be organised, and gives examples of task types.
However, text transformation is a very flexible type of
exercise, adaptable to different approaches to teaching
writing, and to classes of different levels and with
different writing goals.
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