ASIAN EFL JOURNAL fe Reflections on Modified Genre-Based Instructions to Teach Essay Writing to Thai University Students Nguyen Thi Thuy Loan Kalasin University, Thailand profile Nguyen Thi Thuy Loan (Ph.D.) is a lecturer at Division of English, Faculty of Education, Kalasin University, Thailand, Her research interests include ESP, discourse and genre analysis, genre-based instruction, academic writing and textual analysis. She may be reached at thuyloancailay@yahoo.com. Abstract Thai university students* English language performance has been reported to be unsatisfactory and their writing ability is of particular concern as most writing programs are still taught using the grammar translation model. Therefore, an effort to help Thai students improve their writing skills in English has been exerted. The present study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a modified genre-based instruction to teach essay writing to Thai university students whose major is in English. This approach was modified to suit these students* difficulties, needs and expectations in studying writing in English as revealed in the questionnaire and the suggestions from previous studies on Thai leamers. Besides the supplementary materials on the basic structure of an academic essay and four target types of essays (explanation, problem-solution, comparison-contrast, and persuasion) which were developed and taught together with the course book employing the modified genre-based approach, a 5-point Likert scale survey and a focus group interview were also conducted and 296 essays were graded to lear about the effectiveness of this modified instruction, In addition to these students* topics of interest, writing strategies, difficulties, and expectations from the writing course and their teacher, the results showed their positive attitudes to the new teaching approach, activities and exercises and a positive signal for autonomous learning ‘Rares Tor correspondence despite their slight resistance. Moreover, their writing was Division of English found to be successful in terms of their control of the Faculty of Education, Kalasn University {3 Meo 14, Songpieuy subse. internal structure and their use of appropriate linguistic amon dsc, Kalasin province Thailand 46230 features specific to each type of essay to achieve its 148communicative purposes. These findings would suggest a new model for effectively teaching writing in a culturally-based context of English learning that exists in Thailand and in other Asian countries with similar cultural values, Keywords: essay writing, Thai university student, writing instruction, genre approach, El learner Introduction Essays are considered as a genre because they are written for the intended audience and in a recognizable structure in order to achieve a particular communicative purpose. Hyland (2004) and Martin (1989) state that essays which narrate, report, explain, recount, describe, or account for something are factual genres or various forms of communication in a situated social context. An essay, therefore, is understood in the way social purposes are linked to text structures and these structures are realized as situated social and linguistic actions. To achieve a particular goal of an essay, writers thus need to structure the essay in a way that they can get things done as intended, Because the communicative purposes represented in essays are realized through their generic structural elements and lexico-grammatical features, these purposes, elements and features are identified when the genre is taught, based on examples of this particular genre, This teaching approach is defined as a genre-based approach or framework for language instruction” (Byram, 2004, p. 234). Providing students with generalized, systematic guiding principles about how to produce meaningful texts in this ‘genre-based approach is claimed to be necessary for them to recognize these features in the texts that they read and use them in the texts that they write (Bawarshi & Reiff, 2010; Hyland, 2007; Hyon, 1996). Although genre-based approaches were mainly criticized for offering teachers and learners a formulaic, mechanic, rigid, and prescriptive how-to-do-lists (Kay & Dudley- 1998), they have been reported to have a positive impact on students and their writing in various EFL settings, namely Brunei, India, Korea, Taiwan and Thailand (Changpueng, 2012; Henry & Roseberry, 1998, 1999; Johnson & Lin, 2016; Y. Kim & Kim, 2005; Kongpetch, 2006; Swami, 2008; Yang, 2012a, 2012). In fact, through genre-based instructions, learners in EFL contexts become more confident and better writers (Johnson & Lin, 2016; Yang, 2012a). Swami (2008) also emphasized that genre-based approaches enable Indian learners to gain insight into the working of the genre, the formal and functional properties of a language, 149and how and why linguistic conventions are employed for particular rhetorical effects. Such information will form a kind of background knowledge that students can activate in the next earning situation and will make it easier for them to produce acceptable structures in their writing tasks (M. Kim, 2007). Although Matsuda (2003, p. 69) describes process-centered approaches of four stages: prewriting, composing/drafting, revising, and editing as the most successful pedagogical reform”, Hyland (2003a, pp. 18, 20 & 25) argues that these teaching approaches eave students innocent of the valued ways of acting and being in society” and Jacking cultural and linguistic resources necessary for them to engage critically with texts”. Knapp and Watkins (2005, p. 8) also add that treating language learning mainly as -¢n individualized phenomenon” and in under-valuing instruction in textual form, process- centered approaches result in students* failing to develop an adequate understanding of contextualized language knowledge. Stewart (2016), in addition, advises that because the writing process is as important as the product, writing instructors need to model what they would like their students to do. Her advice tends to be in line with Badger and White (2000) and Y. Kim and Kim‘s (2005) suggestion of balancing these two approaches in teaching writing, Research on process-genre approaches has been reported to have positive impacts on EFL students‘ writing abilities in Indonesia, Nigeria, and Yemen (Assaggaf, 2016; Babalola, 2012; Gupitasari, 2013). In Thailand where English has been taught as a foreign language for decades, students in higher education have to be fluent in English writing because some courses or programs require them to write essays, reports and research papers in English (Wongsothom, 1994) This is in accordance with the national objectives as expressed in the Thai education reform agenda, which aims to ensure that Thais are able to actively participate in the global economy rather than to serve as a source of cheap labor in multinational corporations (Office of the National Education Commission, 1996). Furthermore, due to globalization and industrialization, especially among ASEAN countries, research is increasingly globalized in ‘Thailand and Thai graduates who have a good command of English will be more easily able to compete for international research funding for both domestic and international research projects, In the global competitive environment itis also the case that Thai graduates who are good at English will have an edge over their peers in terms of their career choices or professional advancement, At the university level, however, the English proficiency of Thai students is often less than satisfactory (Boonpattanaporn, 2008; Komin, 1998). This is because English is taught as fa separate subject rather than being used as the medium of communication, In Wongsothorn‘s 150