Genre and Second Language Writing

Introduction

Introduction It is now ten years since Candlin (1993, p. ix) described genre as “a concept that has found its time,” and since then, genre has confirmed much of its potential as one of the most lively and influential concepts in second language teaching and research. Essentially, genres are resources for getting things done using language: they represent a repertoire of responses that we can call on to engage in recurring situations. Recognizing their importance, few teachers now neglect text structure or the importance of context in teaching writing, and familiar process methods co-exist with genre techniques in many L2 classrooms. Despite the established significance of genre-based instruction, however, the insights of a growing literature often fail to reach teachers of multilingual writers. This book addresses this problem by providing a synthesis of theory, research, and practice specifically devoted to an understanding of genre theory and its relevance for the second language writing class. The term genre, of course, is not new. It dates back to the study of classical rhetoric and for the last century or more has been associated with literature and literary criticism. Modern conceptions of genre, however, extend its use beyond literary texts, into films, music, and computer games and into professional , academic, and everyday forms of speech and writing. Today, studies of genre also stress a concern with context as well as form and emphasize the importance of description and analysis rather than simple classification. It is also true that genre has become a key concept in modern thought, not only in linguistics and language teaching but in many areas of contemporary social and cultural studies. This is because language is seen as a central way in which we construct our lives. It is through genres that individuals develop relationships , establish communities, and achieve their goals. With- out the familiar structure that genres give to social events, we would be unable to conduct the most basic interactions of everyday life. My own contact with the ideas developed in this book began in the 1980s while I was teaching in Papua New Guinea. At that time, my colleagues and I were beginning to use the insights into written genres filtering through from Australia in our ESP writing classes, and one colleague had developed a genre-based computer program to grade engineering student reports (Marshall, 1991). This activity encouraged me to carry out a move analysis of the argumentative essays stacked in my office, a step that led to one of my first publications (Hyland, 1990) and a continuing interest in the ways written text are constructed and the possibilities this presents for instruction. This book is part of that continuing interest, focusing on the multilingual writing classroom and taking as its starting point the belief that a better understanding of genre greatly assists what we do as teachers. It sets out to provide an accessible and practical introduction to the theory of genre and to elaborate how teachers can use this theory to extend the ways they teach writing, offering a scholarly foundation for using genrebased practices. In this way, it is intended to serve as a resource not only for students of writing and teachers in training but also for experienced teachers of EFL/ESL writing who are perhaps skeptical of genre approaches or who are looking for ways of introducing such approaches into their classes. I have to come clean at the outset, however, and admit that this book is informed by a long association with and affection for an approach to genre influenced by English for Specific Purposes and functional linguistics. It emphasizes the central role of language in all social activity and argues that texts are a good starting point for understanding and teaching students to communicate effectively in writing. My understanding of genre is therefore grounded in writing and the sense writers have of who they are and who they are writing for. I am aware of arguments that the genres students need in the real world cannot be adequately taught in the classroom—the view that because teaching and learning occur uniquely in each setting 2 Genre and Second Language Writing “what is learnt in context is the context” (Dias & Pare, 2000, p. 3). But while we can acknowledge that the move from the writing class to the world of work, community, and further study represents an enormous transition for learners, this is no reason why we...