The readings for this week call back to our conversation about audience from a few weeks ago. In considering the context of writing, composition scholars claim students must understand genre in order to secure success in the academic and professional spheres. Clark specifically summarizes the theoretical shift in focus from the form of genre to its function, interpreting the term as “typified social action that responds to a recurring situation” (182). She traces the rhetorical roots of this concept to conclude genres are “associated with particular discourse communities and disciplines” and, as a result, are “correlated with educational and professional accomplishment” (Clark 181). Although I would argue equitable educators should aspire to challenge the constricting implications of this conclusion, I agree with her assessment of genre awareness as one possible path to student success in terms of transferability and creativity in the composition classroom.
On the topic of transferability, Clark contemplates the cognitive approach to genre instruction in which writers are able to apply their knowledge of one genre to another. She cites strategies critics have contrived to help teachers generate genre awareness and, in turn, strengthen this skill in their students, such as “explicitly abstracting principles from a situation” (Clark 189). This particular strategy “presumes that genres are stable,” whereas proponents of process pedagogy believe “genre boundaries are fluid, not identifiable and fixed” (Clark 189). Other critics concur with the latter pedagogical perspective, as Hart-Davidson claims genres “are open to hybridization” (39-40) and Lerner characterizes them as “fluid” (41). Yet, the explicit teaching of genre and the dynamic nature of genres themselves do not need to be mutually-exclusive concepts. English educators can show their students the somewhat stable, structural components of certain genres at the same time as they explain how reader expectations for said genres have evolved since the start. Implementing both truths into their instruction can render their students ready to transfer their knowledge of those expectations in specific situations to real-world writing (e.g. resumes, cover letters, emails, etc.). For this transfer to succeed, students must receive some form of explicit teaching about genre in the composition classroom, especially in the K-12 setting.
In regard to the critical concern for creativity, Clark addresses a similar argument about the impact of genre awareness on students’ ability to invent ideas in their writing. She asserts that “creativity can exist only within the context of genre, that genre awareness is actually a prerequisite for creativity, and that students will be unable to engage in creative adaptation of a genre if they are unaware of what the genre is” (Clark 195). This proportional connection between a writer’s consciousness of genre and their creativity exemplifies, again, that the explicit teaching of genre serves to strengthen student writing. In the twelfth-grade writing seminar course I teach, for example, I try to find a balance between form and function when designing my lessons. If I simply asked my students to “write a research paper” without providing them with any additional instruction, the majority of them would either experience extreme writer’s block or produce a paper that does not resemble the research genre in the slightest. While this type of response would not be the writer’s fault, their hypothetical conflicts with creativity demonstrate how explicit genre instruction that includes models and other methods of scaffolding can provide students with a powerful path to success.
Yes, Ashley, I agree with your comments on transferability, especially this: "Yet, the explicit teaching of genre and the dynamic nature of genres themselves do not need to be mutually-exclusive concepts. English educators can show their students the somewhat stable, structural components of certain genres at the same time as they explain how reader expectations for said genres have evolved since the start."
I even discuss this concept with my students through the example of social media and how various platforms are constantly redefining themselves. They are still connected to a genre -- particularly in purpose -- but recreate themselves in style and structure. This was helpful to students recently when we discussed "spoken word" as poetry, using the same techniques and tropes we've learned for years but with a new "voice" and image. It helped them to connect prior learning with a new text.
Ashley, I also noticed connections between this week's readings and our previous conversation about audience. I like the point you make about explicitly teaching genre alongside the dynamic nature of genre not being mutually exclusive. As you mention in connection with your seniors, students do need some explicit teaching for the genre or form that they're expected to write in. Explicitly teaching genre and the typical structure of different writing forms is necessary if we want students to be successful with then writing in this genre. Students won't be comfortable taking risks or creative freedoms unless they first have an understanding of what they're expected to do.
Similar to our discussions and readings around the importance of audience, the readings for this week discuss the concept of genre and how this should be taught in a writing class. Many aspects of writing and the writing process (which in itself is also a controversial concept), have sparked debate and controversy since there are many different ways to approach and discuss writing both pedagogically and academically.
