Teaching Genre in College Basic Draft

Teaching Genre in College 1
Teaching Genre in College

Eduard C. Hanganu
B.A., M.A., Linguistics
Lecturer in English, UE
Draft 4
Revised November 25, 2014
2014
Abstract
The identification of the genre of a text is an important aspect of written language comprehension,
and interpretation, and should be part of the required language skills for college students. Scholars
are divided, though, about instruction in genre. Some think that students acquire genre knowledge
in a natural manner, through the mere exposure to texts which represent various generic structures,
while other scholars believe that the students need explicit instruction in genres in order to be able
to categorize texts, recognize their generic structures, and comprehend the social functions and the
rhetorical roles that text perform inside the social and cultural milieu in which they are embedded.
Understanding genre as social action which accomplishes various rhetorical functions in the social
context has important implications for instructors and students. Often college education appears to
be detached from the real, professional life, and students think that taking composition courses has
a mere didactic purpose, and that no acquired college skills could be transferred into authentic and
lucrative professions. Research done in the past decades shows that students could be instructed in
genre in such ways that their acquired theoretical and practical knowledge might be used in actual
careers. This can be achieved through solid, explicit genre teaching in classrooms, through the use
of mediating genres that lessen the gap between the academic context, and the business world, and
through cooperative work between the classroom and various businesses which could benefit from
the professional work which students could perform free of charge.
Key words: genre, teaching, instruction, definition, method, approach.
Teaching Genre in College

Courses in literature include, in addition to the reading and discussion of certain classical
and modern works, text criticism and appreciation. Such work demands understanding genre and
its textual functions (classification device, communicative event, and social action) as quite often
"genre mistakes cause the wrong kind of truth values to be attached to sentences" (Barr, 1973, p.
125), metaphorical meaning is interpreted as literal, fiction is read as actual narratives, legal texts
are understood as affected, exaggerated language, and perfomative expressions are ignored. Such
misunderstanding of the textual meaning could have consequences ranging from confusion about
the intended social action and rhetorical purpose of a text, to legal issues. Explicit theoretical and
empirical knowledge about genre through exposure to different generic structures should help the
readers avoid such confusion and misunderstanding. This paper summarizes various perspectives
on the teaching of genre in college, contends that students must be taught genre in an explicit and
direct manner in order to be able to interpret texts adequately, and reviews different methods and
approaches that could be used to provide students with theoretical data, and empirical experience
in the genre identification of various texts.
Teaching Genre in College: Perspectives
Productive reading occurs as an interaction, or dialogue, between the reader and the text,
and is based on certain assumptions which the reader makes about the form and content of the
text, and on certain expectations the reader has about it. These expectations indicate the reader's
previous experience with various texts, and the presence of internalized generic structure patterns
which come to be compared with the actual format and content of the texts under inspection.
Among the generic structures, or genres, to which the reader is exposed one can mention prose,
newspaper stories, fiction, biographies, advertising, fable, academic writing, etc. During the past
decades, more genres, which represent basic social activities, have been added to the record, and
among them are "business, politics, medicine, religion, and sport." In fact more research shows
that all human activities could be included in different generic categories (Beghtol, 2000, p 17).
This extension of generic categories from literature and art to common human activities
which occur in the social context has originated with Miller's (1984) article, Genre as Social,
Action, in which she departs from the conventional definition of genre as a classification device to
its redefinition as rhetorical and social action. From an inactive mechanical device, genre is seen
as a social agent that interacts with the socio-cultural context, and supplies the framework for the
organization of thoughts, interests, and purposes (Kain &Wardle, 2005, p. 16). Miller (1984) also
defines those parameters within which a certain text can be termed "discourse" and can be
included in a certain generic group, and insists that the most important aspect of text is not its
form and content, but its rhetorical and social functions (p. 151).
Beghtol (2000) paraphrases Miller's (1984) ground-breaking understanding of genre and
states that "we need also to relate these genre issues to the larger scale of the cultural context of
the various genres" (p. 19), and mentions that the reader's expectation concerning the text must be
included in the writer's interests, as readers match prototypical generic models with the actual text
which they read in the process of genre identification (p. 18). Her article opened a new field in
genre research which Freedman has called "rhetorical genre studies (RGS)," and that relates genre
and composition from a pedagogical perspective, in order to emphasize the generic factors that
have a bearing on education and involve teaching and learning (Freedman, 1999, p. 764).
Freedman (1999), agrees with Bakhtin's (1986) warning that language use and research
cannot be done without a clear understanding that language is a social event, and must not be
separated from the social realm, as such a viewpoint will cause estrangement, evasion from the
real world and retreat into abstractions, and a disconnection between language and life (p. 766;
Bakhtin, 1986, p 63). Composition courses need to state their rhetorical purposes, which are to
teach about human existence and social life, to provide students with clear perspectives on the
people around them, and to involve students in the dream for a better life (Freedman, 1999, pp.
766-767).
Engagement with the text occurs through an instinctive evaluation of the co-text, context,
and the rhetorical situation of that fragment of discourse. The crucial questions asked are related
to the text's intended communicative purpose(s), its meaning, the structure and the content of the
discourse fragment, and the emotional load of the message. This assembled information provides
the reader with data needed for the decoding of the message (Bawarshi, 2000, p. 335). The trade
between the reader and the text does not leave the reader unchanged. Smith (1991) remarks that
some of the effects that literature reading has on students are (1) emotional growth, (2) cognitive
development, (3) fictional character emulation, and (4) skills development. Due to the fact that
generic features differ in strength among genres, exposure to multiple genres provides enhanced
cognitive and emotional learning experiences for students (p. 440).
The past four decades have witnessed a constant debate concerning whether genre should
be taught to students in school as an explicit subject, or whether the students should be permitted
to acquire this knowledge in a subconscious manner, through reading exposure to various genres.
Commenting on the genre debate, Henry and Roseberry (1998) state that "the arguments for and
against the genre approach in ESP/EAP have been limited to the theoretical, and few if any
attempts have been made to evaluate the approach empirically in an ESP/EAP context" (p. 148).
Though their research dealt specifically with English for Academic Purposes (ESP), and English
for Specific Purposes (ESP), the same observations apply to all areas of English instruction. With
no empirical evidence to support either side of the issue, the argument remains open. There are,
though common-sense reasons for teaching or not teaching genre on both sides of the matter, and
this section of the paper will review the most important ones.
Carter, Ferzli, and Wiebe (2004) state in their article on approaches to teaching genre to
adults that one of the first educators who argued against explicit genre instruction was Freedman
(1993) who declared that genre learning is natural, and context-dependent, and occurs through
mere student exposure to various literary genres. For this reason explicit teaching is not required,
it is difficult or impossible to provide outside the context, and may harm the students (Carter,
Ferzli, and Wiebe, 2004, p. 395). Williams and Colomb (1993) and Fahnestock (1993) made a
rebuttal to Freedman's arguments, and commented that context is not always required for text
interpretation, and that genre conventions can be learned even outside generic contexts (cited in
Carter, Ferzli, and Wiebe, 2004, p. 396).
