Textual competence includes comprehension and composing texts of different types and genres. Systematic Functional Linguistics groups texts according to the learning areas and suggests key genres for teaching. The aim of this article is to present findings of the study conducted among the students of English as a second language. The aim of the study was to determine prior knowledge and understanding of the students by self-evaluation of their awareness on text genres and stating the actual level of their knowledge. The purpose of the study was to identify difficulties and to find ways for developing students’ textual competences.