Irene Clark presents arguments for and against the explicit teaching of genre. Some scholars argue that “the explicit teaching of genre is not even possible because genre knowledge requires immersion into a discourse community” (Clark 185) and that “genres are context-specific and ‘cannot be easily or meaningfully mimicked outside their naturally occurring rhetorical situations and exigencies” (Clark 188). However, Clark ultimately suggests that genre awareness is beneficial in a writing class and can be incorporated in multiple ways. Having an awareness and knowledge of genre “will enable students to examine texts in terms of their cultural function and to use their awareness of genre both to fulfill academic and professional expectations and, perhaps, to develop new genres as the need arises” (Clark 201). Charles Bazerman also asserts that it is through an understanding of genre and the rhetorical situation that writers can recognize “the specifics of the situation, the exigency the situation creates, and our perception that by communication we can make the situation better for ourselves” (36). Having an understanding of genre is important because the basic aspects of a form of writing remain the same, and from there a writer can add their own voice and creative touches, while the audience for a piece of writing can vary widely. Writing can circulate to a much wider audience even if it wasn’t originally intended to. This awareness of genre is beneficial for students because if they aren’t aware that different genres exist and that there are different expectations in the forms of each genre, especially as new genres are emerging as a result of technology, then they may struggle as writers.
However, the genre and form that is too often taught in schools tends to do more harm than good for students. The genre of the “five paragraph essay” is the form of writing students tend to assume teachers want when producing writing for school. This can then lead to “formulaic, mechanical texts” (Clark 195) or it can lead to an inappropriate response (Clark 199). When K-12 students (although this is most likely the case for late middle-high school students) produce writing, whether they are explicitly told to or not, students often go with the “safe” choice of the five paragraph essay. If students only write in this form, then they will struggle with the academic writing expected of them in college. As David Bartholomae states, every time a student writes at the college level, they have to “invent the university for the occasion” and they have “to learn to speak our language, to speak as we do, to try on the peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing that define the discourses of our community” (605). Students are aware that something different is required of them in academic writing, but “to some degree…all of them can be said to be unfamiliar with the conventions of academic discourse,” so they need to be explicitly taught the genres and forms of academic writing that are expected of them (Bartholomae 623). Students need to be taught that there are multiple genres and forms of writing that each carry different expectations. Having an awareness of genre will ideally help students become stronger writers and help them become less reliant on the five paragraph essay format.
Here too, as with Ashley's work, nice connection to audience. And a nice connection to your presentation tonight--audience can be understood as a discourse community, that community is established through language specific characteristics both in terms of meaning and usage. Collaborative writing establishes a discourse community within a class--a community within a community. And, also, part of engaging in community based writing means that you have to learn the genres of that community (essentially). In other words, the discourse community is your audience and you have to learn what language they use to communicate big ideas. Nice work here.
Maura, I completely agree with your assessment of the "five paragraph essay" genre as something students see as the be-all and end-all of writing formats in the K-12 setting. It does, as you say, do more harm than good when students are asked to write within a different discourse than the ones with which they are familiar. For example, when I first teach my Journalism students about the traditional news writing style, they struggle to understand how a paragraph cannot be more than three sentences (and vice versa, how one sentence can stand alone as a paragraph). No matter how many times I try to teach and re-teach the tenets of the genre, I still have at least one student each semester who writes five paragraph essays instead of articles up until the very last assignment. It's a little concerning to see how conditioned they are to write in this way!
I'm constantly trying to reprogram my students out of the "how many paragraphs should this be?" mindset. I often just give them a page limit and tell them that they must have a thesis that they support with evidence. Once they get out of the 5 paragraph mindset students have remarked to me that it actually makes it easier for them to write.
I liked your connection to the 5 paragraph essay structure that we discussed a few weeks ago in class. I remember that being the worst part of English class in middle school when I first learned it. It produces formulaic, boring responses. I agree with you, teaching students to write to multiple genres is a great way to shift student writing away from the boring 5 paragraph essay.
I had to read the opening paragraphs of Clark’s chapter on Genre slowly a couple of times to recognize a difference between genre as “a way of classifying text types” and genre as “a rhetorical construct… defined in terms of function” (181); the two definitions seem to go hand in hand, since the text type determines its function. Of course, I’ve been frustrated many times by multiple choice questions insisting on one best answer for which genre a text supposedly fits. For this reason, her reference to Freedman and Medway, who describe the traditional view of genre as fixed and easily categorized, is helpful. This fixed definition is what recent theorists are abandoning in their broadening definition as “typified social action” (182). Still, throughout the reading, the use of “social action” and “constructivist” language seems to add semantics to an existing reality: knowing the type of a text informs and impacts the way we read it and respond to it. Bawarshi and Reiff call genre recognition a tool in “human sense-making” (183), which validates its presence in our curriculum.