Carter, Ferzli, and Wiebe (2004) also affirm that the decision whether or not explicit genre
should be taught are made harder because there are three major theoretical perspectives on genre:
(1) Swales's (1986, 1990) model, (2) The Australian model, and (3) The North American model.
Swales's (1986, 1990) model, is based on the idea of structural moves and patterns in genres, and
those who advocate his perspective believe that there are good reasons for explicit genre teaching.
The Australian model, similar to Swale's model, is based on Halliday's (1985) systemic functional
linguistics, and formulates "well-designed pedagogies for explicitly teaching genre," while the
North American model is based on Miller's (1984) "understanding of genre as social action." The
supporters of this school of thought on genre do not think that genre could and should be taught as
an explicit subject (Carter, Ferzli, and Wiebe, 2004, p. 396).
Swales's Theoretical Perspective

Fahnestock (1993) finds that "in looking for evidence on whether or not to teach genre,
researchers might recall the role that the explicit teaching of genre in rhetorical education has had
for more than two thousand years," as in classical rhetoric writing and argument were seen as
inseparable and the acquisition of such skills was deemed essential for students. Those basic
studies are equivalent to the freshman composition courses which students take in college now,
and their importance does not need emphasis (p. 257). What is important about the writing and
argument instruction during the classical period is that the focus of that teaching was not on the
rhetorical subject or on context, but on the rhetorical action that the text performed, and on the
approaches which developed the rhetorical effects of the text (pp. 267-268).
The research that Carter, Ferzli, and Wiebe (2004) did on the explicit teaching of genre
showed that "genre can be explicitly taught and effectively learned," but that instruction does not
have to be decontextualized, as Freedman (1993) had declared, even when students are exposed to
intensive learning of theoretical concepts. Students were provided with proper materials, and
learning was included in the general educational context of the project. The "outsiders" problem,
as Freedman (1993) called it, and which she thought was caused by those educators who did not
teach genre in their area of educational expertise, was not an issue in the research because all the
teachers were specialists in their fields, and the focus of instruction was on learning the practical
aspects of genre writing and not on learning theoretical aspects of the genre (p. 407). Freedman's
(1993) concern that by teaching genre explicitly the teachers were preventing the students from
using their tacit knowledge of genre, did not prove to be true, and the conclusion was that "tacit
knowledge can be effectively enhanced through explicit teaching," and not disabled (p. 408).
Reppen (1995) comments that as students' experience with oral language covers different
registers, so their knowledge of written language should include various writing styles or genres,
as this knowledge would allow them to write for different rhetorical purposes. She comments on
the evidence from recent research, which suggests that in order to widen their English language
skills students should be exposed to various genre texts, practice which is "important for English
L1 students and crucial for English L2 learners," as mere intensive writing would not be enough to
provide the students with skills on writing in different academic styles (p. 32). Reading skills can
be developed and improved in a significant manner when students benefit from exposure to texts
in different genres, according to Stamboltzis and Pumfrey (2000), and therefore "the issue of text
genre has begun to loom larger in thinking about reading development" (p. 60). Research shows
that though narratives seem to be the most attractive genre for students, no genre could be said to
have all the features that would cover all the reading needs of the students, but that a combination
of texts in different genres was the best approach to reading development (p. 60).
The Australian Theoretical Perspective
In the article entitled, Genre in Three Traditions, Hyon (1996) discusses the significance
of explicit genre instruction for ESL students in Australia. She reviews first the main schools on
genre, and their contribution to the evolution of different pedagogical approaches to the teaching
of rhetoric and composition in the context of genre, and remarks that "genre-based pedagogy, in
all its forms, involves some kind of classroom consideration of genres and the context in which
they are found" (p. 697). The methods and approaches were intended for teaching in English for
Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Professional Communication (EPC) courses (p. 698).
The conclusions drawn in the studies on the effects of explicit teaching of genre were heartening,
remarks Hyon, as "in studies of ESL reading development, Hewings and Henderson (1987) and
Hyon (1995) both report positive effects of genre instruction on students' understanding of text
structure and overall reading effectiveness" (1996, p. 714).
Explicit genre teaching in Australia, in fact, dates from the early 1980s, when the concept
of genre began to be shown increased interest, and was included as part of the curriculum on the
basis that if genetic structures or patterns could be identified in texts then such patterns should be
"made available as explicit knowledge for learners in school" so that the writing education could
be more effective (Kress, 1999, p. 463). The adoption of explicit genre instruction was perceived
as a matter of fairness to the students, as part of an equitable curriculum, as student diversity was
too great, and the teachers could not assume that all students who were coming to school had the
same knowledge, or for teachers to assume that all had "the same cultural capital" (Kress, 1999, p.
463).
The Australian opposition to explicit genre instruction was based on a few main reasons,
among which were: (1) writing was a personal expression of ideas, and should not be restricted
through the introduction of mandatory forms, (2) the Australian society was not homogenous or
uniform, and there was no to impose a common denominator among students, (3) the issue was
one of social power and control, rather than a matter of access to education, (4) performance in
writing would decrease, and dynamic writing would be replaced with the mechanical structures
which were characteristic to genres (Kress, 1999, p. 464).
Christie (1999) states that the Australian approaches to genre instruction are based on the
systemic functional (SF) theoretical model articulated by Halliday and Hasan (1985, p. 12). From
their standpoint, language is characterized as functional, and its functions can be identified in the
text as ideational (propositional content), interpersonal (social interactions), and textual (patterns
of linguistic message). Implanted in the contexts of situation and culture, the text carries meaning
and performs various social functions (Christie, 1999, p. 760). The practical application of this
theoretical model is that "for pedagogical purposes, the theory proposes that a knowledge of how
language works to build the genres associated with school success will enable teachers to guide
their students (both L1 and L2 ) in learning them" (Christie, 1999, p. 762).
The Australian educators have applied the functional language model with those students
whose intellectual growth had been slow due to a negative socio-cultural background or harmful
educational contexts, with L 2 students, with native Australians, and with migrant children. The
outcome of this educational approach has been positive and encouraging (Christie, 1999, p. 762).
The benefits of teaching language within the functional model are that: (1) learning occurs in a
structured instructional environment whose framework facilitates the learning of grammar and
discourse features; (2) the students are provided with numerous generic models which show the
way in which such models perform various social actions; (3) the students learn how to generate
meaning through the form and content of their written texts; and (4) the students learn to extend
their explicit knowledge of the configuration of the English language into textual criticism, and
discourse analysis (Christie, 1999, p. 762).
The North American Theoretical Perspective
In North America, the resistance to explicit teaching of genre has been in general derived
from low interest in genre. Heilman (1963), for instance, states that he doesn't think that "genre is
an indispensable subject when we are making proposals about curricular phasing" (p. 358), while
Kessler, Nunberg, and Schtze (1997) make the observation that genre "can be a difficult notion
to get a conceptual handle on" (p. 32). Freedman (1993) has made, as described before, the most
serious objections to the explicit teaching of genre. She has argued that genre learning was tacit,
natural, and context-dependent, and occurred through contact with various textual structures, and
that explicit teaching was not needed under such linguistic circumstance. Williams and Colomb
(1993), and Fahnestock (1993) refuted her arguments and showed that context is optional during
instruction on genre, and that students benefit from explicit learning of genre even if they learned
to recognize genre through exposure to different texts (Carter, Ferzli, & Wiebe, 2004, p. 396).
