Innovative Methods and Practices of Academic Writing and Writing Instruction
GENRE AS SOCIAL PRACTICE: REASSESSING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GENRE AND PROCESS, WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR ACADEMIC LITERACY PEDAGOGIES
Dr. Simon John Green
University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
This presentation takes a fresh look at the concept of genre, and reassesses the relationship between text and context, the two traditional foci of genre studies and writing process. Although it has long been recognised that genrebased writing pedagogies need to be complemented by work on reading/writing process (e.g. Badger & White, 2000) the models of genre that underlie such pedagogies, whether drawn from ESP, Systemic Functionalist or New Rhetorical traditions (Hyon, 1996), invariably construct process as something external to genre; as an independent variable, relevant to, but in no way integral to the notion of genre (e.g. Tribble, 2010). In my view this model obscures the inner connections between text and process, and I would argue that, in fact, genre is best conceived as situated social practice; social practice in which is implicated a triad of dialectically connected elements: text, context and process. In this presentation, I want, firstly, to develop such a model of genre as social practice and secondly to explore the implications of this model for academic literacy pedagogies. To do so, I will draw on qualitative data from a yearlong longitudinal case study into the emergent writing processes of three novice undergraduate ESL writers (Author, 2013). I believe that the presentation will offer a theoretical contribution closely related to the central concerns of professionals concerned with supporting students in the process of constructing their academic/disciplinary literacies, but specifically, academic writing teachers, materials writers and course planners.
References
Badger, R. and White, G. 2000. A processgenre approach to teaching writing. ELT Journal. 54 (2), pp. 153160
Green, S. 2013. Novice ESL writers: A longitudinal casestudy of the situated academic writing processes of three undergraduates in a TESOL context. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 12, pp. 180191.
Hyon, S. 1996. Genres in three traditions: implications for ESL. TESOL Quarterly . 30, pp. 693722.
Tribble, C. 2010. A genrebased approach to developing materials for writing. In: Harwood, N. ed. English Language Teaching Materials . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 157178