Because I have found genre awareness personally helpful in both understanding a text or approaching a writing task, I have taught it alongside these disciplines for years. It was therefore validating to read Clark’s comments on transferability. She suggests that raising student awareness, rather than drilling specific, formulaic terms, equips students with “strategies for transferring and generalizing their knowledge when faced with new tasks” (Foertsch, p. 370). She goes on to write that the school essay doesn’t fit this paradigm. According to Clark, it excludes students from participation in academic discourse because of its insistence on “institutional rules and practices” (190). We’ve had similar discussions in this class before, and I continually circle back to the reality that our instruction can empower students to engage and perhaps challenge these classed assumptions; denying the common genre of academic discourse, however, will not help our students as writers or as members of academia. I would also suggest that academic writing does not need to be a genre mastered by every student. At the K12 level, students are given the opportunity to write across genres and ought to graduate with familiarity with various styles of text and discourse. They can then decide which genres to pursue, whether privately, socially, or academically, as in university-level writing. Genre awareness, like Bishop argues, “facilitates rather than constrains creativity” (195), as students can personalize their writing styles and enter into the discourse community of their choosing (199).
Annis Bawarshi’s article, Sites of Invention, further considers how genre both prepares and aids readers in discourse, especially in the classroom. Again, this doesn’t feel particularly new, in the sense that a syllabus is contractual, and rhetorical activity begins with a prompt. It also doesn’t seem terribly troubling to me that students “ reflect and reinscribe desires and assumptions” as they “come up against a set of cultural expectations” in their assessments (216). This is a rhetorical reality in any type of discourse. A teacher is not “an objective observer giving helpful advice”; she is, however, preparing students for audiences of objective (or not-so-objective) observers that they will encounter outside of the classroom. All of these realities point to the necessary adaptability of compositionists (222), as students determine which “self they project in a text” (Clark 191). As much as I’m concerned about students’ expression as writers, as well as their development of voice, I am deeply aware of my responsibility to empower them with skills to engage beyond their own personal expression into discourse with the broader community, even if that means they are simply knowledge-tellers coping with academic tasks (Bartholomae 613).
I’m out of words, so I’ll conclude with an observation I’ve made before: the nuances of this discussion seem far more significant to the FYW courses than to the K12 experience, where genres are taught expansively. I’ll be curious to read what others say about Bartholomae’s concerns with student invention versus the commonplace and how that impacts the way genres are taught and supposedly mastered in FYW courses.
Sarah- I find it so fascinating that your entire response today was all about you seeking to find and define genre and to see that definition in all of its functions and specificities. I find this funny, of course, because my response wound up with me arguing that the genre ultimately doesn't matter as long as someone ends up interacting with and engaging in discussion on the topic. My argument was that then, regardless of what the initial and anticipated genre, the real purpose and label of that text became a way for people to elaborate on a conversation for a particular topic.
What you write hear speaks to me--as it always does--about the conflict between creating formulaic writing that doesn't really exist outside of the classroom, and my own fear that I am not preparing students to write for other teachers. Genre has been very helpful to me in this. I feel like when I talk about genre I"m actually talking about readers--this is what a reader will expect from you in this genre. And so here are the characteristics of that genre (a research paper, a lab report, a short essay answer on an exam--all examples of genre, not just poetry and fiction, etc, which is sometimes what my students struggle most to understand--that writing forms, any writing forms, are not organic). That's a long parenthetical. But for me this is what Clark is getting at when she talks about students not being invited in. Transparency about genre as genre, I think, is very helpful to students--awareness that genre is a thing is a transferable skill.
Yes!!!! I did the same. It is interesting to see this other side of genre after looking at both definitions. I think we are also "raising" this "awareness" subtly rather than hammering it into the curriculum outright. Again, I think it goes back to thinking about purpose. What purpose are they writing for? How does this relate to the genre? It adds more to the criteria in writing. I think it breaks down what we are assigning our students and why. Which types of writing work for which students and for our own purposes.
I agree with your suggestion that "academic writing does not need to be a genre mastered by every student". We need to be aware of the personal and career goals of each student to understand what they want to get out of their writing. Not every student will get to writing at a graduate/PhD level and that is okay. We should instead use the writing classroom as an opportunity to prepare them for future interests and goals. Yes there are certain academic writing techniques they should grasp, but it is good to acknowledge not everyone will be on the same level of academic writing.