Research has confirmed again and again the relevance of explicit genre instruction in the
development of the writing skills of children. Donovan (2001), for example, shows how children
develop their genre recognition aptitude at the primary school level, and mentions Kress's (1994)
remark that the development of such ability cannot be separated from genre acquisition because
"learning to write is the learning of forms, demands, and potentialities of different genres (p. 11)"
(Donovan, 2001, p. 394). The implications are that children should be exposed to various genres
during the time when they learn to write, and that they should be taught the structure of the texts
that represent those genres, so that they will be able to replicate the new generic structures in the
process, and develop their writing (Donovan, 2001, p. 400).
Knowledge of genre and writing develop in two stages, at the micro and macro stages of
expertise. The micro level comprises the linguistic features of a language (word use, vocabulary,
tense, and cohesion), while the macro level includes the features which define the specific genre
(Donovan, 2001, p. 397). Students begin at a starting point, and move through transitional levels
towards more advanced writing skills (p. 400). Because all the "writing is the learning of genre,"
the writing exercises which students perform develop their knowledge of text configuration, and
genre structure (p. 437). Donovan (2001) agrees with Kress (1994) that the students' "knowledge
of genre, from a Kressian perspective, is as important as their developing control of the
conventions of spelling and punctuation," and that knowledge of genre should not be considered
optional, or a matter of little importance, but a basic area in the development of writing (2001, p.
437), and that explicit college classroom instruction in genre could contribute to a large degree in
this development.
Explicit instruction on genre makes good sense from a historical rhetoric perspective, and
has been defended with ample research data collected in the past decades. Rhetoric and argument
have been seen as contributing factors in the phenomenon of text as social action (Miller, 1984, p.
151). This social action is defined and expressed through the generic structures and the rhetorical
force of various texts, and a good knowledge of the specific characteristics of genres could make
the difference between a well written and persuasive text and a weak, mediocre document.
Writing as Part of Social Action
Referring to the writing level of college students, Lillis and Turner (2001) remark that "in
recent times, student writing in higher education (HE) is increasingly seen as a problem" (p. 57).
The problem seems to be the fact that students are not able to meet the expected academic norms
on English writing. The reasons appear to be that (1) students come to college less prepared than
before, and their knowledge of language, and writing practice seem to be below those expected in
the academic environment, and (2) students are confused about the writing expectations in the
academic setting (2001, p. 58).
The criticisms raised concerning the student writing deficiencies included writing outside
the expected college conventions, and failure to pursue a certain document structure. The pattern
of writing expected from students seems to derive from the "conduit model of language" that has
its origins in the rationalist view of language as knowledge carrier separated from the transmitted
meaning. This speculative model does not consider the import of language as a rhetorical device,
or as language in action (Lillis &Turner, 2001, pp. 62-63).
The modern view on language, though, perceives meaning as a crucial aspect in language
use, and declares genre and rhetoric fundamental to the social action which language performs
(Lillis & Turner, 2001, p. 64). Donovan (2001) asserts that in Kress's (1994) perspective "writing
is the learning of genre" (p. 437), and therefore writing instruction should focus more on the role
of genre in the structure and rhetorical force of the discourse. This new approach would make the
explicit learning of "the elements of genre" an essential area of the composition process, and the
instructional goal would be no more teaching certain genre structures and grammatical rules, but
the reasons for the writing process and its intended rhetorical functions. This educational method
is known as the genre-based approach to the teaching of writing, as opposed to the dated conduit
model (Donovan, 2001, pp. 439-440).
The research performed on genre in the past four decades has had two effects on English
language instruction: (1) it has caused a change in the theoretical perspective on genre, which is
no more understood as a mere classification device, but as the discourse structure within which all
writing occurs, and as social action, and (2) it has accumulated knowledge that could be used in
writing instruction. The change of perspective on genre that had a direct impact on the English
composition teaching began in the 1980s through studies done by Miller (1984), Halliday and
Hasan (1985), Swales (1990), and Bhatia (1991, 1993). From their perspective, genre was a social
device which had a communicative purpose, and which performed a rhetorical action in the social
and cultural context (Henry & Roseberry, 1998, p. 147).
From an educational perspective, this new understanding of genre created the framework
for new, genre-based writing methods and approaches, in education and business. The main goal
was to improve the assimilation of new writing patterns through (1) the identification of essential
textual features, (2) the acquisition of the generic structures which characterize various academic
and business genres, and (3) the understanding of the rhetorical functions and actions which each
genre was going to perform in the socio-cultural context. These goals could be achieved through
the introduction of the new teaching methods and approaches into the courses that taught English
for Academic Purposes (EAP), and English for Specific Purposes (ESP).Through these different
genre-based methods and approaches, college educators have hoped to "raise learners' awareness
of both the rhetorical organization and the linguistic features closely associated with genre," in
order to help their students to reproduce different document formats and improve their writing
skills (Henry & Roseberry, 1998, p. 147).
Flowerdew (2000) remarks that the development of genre-based methods and approaches
on writing can be traced back to Swales' (1990) influential genre studies that resulted in practical
applications of the theoretical perspective. Among the various applications of the method for the
academic or business writing, she describes Bhatia's (1993) "examples of materials to familiarize
students with the promotional genre of sales and job application letters, some language exercises
designed by Flowerdew (1993) for students majoring in communications which were intended to
teach them "the process of acquiring new genres," and the use of Swales' (1990) CARS ('creating
research space') rhetorical model by different scholars among whom are mentioned Hopkins and
Dudley-Evans (1988), Kusel (1992), Dudley-Evans (1994) and Jacoby et al. (1995), with the aim
to "disambiguate the rhetorical structure of various types of academic report writing, specifically
the introduction and discussion sections" (Flowerdew, 2000, pp. 369-370).
The notion of genre as social action involves a restructuring of certain educational norms
and boundaries because it involves a relation between formal or academic writing, and writing in
the larger, socio-cultural context. It is unfortunate, believes Russell (1997), that at this time there
is no theoretical framework which would make the connection between them:
There is currently no comprehensive theory of writing to explain how doing school, doing
work, and doing the other (political, familial, recreational, etc.) things our lives are made
of come together through the mediation of writingor how to trace the ways people
change as writers, individually and collectively, as they move within and among various
social practices. (p. 505)
Such questions are legitimate and relevant as quite often composition students do not see
the relation between college writing and their future careers because academic writing appears to
be too abstract and removed from their practical needs as individuals and professionals in various
business fields. Russell (1997) seems to find the answer in Vygotsky's (1986) interactionist view
on formal education and other social practices, the cultural-historical activity theory, that "traces
cognition and behavior, including writing, to social interaction" (Russell, 1997, p. 509). Cole and
Engestrm (1993), reformulate Vygotsky's (1986) activity theory, and define human interactions
as "dynamic systems of networks" (Russell, 1997, p. 509). Such networks comprise "both human
agents and their material tools, including writing and speaking," and provide the structure which
integrates all the communication devices that people use into a multiplex of human activities that
happen "without separating either from collective, ongoing motivated action over time" (Russell,
1997, p. 509).
