An Analysisi of Teaching Writing through Genre Based Approach at SMA 10 Pekanbaru

This study explores senior high school teachers’ adoption and teaching practice of the Genre-Based Approach for teaching writing skills as a part of Indonesia’s new curriculum initiative. The research is qualitative descriptive research. The participants are a small group of senior high school English teachers. The data were collected through interviews, documentation and observation. The result of this research demonstrates that despite the Genre-Based Approach has been introduced for three years, many teachers still did not fully understand the application and aims of this approach. There is still a mismatch between the conceptual theory of the Genre-Based Approach for teaching writing skills and these teachers’ teaching practice in the classroom, particularly in selecting appropriate classroom activities for each phase of the curriculum cycle. In addition, the difficulties of teachers in teaching writing are the lack of vocabulary and the ability of students in constructing sentences. Taking into account the findings of this research, it is suggested that the Indonesian government invest in training more appropriate to the task of training teachers in the Genre-Based Approach. This training should be available equally to all teachers of English, and should focus not only on the theory of the approach, but also on the practical applications in the classroom. On the other hand, teachers also should be more active to develop their professional achievement through any possible way. Although this research deals exclusively with the application of the Genre-Based Approach for teaching English writing skills, the implications of this research could also be important to the application of the approach for teaching others skills such as teaching integrated language skills and critical thinking.