This is some brilliant work here Ashley. I really love the connection back to audience, very smart. I really love the discussion of how genre is simultaneously fixed (according to some) and fluid (according to others. That's an important point. In reading theory, genre signals to a reader what to expect from the text they are about to read: is it instructions? Is it an MCAS essay? Is it a poem? etc. I like teaching genre this way--as what it means to a reader and how a writer can either play into or against genre expectations (and what the consequences of that are).
In Clark’s chapter regarding genre, she stated that she has “found the concept of genre to be extremely helpful in enabling students to understand and produce both academic and ‘real-world’ writing genres” (p. 185). She is referring to students at the collegiate level in her statement, but I would say that I feel very similarly about the students I have taught at the middle school, and can see it applying to all grades in the K-12 levels as well. In my own experience, students often seem to grasp the concepts quicker when writing pieces and/or projects are framed around a genre that they have experience with outside of school. For example, my 7th grade groups have just finished creating their own mock websites which were made to emulate either a blog or news style of site. The students had a firm base knowledge of what these sites look like already, through their “real-world” experience with them, which made it easier for them to create content that fit the tone and style of what such a website would really have.
Something that I found interesting was the debate about the explicit teaching of genre that Clark provides an overview of. On the “nay” side, Clark references Aviva Freedman, who states that “people acquire genres below the conscious level” and so she does not believe that genre can be, nor should be, explicitly taught. There is some truth to that as often there are concepts, particularly with academic or scholarly genres, that students have acquired unconsciously over time. The main issue with not explicitly teaching genre though, is something that we have read about before, and that is that not all students are entering our classrooms with the same privileged level of experience. It is a fallacy to believe that all students will have a working knowledge of the academic genres when they reach our classes, and in light of that, explicitly teaching a genre can be extremely beneficial. In my own teaching I tend to lean more towards the side of explicitly teaching genres, with the idea that we are giving them the tools to begin building their own understanding of the genres that they will be able to take with them and adapt throughout their academic careers and beyond.
I appreciate your exploration of whether or not genre can be taught. I always get caught up in this. I don't get how it can't be taught. Genre is not unconscious to me. It's totally conscious. It's not organic. It's artificial. And to pretend otherwise, I think, disempowers students. When we pretend that just magically a thesis appears in the opening paragraph of an essay, that's when we disenfranchise a student. But when we tell them this is how you do it because that's what is expected in the genre, then we give them something they can learn. All this to say, I'm with you.
The most interesting reading for me this week was “Concept 2: Writing Speaks to Situations through Recognizable Forms”. The topics addressed within this concept are not just valuable in the literacy classroom, but also in a student’s future career. The ability to community effectively in a multimodal fashion is essential, which writing skills provide a great foundation for.
Section 2.1, “Writing Represents the World, Events, Ideas, and Feelings”, speaks to how language holds so much power but can also be limiting. Limitations come from how an author relays information in the text and how readers understand it. Bazerman states “Despite the limits of language, most of what we consider knowledge comes from the representation of the world and events in text” (38). If used correctly, written language will not be limiting but instead serve to expand thought. I believe this is one of the main goals of the literacy classroom, to demonstrate the ways writing can generate and spread new ideas. As Bazerman notes, we can acknowledge the limits of the written word while also witnessing how influential it has been in documenting and creating history.
In Section 2.6 “Texts Get Their Meaning from Other Texts”, Roozen mentions valuable documents in history including the Declaration of Independence. He notes while this document is the basis of a nation, it would not be as powerful as it is without influence from other texts. It is part of human nature to use intertextual links to make meaning. This practice is implemented in many classrooms, but I feel it could be enhanced more as it is such a valuable tool to allow students to bond with a book they might otherwise feel distant from. Another way to engage students is reminding them of Section 2.4 “All Writing is Multimodal”. In technology-saturated modern world, most people assume that multimodal involves some type of new media, technology, or visual rhetoric. The multimodal nature of a text is more about digital components. It involves viewing writing as a performative activity which encourages knowledge-making and “takes place within any number of genres and disciplines” (43). This allows students to look at a document such as the Declaration of Independence through multiple lenses. It serves a purpose in the fields of history, anthropology, science, communications, and much more. All texts are multimodal as they can include written and visual components, reach people across a variety of disciplines, and be distributed in a variety of ways.