Russell (1997) expands on Miller's (1984) perspective on genre as social action and states
that genres are more than texts which share similar generic structures. Genres define expectations
among various social groups, and express a common ground among the group participants (1997,
p. 513), and should be interpreted as "forms of life, ways of being, frames for social action. They
are environments for learning" (Bazerman, 1994, p. 1). From such a perspective, learning a genre
is to realize the rhetorical functions of writing as social action, and its meaning (Russell, 1997, p.
513). As communicative actions, written texts contribute to mediation among the group members
of a social class, and help in the creation of a stable group environment (Russell, 1997, p. 514).
Russell provides the example of a list of items which he used together with his daughter, to show
the value of a "non-school and non-professional genre" in the management of one feature of their
social relationship, and the mediation of their arguments over shopping matters (1997, p.516).
The social events produced through various generic structures have a direct impact on the
academic environment. Higher education does not take place in a vacuum, but in particular social
context, the academic milieu, which is connected to the larger social context through the "written
genres which mediate the interactions between school and society" (Russell, 1997, p. 525). As an
example, Russell mentions the interaction between a research institution of higher education and
the researchers who work there. Most of the mediation occurs as written formal academic genres,
but there is also informal written and unwritten interaction. States Russell:
There are also a huge range of what Medway (in press) calls informal written genres, such
as marginal notes, scribbles, and e-mail, as well as bureaucratic genres such as rolls, grade
forms, drop/add slips, and so on. There are also genres that are oral, gestural, mechanical,
architectural, monetary, and so on. Certain genres are also the outcome or product of the
activity sistems' functioning. (1997, p. 525)
Classroom interactions in college are also mediated through different written genres such
as reader responses, book reports, essays, research papers, theses or dissertations. Oral genres are
also participators in the mediation process, as also gestural genres. The oral and written genres in
the classroom connect the classroom to the whole academic environment, and establish the social
context of academic language in action (Russell, 1997, p. 532). In this context, students also have
to confront "double binds," (Russell, 1997, p. 533)the pull towards conflicting life choices and
paths. They have the option to involve themselves in academic pursuits, as active members of the
academic environment or rather to select "to involve themselves as consumers of a discipline's or
profession's commodified tools (knowledge) in distant genres" (Russell, 1997, p. 534). The issue
is also a matter of social power or influence in the academic world, as few students are so familiar
with the genres of academic interaction and mediation to exercise a relevant influence or to cause
radical changes in the established tradition (Russell, 1997, p. 538).
Most college students appear to "have a 'text based' approach to learning," and understand
texts as "arhetorical," that is, isolated from the social context, and isolated from social action, and
intended for educational purposes only. They do not see how classroom genres will support them
in their education and careers. Their writing exercises lack interest and enthusiasm, and show the
students' refusal to get involved in the academic actions generated by language. The consequence
is that "most students are doing school most of the time, not disciplinary work" (Russell, 1997, p.
539). This problem is more severe in freshmen composition classes which are in general attended
by undecided students. States Russell:
I suggest elsewhere in an activity theory analysis of first-year college writing instruction
(Russell, 1995) that composition students have particular difficulty seeing the connection
between their writing and the other social practices. Students tend to write in the classroom
genre of the five-paragraph theme, which has a history almost exclusively educational.
(1997, pp. 541-542).
The solution to this lack of student engagement problem seems to be "scaffolding," which
is an integrated, cooperative learning context or "the classroom/curricular experiences instructors
and students construct to facilitate learning" (Russell, 1997, p. 542). This scaffolding would have
a dual role: (1) provide openings into different disciplines by training students in specific generic
structures which are characteristic to those disciplines, and (2) act as a selective filter for students
who are not inclined towards a certain field of academic study or profession. The approach could
be seen as a "selection versus introduction" process, as students would choose between academic
fields or professions, and remove those choices which were of no interest to them, and then move
towards the academic field or profession that would fit their interests (Russell, 1997, p. 542). The
construction of that scaffolding between students and teachers would lead to a clarification of the
writing process and its rhetorical purpose, and would help students involve themselves in writing
as social action, and allow educators to evaluate their teaching methods and approaches and find
out what works better for both the educators and their students (Russell, 1997, p. 545).
Teaching Genre in College: Methods and Approaches
Learning genre identification is, to a certain degree, similar to learning a craft. This point
of view is nothing new. In the classical rhetorical tradition, teaching and learning genre occurred
thorough creative instruction established from a perspective similar to Miller's (1984) theoretical
model that genres are not simple classification devices, but functional language that has a strong
influence on the social and cultural context (Fahnestock, 1993, p. 268). Classical rhetoric became
a conventional discipline between the first century B.C. and the first century A.D., so that during
the New Age "rhetorical education had evolved a set of hierarchically-ordered written exercises,
each practicing a distinct genre" (Fahnestock, 1993, p. 268). The outstanding intelligence of such
an approach was that "the earlier exercises were meant to isolate and practice the compositional
skills that were later combined into a full performance" (Fahnestock, 1993, p. 268).
Freedman (1993) had argued that the knowledge to differentiate between genres does not
have to be taught in an explicit manner because it is learned through exposure to different genres
in the same way in which people learn crafts. She had affirmed that "control of craftsmanship, or
techne, does not necessarily entail conscious learning of explicit formulation of rules" (p.236), as
the trade can be learned through the apprentice observation and cooperation with his master. The
"rules governing the intended form need never be articulated in language at all" (p. 236) believes
Freedman (1993), and, in fact, neither the apprentice nor the master knows them (p. 236).
The comparison seems to be appropriate, states Fahnestock (1993), but the actual facts do
not support the conclusion that all crafts are learned without language communication. She states
that Freedman's (1993) description of craft learning appears odd:
I take exception to Freedman's assertion that any craft is ever taught without a conscious
awareness of technique (p. 236). Freedman seems to imagine a silent blacksmith who
passes on tactile knowledge to a watching apprentice without ever verbalizing a rationale
for what is going on; nothing conscious need even occur in head, master or pupil. (p. 269)
Fahnestock (1993) believes that a better example of craft learning could be "the training of
an auto mechanic, or of a surgeon, or of a chef," in which the tactile knowledge is mixed with
explanations and precise procedural instructions (p. 269). In the college classroom, students can
acquire the knowledge about genres which would help them develop their writing skills through
structured exposure to different genres and their contextual configurations. Most students appear
to have trouble writing arguments because their critical thinking is not developed enough, while
their exposure to argumentative writing has been random. The solution seems to be an extensive
exposure to various genres, and the application of the students' knowledge to the recognition and
classification of various generic structures in context (Fahnestock, 1993, pp. 269-270).
For the apprentice, learning a craft means that both he and the master will be engaged in a
sequence of activities that will result in some kind of product. The sequence of activities is not an
option, but an indispensable aspect of their work, and their failure to engage in that sequence will
have various consequences among which the most severe will be the failure to create the product,
and the failure to learn the craft. Prince (1989) mentions research which shows that a comparable
rule applies when students acquire writing skills, because "certain writing tasks (e.g. description,
listing, inner monologue) are cognitively prior to others (e.g. definition, analysis, argument)," and
following a particular order "attempts to replicate psychological stages with modes of discourse,"
and results in faster learning which later becomes routine for the students (p. 730).
