Contrastive Genre Mapping in Academic Contexts: an Intercultural Approach

Abstract

This paper presents a comparison of genre use at three Swiss universities from different language regions. The methodology is one of contrastive genre mapping in which we connect two lines of research usually seen as distinct approaches. The aim of the study is to find ways of comparing the writing cultures of different languages by collecting and comparing the genres used for teaching. Data about genres were gathered through questionnaires in which students and faculty members were asked to describe writing assignments and student texts. From the answers to these questionnaires, genre inventories were constructed and then rechecked with insiders in faculty discussions or interviews. As results, lists of genres from the individual universities are presented, as are the patterns of genre families into which the genres were classified. It turned out that genre use shows strong similarities across the three universities. The main genre families are presented and differences between universities are discussed.

Contributing Factors to Move Recycling in Research Articles: Perceptions of Social Science Researchers and Genre Analysts

“…One of the newly developed methods for the ethnographic approach is genre mapping. According to Kruse and Chitez (2012), genre mapping implies the use of multiple steps for data analysis and simultaneous involvement of insider knowledge to gain a comprehensive understanding of how genres are structured. Using contrastive genre mapping, Kruse and Chitez (2012) compared writing cultures at three universities in distinct Swiss regions where different languages were used as the medium of instruction.…”

Faculty and student representations of academic writing at Spanish universities / Las representaciones de profesores y estudiantes sobre la escritura académica en las universidades españolas

“…We used the Spanish version of the European Writing Survey (Encuesta Europea sobre la Escritura Académica; EEEA) for both faculty and students (Chitez et al, 2015; Kruse, 2013; Kruse & Chitez, 2012). An early version of the survey was translated 3 and piloted in a previous study (Castelló, Mateos et al, 2012).…”

“…Its results included the development of the European Writing Survey (EUWRIT), which has two versions, one for students and the other for faculty. It is currently available in eight languages, including Spanish, Catalan and Basque, and it was used as the main data-gathering source in the articles in this issue (Chitez, Kruse, & Castelló, 2015; Kruse, 2013; Kruse & Chitez, 2012).…”

La Acreditación De Títulos Universitarios Oficiales en El Ámbito De Ciencias De La Educación: Una Cuestión De Alfabetización Académica

“…Para ello, es necesario construir en primer lugar una conciencia de género discursivo en el seno de la comunidad discursiva académica. Esto es especialmente importante en el caso de los trabajos fin de estudios, dado que en España no ha existido una tradición previa y, en el ámbito europeo, no existe un acuerdo en la definición de los prototipos asociados a géneros discursivos asociados a los trabajos fin de estudios (Kruse, 2012;. Los estudios españoles (Corcelles, Oliva, Castelló, y Milian, 2015;Álvarez y Yániz, 2015) evidencian cómo en las universidades estudiadas son escasas las tareas de escritura que transformen el conocimiento y conlleven un proceso de investigación (Guzmán-Simón y García-Jiménez, 2015).…”