Still not teaching the 5-paragraph essay!

“Our concern is not to banish the evils of incoherence, nor to promote writing as the free expression of the author’s voice. We have seen over and over that the explicit and thorough teaching of genres is the best way to level the playing field and give marginalized learners of all ages access to the high-stakes ways of knowing, reading, and writing that will open doors in their academic, professional, and social lives.”

– Read the rest of my post with Luciana de Oliveira on the TESOL blog and for an example of genre-based pedagogy in action (or at least in a series of ESL textbooks), take a look at Inside Writing!