The first phase of this writing acquisition sequence comprises the gap between the known
and the unknown about the generic structure of different texts. Students know certain genres, and
their generic lexicons, and learning new genres will be easier if the old and the new genres prove
to have similar features, or if the instructor is able to provide "mediating links" between previous
and recent information. Such genre mediation was common among most English writers who
lived in the 18th century. Instead of using formal, academic genres, those thinkers used dialogue,
letters, and essays to acquaint the common people with scientific, sociological, and philosophical
issues. The application of this didactic principle in college is the use of certain generic structures
familiar to students, such as letters and essays, in the practice of writing (Prince, 1989, p. 733).
The knowledge stage is also relevant for those students engaged in the process of learning
to write, as the largest number of the students "will not be motivated to read or write if they have
no content knowledge of the issues" (Prince, 1989, p. 737). Failure to relate their past knowledge
to the new one will cause students to feel confused and detached from classroom instruction. The
same situation occurs when students have to perform classroom activities which make little or no
sense to them. States Prince: "Certain kinds of institutional activity frequently debilitate students
and render them inert, no matter how full their storehouse of nouns may be" (1989, p. 738).
Written and spoken genres are powerful social agents of change which have an extended
influence in the lives of the language users. Knowledge of a certain language implies knowledge
of the culture of a social group, and in most cases indicates that the speaker or the writer belongs
to that groupethnic or national. Language or dialectal differences between individuals translate
into social differences, and have a dual effect, which is, unite the individuals who are users of the
same language or dialect into a social or political group, and distinguish the group from the other
groups around them. When individuals adopt a certain language they implicitly adopt the culture
of the group who speaks and writes that language through a process known as acculturation. The
implications in the academic world are that when students are required to adopt a new pattern in
their language use they have to adopt also the culture which had produced those patterns through a
process similar to acculturation (Prince, 1989, p. 740). Because all students belong to different
social groups with cultural patterns that may be similar or different from those of their educators,
it follows that "the acquisition of essayist literacy for certain students may be tantamount to the
[acculturation] experience of passing from one country to a very different one, and of constantly
renegotiating of such border crossings" (Prince, 1989, p. 740).
The transition from one socio-cultural and linguistic context to a different could be aided
through mediation. Instructors should use conversion genres, or discourse structures with clusters
of features that could bridge the difference between the generic structures that the students know,
and those generic structure which are new to them (Prince, 1989, p. 740). This teaching approach
could reduce the pains of adjustment and integration into a new writing culture, and help students
to avoid those adjustment failures which could result also in academic failures (p. 741).
Included in the process of acculturation is another social movement which students must
implement, that of decontextualization. In their colloquial language use, students negotiate social
relationships and knowledge exchange through informal language, while in the academic context
they are required to use formal, academic language. Most students have a difficult time accepting
such a shift and adapting to it. While informal language includes casual genres, and an informal
lexicon, with rhetorical formats that use "home-based conversational discourse strategies, which
depend on multi-level linguistic inference" (Prince, 1989, p. 742), that is, diverse communication
channels, academic writing occurs as formal discourse which is defined thought precise structure
and content rules. The shift from the casual or informal discourse to the academic discourse is an
issue with which students struggle, and many of them cannot negotiate the change (Prince, 1989,
p. 742). The solution seems to be, again, in mediation, and "several researchers in developmental
literacy have argued that teachers should make fuller use of genres that mediate between familiar
(conversational discourse) and more difficult institutional forms" (Prince, 1989, p. 742).
Prince (1989) proposes a course outline for an English composition course for beginners
which integrates the essential elements of his instructional perspective: (1) a sequential structure
in which information is distributed to students in a gradual and progressive fashion; (2) the idea
that progress from high school writing to college writing involves "a constant matter of undoing
and doing" (p. 744); (3) the need for the instructor to disrupt the deep-rooted habits with which
students come to college from high school in order to produce the growth environment required
for the development of college writing skills; (4) revoking some of the writing directives which
have been imposed on the students in high school, such as writing the thesis as a deduction, not
using the personal pronouns, etc., and (5) instructing students that the use of specific and explicit
rhetorical modes in writing is not always indicated or useful (pp. 743-745).
Writing, as social action, is a mutual, sociocognitive process that takes place between the
members of a social group. People learn language through exposure, and through participation in
transactional and interactional sociolinguistic processes. This situation also applies to the written
language, as students learn through involvement in educated environments, through observations
of other language users, and through personal discoveries in language (Chapman, 1995, p. 164).
The process is known as socialization, encompasses all areas of human existence, and happens as
an active dialogue between the individuals who pass on to the next generation the social tradition
and customs and those who receive the inheritance. Language socialization should not be seen as a
linear donor-receiver process, but as a continuous interaction between actors who participate in
social reconstruction on the foundation of their language heritage (Chapman, 1995, pp. 164-165).
The educational implications which derive from the phenomenon of socialization in general, and
language socialization in particular are that socialization is a rather slow process that takes place
in stages. As students acquire more information concerning language use through the immersion
and explicit instruction on genre, their genre repertoire increases, and their lexical data improves,
too. Educators can stimulate and guide this process of development through: (1) providing some
adequate samples of different genres to the students; (2) allowing students time to investigate and
explore language on their own; (3) participating in an active manner in the classroom work; (4)
providing ample time for writing exercises and helping students to articulate their perspectives in
writing, and, (5) planning writing workshops in which the students will be able to share opinions
and experience on writing (Chapman, 1995, p. 188).
Specific approaches are required when students need to be acquainted with narratives and
information genres. Simple narratives are easier to write at the beginner's writing level; therefore,
those students who have little or no writing experience are encouraged to begin the improvement
of their writing skills through practice in the writing of narratives. The process will provide those
students who are still struggling with content and form the chance to practice on linear structures
and acquire a deeper comprehension of the way genres work (Donovan, 2001, p. 400). Writing is
a never-ending process; development of writing knowledge is seen as "emerging from an initial
starting place, the observation comment," and then growing through intermediate stages through
guiding instruction towards more advanced and sophisticated narrative structures (p. 400). This
perception of writing as a spiral, and ascendant process of assimilation of generic structures and
content could be exploited in composition classes in order to provide an adequate learning forum
for students. Comments Donovan:
Perhaps what is needed is a shift in current views of writing assessment and instruction.
Educators could approach the study of writing as they approach the study of reading, using
developmental information to guide and tailor instruction. This writing instruction, like
reading instruction, could be focused at a level that would give children support and
guidance on areas specific to their developmental needs. (2001, p. 439)
Human beings are averse to change, and college students are no exception to this regular
situation. In the first year composition classes, resistance to change seems to be connected to the
students' need to reposition their identities during acquisition of written, spoken, or social genres.
Learning the new genres which will mediate their integration into the new social group is crucial
to their progress in college, but the fact that they have to behave academically in ways that seem
at first quite strange to them produces an identity crisis which they have to resolve (Kill, 2006, p.
