Genre pedagogy to teach spoken reports in EFL

Abstract Genre-based pedagogy is an approach for promoting school literacy that uses texts as basis for instruction. Since its origins in the 1980s, however, this pedagogy has emphasized written literacy, paying less attention to students’ spoken communication, particularly in EFL classrooms. To address this gap, this study assesses whether genre-based pedagogy may also promote students’ spoken communication. We adapted this pedagogy to help sixth graders create spoken descriptive reports in an EFL Colombian classroom. Our adaptation, called talking to learn (T2L), consists of a scaffolded instructional cycle that uses authentic spoken texts as the starting point for instruction. Using a case study-mixed methods design, we collected data from pre– and post–test spoken tasks, observations, and interviews. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were integrated with a joint display. Findings suggest that T2L helped students produce well-organized spoken descriptive reports, becoming a valuable tool for developing students’ ability to create meaning in EFL.