Genre awareness for the novice academic student: An ongoing quest

Abstract

Genre, the most social constructivist of literacy concepts, has been theorized and variously applied to pedagogies by three major ‘schools’: the New Rhetoric, English for Specific Purposes, and Systemic Functional Linguistics. In this paper, I will discuss my long, and ongoing, search for a pedagogy drawn from genre theories for novice academic students. With others, I am trying to find or develop an approach that is coherent and accessible to students while still promoting rhetorical flexibility and genre awareness. I will first define and problematize the term genre. Then, I will briefly discuss what each of the three genre ‘schools’ can offer to novice students – as well as their pedagogical shortcomings. Finally, I will suggest two promising approaches to teaching genre awareness: learning communities and ‘macro-genres’.

Role of assessment in second language writing research and pedagogy

“…Flowerdew (2002) postulated that these three theoretical traditions could represent two approaches to genre theory and pedagogy: a text-based approach and a situation-oriented approach. Johns (2008) has referred to the text-based approach as 'genre acquisition' and to the situation-based approach as 'genre awareness' . A text-based or genre acquisition approach puts the main focus on the linguistic and generic features of the texts.…”

A Genre-Based Textual Analysis of Expert Online Reviews of Electric Guitar Fuzz Pedals

“…This is a direct example of an occluded genre chain with a hierarchical power structure. According to Bhatia (as cited by Johns, 2008), this would become part of a chain of Promotional Genres.…”

Educational Genres in Eastern Europe: A Comparison of the Genres in the Humanities Departments of three Countries of Three Different Universities in Three Different Countries

“…A genre-based approach is seen as a way to support the academic literacy development of both L1 writers (e.g., Devitt 2004 andJohns 2008) and L2 writers (e.g., Gebhard and Harman 2011, Hyland 2003and Tardy 2006.…”