216). In fact, learning new lexical registers, new document structures, new rhetorical appliances,
and new social purposes for their papers is a "shift in practices," which is "experienced as a shift
in genres," and which changes their habits and worldviews (Kill, 2006, p. 216).
The new identities that students assume are assembled through the integration of the new
generic structures which define activities in a different, academic, socio-cultural context, into the
previous socio-cultural background which has been constructed through exposure to the previous
generic structures, social actions, and rhetorical functions. This integration stage is indispensable
to the students' progress because "it is by engaging in the generic actions and interactions that are
valued in particular communities that we perform and develop identities appropriate to the places
and spaces we want to occupy" (Kill, 2006, p. 217). The new generic structures and social modes
which the students are assuming serve as mediating agents between themselves and the new, and
threatening social context, and allows them to find their new social spaces (2006, p. 217).
Such changes in the students' academic perspectives and actions have a relevant influence
on their progress as academic writers because of the consequences which these changes will have
on their growth in the composition course. Instructors should be aware of these facts and mediate
the restructuring of students' identities through apposite genres, and help students overcome their
difficulties in the process. States Kill:
As has long been acknowledged, the acquisition of these new ways of being and
communicating is neither easy nor problematic. As David Bartholomae has famously
pointed out, there are "difficult, and often violent accommodations that occur when
students locate themselves in a discourse that is not 'naturally' or immediately theirs"
(147)." (2006, pp. 217-218)
Kill recommends that instructors should organize the classroom activities and provide the
kinds of reading and writing exercises that would make possible the development of the students'
transitions to the new generic structures and rhetorical functions without the negative and intense
reactions which might be expected from different students. This would mean an adequate answer
to the needs of the students based on a thorough knowledge of various genres, of the associations
between them, and of those genres' interactions with one another. The students and their teachers
would have to be working as a team, in a process called uptake, or the "exchange that takes place
in all speech acts" between both parties of the discourse, and in which "a speaker's utterance sets
the stage for the interlocutor's response." (pp. 218-219). As an elucidation of the term uptake Kill
notes that "Freedman uses an analogy to tennis to illustrate this point, explaining that each return
shot must account for and make use of the characteristics of the shot it returns" (2006, p.219).
While Carroll (2002) sees the objective of first-year composition courses as providing the
transition which most students need from the high school environment to the college context, and
introducing the students to the demands of the academia through mediating generic structures (p.
119), Lu (2004) has a wider perspective on the matter. Her perception is that composition classes
form the foundation of the students' future academic work and careers because in that "space" the
students take time to examine their past, present, and future, and "think, reflect on, and revise the
tacit goals, values and understandings prescribed by the discourse of flexible accumulations" (p
44). This moment in their academic pursuits might also be a moment "when reading and writing in
English can have a long-term effect on the future of all languages, all users of English, and the
order of the world we share" (Lu, 2004, p. 44).
English composition as an academic discipline appears to be even more significant when
one learns the facts that "three of every four students in the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades demonstrate
only partial mastery of the writing skills and knowledge needed at their respective grade levels,"
and that "almost one in every five first-year college students require a remedial writing class, and
more than one half of new college students are unable to write a paper relatively free of errors"
(Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2006, p. 296). Given such low performance in the students, teaching
good English writing skills in college becomes a matter of national interest, while the recognition
of the most effective methods and approaches for the teaching of English expands into a research
project (Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2006, p. 296). Part of the research covers the best approaches
or "genre-specific planning strategies" for writing improvement (p. 298).
Genre-based approaches to narrative writing include theme selection, identification of the
most essential characteristics of the generic structures, recognition of the socio-cultural rhetorical
functions of the narrative, inclusion of the narrative elements into an outline, sequencing the time
elements of the narrative, organizing all the information into a paper, and ending the document in
a persuasive conclusion (Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2006, pp. 297-298). The writing skills which
had been acquired through the writing of a narrative could be then used for learning a new genre,
the argument, which is based on a different generic structure, and which requires critical thinking
and evidence. The students' lexicon also needs to be augmented with words which can be used in
the argument and persuasion context (p.298).
The acquisition of rhetorical modes based on various generic structures is a complex and
intense learning process, which includes, in general, the following steps: (1) development of the
background knowledge required for the writing process; (2) subject invention, and review of the
structural, or generic features of the future document; (3) modeling the form and content that are
characteristic to the specific rhetorical mode; (4) supervised student-directed practice workshops
in groups, and (5) application of the obtained knowledge and skills through independent writing
(Harris, Graham & Mason, 2006, pp. 307-309).
Collaborative writing, or peer support, is imperative during all five phases of the learning
process, and students should be encouraged to assist one another in the identification of different
genres and generic and rhetorical features, recognition of background, the context of culture, and
the context of situation, and the organization of their papers through different writing approaches
(Harris, Graham & Mason, 2006, p.310). Students could then proceed to engage in research work
on their own using their knowledge of the acquired generic structures and rhetorical functions to
develop their personal and distinctive writing individualities. Affirm Harris, Graham and Mason:
The writing performance and knowledge of young struggling writers can be improved
substantially by teaching them general and genre-specific strategies for planning in
conjunction with the knowledge and self-regulatory procedures needed to use these
strategies effectively. These findings provide further verification that explicit and
systematic strategy instruction can enhance students' writing performance. (2006, p. 335)
One application of the genre-based approach to instruction is student preparation to write a
problem-solution project report which needs to be submitted at the end of the school year. The
instructional approach that Flowerdew (2000) uses in this specific situation is determined by the
structure and content of the report, and the "communicative purpose of the discourse community
participants" (p. 370). The researcher begins with the examination of the generic structure of the
project, continues with the problem-solution pattern, and considers the different approaches that
the students are taking to complete the project. The classroom exercises planned for the students
are: (1) the reconstruction of a text from various paragraphs through team work,: (2) comparison
of various texts written in different genres; (3) context identification; (4) connections evaluation
between different texts; (5) identification of the problem-solving pattern in text; (6) the creation or
invention of topics for discussion, and (7) the examination of the grammatical structure of the
various text which compose the project (Flowerdew, 2000, pp. 370-375).
Because genre is social action (Miller, 1984), connected with all the other genres through
"the larger scale of the cultural context of the various genres" (Beghtol, 2000, p. 19), the students
should be provided with the "opportunities to write about their cultural heritages and identities to
make them feel more comfortable writing in a college setting" (Corkery, 2005, p. 48). The social
background which is part of their individualities must combine with their college experience and
define their distinctive writing and speaking identities or "academic voices" (p. 49). The practice
of writing personal narratives is a good approach to achieve such results, and the students will be
less threatened in their effort to adjust to the college writing if instructors would use the narrative
assignment to mediate the students' transition to standard academic genres (2005, p.49).
Learning good writing skills implies that the students recognize certain writing standards,
and that they abide by those standards in their document composition. One approach which some
instructors use to teach their students good written English is to expose them to text samples that
exemplify good language. Students examine the samples, and adopt those words and expressions
which would make their writing better. The method is called imitation, and offers the apprentices
in writing the occasion to see how great writers use language, and then attempt to reproduce their
styles (Corkery, 2005, p. 53). Comments Corkery: "Bringing imitation down from the theoretical
realm and into the classroom practices can assist students in numerous ways" (2005, p. 53).Some
instructors do not find imitation appropriate for teaching writing and refuse to adopt it, but many
instructors find the approach motivating and effective for students in the process of acquiring the
basic elements of diverse generic structures and rhetorical functions and enhancing them through
the emulation of those writers with advanced or superior writing skills (Corkery, 2005, p. 57).
Sometimes genres are taught best through team or collaborative teaching. Team teaching
is the method in which "two or more instructors share the delivery of a single course to the same
set of students," while the collaborative teaching occurs when "two or more instructors cooperate
in the planning and delivery of a course" (Beck, 2004, p. 390). The difference between these two
methods does not seem large, but those instructors who have used both methods in the classroom
prefer the first method because it appears to provide more instructional options. Beck shares with
her article readers the experience of a group of instructors who had to teach their students the lab
report genre with all its complexities, as "first-and-second year students were struggling with this
'basic' genre" at her college (Beck, 2004, p. 389).
In order to accomplish the task, a team of teachers at the college collaborated to ascertain
the specific educational needs of their students, and decided that the students needed exposure to
actual lab reports in order to become familiar with the characteristics of the genre, and needed to
be taught by a team of instructors with expertise in both engineering and technical writing (Beck,
2004, p. 389). The students were also going to be taught how to perform genre analysis, in order
to become used to "the important rhetorical moves and linguistic markers of those reports so they
could re-create them" (Beck, 2004, pp. 389-390).
ESL students can also benefit from genre-based approaches to instruction. Reppen (1995)
describes a course she designed in which content was taught in an ascending spiral. Writing tasks
were assigned specific content, and were linked with explicit instructions on the generic structure
and rhetorical functions of the written text (p. 32). Content was improved at a constant pace, and
the students were assigned different practice exercises for each content item. The writing process
was monitored through scaffolding or apprenticeship, in which the teacher's role is central during
the first part of the course, and diminishes to observation towards its end, while the students' role
starts with observation and light participation, and ends with complete independence (p.32). This
course also placed increased import on explicit teaching about "how different ways of organizing
information in writing interacts with the purpose of the text" (Reppen, 1995, p. 32). Instruction in
the classroom was centered on discussions concerning the structure of various texts, the language
registers connected with different generic structures, and the rhetorical effects caused through the
choice of form and content. This kind of knowledge and practice enabled the students to examine
their own writing and be more aware of their own problems, and to become more efficient during
peer reviews (Reppen, 1995, p. 32).
Becoming educated in an academic discipline or professional subject requires individuals
to be familiar both with the theoretical matters that belong to the certain discipline or sphere, and
with his or her socio-cultural environment. Among the things that one must know are theoretical
topics and their concepts and formulations, inquiry approaches, and the most appropriate means of
communication in each discipline or field (Wollman-Bosilla, 2000, p 36). This basic principle
applies also to knowledge and experience acquisition in science. The learning process happens in
a scientific environment, among scientists or teachers specialized in a certain discipline, and who
are engaged in a specific kind of scientific discourse (p. 36). Here, as in any other education area,
there is need for the students to become familiar with definite generic structures, and with certain
rhetorical features of the discourse. In Wollman-Bosillas (2000) perspective, the scientists who
adhere to Western views of science interpret the world, think, and write in discipline-defined
ways (p. 36), and college students who want to pursue a certain scientific path need to learn that
learning such information is not just acquiring a jargon, but learning to communicate and reason,
organize information, and perform inquiries (Wollman-Bosilla, 2000, pp. 36-37).
Because form follows content, that is, because the generic structures of all scientific texts
reflect their content, examination of a scientific text shows that "the language of science models
the discipline's conceptual structure," and "scientific reasoning is a linguistic process" that means
to represent the distinct taxonomies and structures universal in science. In consequence, all those
students who want to learn science must also learn the language and genre of science, from those
terms and expressions which define the usual scientific discourse to complex research documents
(Wollman-Bosilla, 2000, p. 37).
In her document, Wollman-Bosilla (2000) illustrates the use of "assignments and related
instruction intended to elicit science writing," in two main academic areas, "science and health"
(p. 39). The texts used for genre instruction are genuine language samples, and the learning takes
place in the context of the particular scientific domain, "guided by the concept of genre as social
action realized through specific text structures and linguistic patterns" (p. 39). The actual process
of writing occurs as a science dialogue from student to student in an authentic context, while the
generic features of the texts are recognized and approached from a flexible, adaptive perspective
(Wollman-Bosilla, 2000, p. 40).
In the paper Teaching Genre to English First-Language Adults, Carter, Ferzli and Wiebe
(2004), report on genre-based approaches to teaching the document genre structure in the biology
lab. The instructional method is "staged pedagogical activities leading to independent application
of the genre," and "through the guided analysis of generic conventions" (p. 397). Evidence of the
students' acquisition of the genre comes from their independent work in the generation of reports
which conform to the standard format for a biology lab (p. 397). The purpose of the writing tasks
is to combine the theory in the biology lab with practice, and the learning has an educational aim,
as not too many students will have to write actual lab research papers in their careers. During the
process of learning the lab report genre students also acquire a scientific perspective about issues
related to the biological world in which we live. In this sense, the biology lab report genre serves
as a mediator between the students and science, introducing scientific principles in the classroom
and helping students make sense of their world (Carter, Ferzli and Wiebe, 2004, p. 398).
Learning the legal language lexicon and the diverse genres of the legal documents can be
made much less tedious when students investigate the generic structures of such documents with
their specific features and rhetorical function through concordancing. Flowerdew (1996) defines
concordancing as:
A means of accessing a corpus of text to show how any given word or phrase in the text is
used in the immediate contexts in which it appears. By grouping the uses of a particular
word or phrase on the computer screen or in printed form, the concordancer shows the
patterns in which the given word or phrase is typically used. (p. 97)
Weber (2001) describes how concordancing has been used as an instructional device in a
law course at the University Centre, Luxembourg. The 20 students were enrolled in a course that
taught introductory English legal language. All students were advanced in English, and had good
reading, speaking, and listening skills, but had problems writing general academic papers (p. 14).
The usual teaching approaches used in the classroom were planned to develop critical thinking in
the students, legal reasoning, and professional writing skills. Because these instructional methods
did not seem to produce the best results, it was decided that the students needed more teaching in
the English language composition, and that a concordance and genre-informed lessons approach
would be the best for them (Weber, 2001, p. 15).
The approach implementation began with a collection of standard samples of legal papers
"from the University of London LLB Examinations, and written by native speakers," which was
supposed to function as a corpus of texts for concordancing. The students collected the data from
the corpus, and compared it with their personal papers. Their research produced the identification
of four common features among the papers in the text corpus: (1) the legal principle in each case;
(2) similar cases in the past; (3) application of judicial precedents, and (4) formulating the most
appropriate legal solution for the case (Weber, 2001, p. 15).
Students then marked the incidence of each of the features in the papers, and attempted to
link the four generic features with lexical structures in the same papers, establishing concordance
in the occurrence of the generic features and the lexical structures. Among the most frequent and
evident recurring patterns, the students noticed that case delimiting preceded principle definition,
and that even those patterns showed irregularities (Weber, 2001, pp. 16-18). The projects ended
with writing exercises during which the students wrote papers in which they integrated the most
persistent generic patterns encountered with the co-occurring lexical patterns. The written papers
were then peer reviewed, instructor reviewed, and discussed. This concordance and genre-based
approach had a good effect on the students' writing which became more structured, showed more
lexical variety, and contained less grammar errors (Weber, 2001, pp. 18-21).
Genre-based methods can be also be used in English for General Purposes (EGP) courses,
an area which includes (1) product promotion, (2) publishing and broadcasting, (3) customer care
and liaison, (4) public relations, (5) human resources, (6) office management, and (7) tourism. In
all these fields there is a strong need for professionals to know well the genre of their professions
in order to discharge with expertise their duties (Flowerdew, 1993, pp. 305-306). Work in certain
fields requires even knowledge of several genres, as is the case with people who deal with public
relations, and who need to be versed in "customer-client interviews, oral presentations, publicity
brochures, press conference, press release, and business report" (p. 306). In these cases emphasis
is not on training in specific genres, but in education about various genres, a process in which the
goal is to develop the linguistic abilities of genre recognition through analysis, and identification
of the most significant characteristics of each genre (Flowerdew, 1993, p. 306).
Communication courses which are designed to introduce students to multiple professional
fields seem to be some of the most demanding academic challenges, especially because "research
over the last decade has questioned in particular whether teaching communication in a classroom
setting can adequately present (or even represent) the rhetorical and practical realities of complex
professional communication situations" (Kain & Wardle, 2005, p. 113). While classroom context
is rather inert and uneventful because it has been planned by the instructor who is monitoring and
organizing students' participation, workplace communication is natural, unplanned, and flexible,
and characterized by unforeseen events and situations (p. 113). In order to reduce the differences,
colleges are designing "writing-in-the-disciplines and writing-across-the curriculum" courses that
link various theoretical disciplines with communications, and place an increased emphasis on the
generic and rhetorical functions of language (Kain & Wardle, 2005, p. 114).
Kain and Wardle (2005) describe in their article the process of teaching genre through the
activity theory perspective. This method entails understanding the true nature of genres as "social
action" or "rhetorical actions" which are responses to contexts of culture and contexts of situation
(Miller, 1984), and not static textual elements. Failure to perceive the active socio-cultural nature
of genre leads to "mismatches between school and workplace expectations and ways of learning,
and students' inability to transfer what they learn in academic settings to workplace settings," and
they will not be able to find their places in the contexts of their professions, (Kain & Wardle,
2005, p. 115). In order to facilitate the transfer from one context of situation to the other
instructors must (1) provide students with opportunities for extensive practice on genre, (2) teach
them to extract the principles from a socio-cultural situation, (3) train the students to be alert to the
activities in which they are engaged, (4) teach them to examine themselves, and their
circumstances, and (5) teach them to use metaphors and analogies in order to transfer their
academic knowledge to their workplaces (Kain & Wardle, 2005, pp. 116-119).
Students need to understand the connection between their activities, contexts of situation,
people's motives for their actions, and the complex socio-historical and cultural contexts which
define their existence (Kain & Wardle, 2005, p. 120). All humans live in specific environments
known as activity systems, or "ongoing, object-directed, historically conditioned, dialectically
structured, tool-mediated human interaction[s]" (p. 120). Within these activity systems, humans
develop various genressocial actions or rhetorical actionswhich are fluid activity structures,
and change with the context of situation and the context of culture ( 2005, p. 121).
In the classroom, activity theory can be connected with genres and the rhetorical analyses
of texts to help students understand different activities or events. For instance, a clear perspective
on the multitude of websites which populate the Internet can be obtained through a previous look
at their different genres in order to "assess what the architecture, functionality, and content reveal
about the communities they serve and the activities they facilitate" (Kain & Wardle, 2005, p. 122).
As the students examine those websites, they perceive what mediating work the sites perform in
the social context, and understand that the form and content of the sites are defined and
constrained by their rhetorical functions. Instructors can take things even further, and ask the
students to talk to the people who have created those websites in order to have an understanding
of the purposes for which those websites were designed (Kain & Wardle, 2005, pp. 1220-123).
Some scholars think that the time which instructors and students can dedicate on matters
related to genre is not enough for a good grasp of this complex notion, and that a classroom does
not offer the best environment for the examination of generic structures as an integral part of the
context of situation and the context of culture. There seems to be a better approach to instruction
in genre, and Blakeslee (2001) states concerning this matter: "In recent years, rhetorical scholars
have shown how newcomers to a domain learn its genres through immersion and participation in
the activities of the domain" (p. 169). Immersion appears to be more beneficial than the standard
instructional approach which is based on two assignments, case studies and client projects in
order to simulate workplace conditions. These two assignments do not seem to provide adequate
writing practice which would prepare the students for authentic professional work (pp. 169-170).
Blakeslee (2001) states that rather often, instructors who teach technical and professional
writing to students think that their "efforts to simulate workplace writing and to teach workplace
genres in our classroom are at best unreliable and at worst futile," and that the students complete
the course, and leave the classroom still unprepared for the business world (p. 170). The solution
she recommends is student exposure to effective work, or client assignments that involve actual
workplace projects (p. 170). When students perform actual business writing, they become used to
specific business requirements and expectations, and learn to do the same kind of work which
would be part of the assigned schedule at their workplace. The difference between the classroom
and the business is reduced to a minimum, and students understand much better their obligations
(Blakeslee, 2001, p. 170).
Classroom-workplace collaboration, while it cannot provide authentic workplace context,
can produce an environment as close as possible to an actual workplace, and provide exposure to
specific writing documents and their generic structures. The students can imitate and emulate the
form, structure, and content of those documents, and perfect their writing skills (Blakeslee, 2001,
p. 170). One other issue that must be considered when students are taught generic structures and
their application in the writing of work documents is whether or not students perceive their work
as authentic or not. The perception of authenticity about their work inspires the students because
they feel that what they are doing is not a useless exercise whose significance and value will end
at the end of the semester, but products which have a business value, and which make a concrete,
positive contribution to various companies (Blakeslee, 2001, p. 171).
Conclusion
Generic structures constitute the language framework, the manifestation of content in the
form which articulates the communicative acts of the language users. Genre does not function as a
mere classification device, but is language in action, that is, social, and rhetorical action, and it
represents the individual and collective consciousness of the members of a social, political, and
cultural group. Learning genre in college setting does not have only an instructional significance
for the students, but prepares them for the real world. It is important, therefore, that genre should
be introduced and explained to students as more than a classification tool with a limited function,
but part of social action. The mediating role of some genres should be used to lessen the distance
between the academic context of situation and culture, and the business environment into which
students are venturing after completing their studies, so that students will be prepared to perceive
the professional world in the right manner, and will be prepared to embrace their new challenges.
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Teaching Genre in College 1

Teaching Genre in College

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Key words: genre, teaching, instruction, definition, method, approach.

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