The overarching message throughout this text was that writing is a powerful tool in all of its forms. Literacy classrooms should allow students to explore with these forms as they discover where their talents and interests lie. I believe the more time students have to experiment with persuasive, creative, and informational writing, they will have a clearer path and more solid foundation for their future career and modes of self-expression.
In Class Addition:
Genre has played an important part in my life as a writer. I always felt as a student I had to tick all the boxes that a certain genre of writing would expect of me, but over the years recognized that some of my best work, both creative and academic, comes out when I break those barriers and let my words flow in a form that feels right to me. I am glad to see that genre is not being used as a restrictive tool as much as it was in the past. I think we do need genre so we know where to go to reading certain types of writing. But it is also okay to write hybrid pieces that cross genres and challenge traditional expectations of writing.
I can always count on you Meghan to talk about writing in the world.--as we should, because that's our classroom goal, right? How students are humans in the world trying to communicate with other humans. I would argue, as a person who worked as a writer at a business-to-business magazine, that all workplace writing is genre writing--there are different genres of workplace writing: memos, executive summaries, instructions, campaigns. All of that. This is also, by the way, why I like Threshold concepts. The idea of genre is a threshold concept.
I'm guilty of adding the H too. Sorry.
I agree with everything you've discussed here, but especially love what you mention in your in-class addition. I agree that genre is necessary as a base for writing, but as you mention it can be somewhat tedious to just "tick all the boxes." By providing students with more opportunities to experiment, like you've been able to do, they can then be more creative and try breaking the barriers instead of remaining restricted within them.
Megan** (Sorry I just noticed I accidentally added an h to your name!)
In reading Clark’s chapter on genre, the line that I found myself being drawn to was in a whole paragraph following one tangential line of thinking. The line of thinking is asking the reader to think of genre in terms of the function, or in other words, the product or outcome. As always, this got me thinking about Inoue and his rather Marxist way of thinking, that it is about the work put in, not the product, that determines value. Clark writes “Because genres develop through writers’ effective responses to those situations, the new concept of genre views generic conventions as arising from suitability and appropriateness, rather than from arbitrary formal conventions” (p.182). This stood out to me as significant because it is a sort of working explanation for how and why we as educators do not explain the hows and whys of writing for one particular audience. It is nuanced and needs understanding of the audience and the role the writing piece will play, and does not have clear-cut rules or formal conventions to follow. Unlike the essay, then, other writing forces students to interact with someone other than the world of academia or their teacher/ professor in order to make it worth something. Its value is in its purpose to others.
This connects to a concept in the Adler Kassner Wardle reading as well. The description of writing as the evidence of a perspective left behind, a sort of fossil or archaeological find by which to base the nature of understanding and premises of the society from which it came is fascinating to me. "The textual structures are akin to the fossil record left behind, evidence that writers have employed familiar discursive moves in accordance with reader expectations, institutional norms, market forces, and other social influences" (p.39). The concept of writing being the evidence of a conversation someone already engaged with in on a topic is also directly conflicting with our previosuly discussed understanding of the written work being one active participant in an ongoing discussion throughout time and history. This is something to think about, then. How does the environment, socio-economic and geo-political, affect our outcomes of writing today? How can we take that into consideration in how we frame our arguments so that they do not become antiquated and another example of "they were a product of their time," or does it not really matter because people will still engage with it in the future?
Either way, I think the idea of writing as conversation almost negates the necessity of defining genre; if people interact with it, it almost doesn't matter what its specified purpose was. Instead, it gains a new purpose as a way to communicate a point and build a conversation.
Hi Alyssa! I also thought about Inoue during this reading. I love how you point out writing that is NOT an essay pushes students out of academia and into interaction with the real world. This type of writing, across all genres, will open them up to skills that are so valuable to their future careers and personal development.
I also like your argument at the end, that as long as we are interacting with writing it doesn't matter what genre it is. I think some people prefer defined genres to seek out and produce certain types of writing, but others thrive without any constraints.
I like the point you made connecting genre writing to audience because it seems impossible to separate the two. Also, teaching genre is difficult because it is so nuanced stuck out to me as well. Even if you are writing a particular piece, it may be done differently depending on the audience. For example, writing a letter is typically structured the same way, but the tone and message vary drastically depending on the audience. Even writing an email can change throughout the response chain. When I originally email a parent, I treat it as a formal letter. As I get more acquainted with that parent, I may loosen the structure a bit.
As you'll be able to tell, I am in a different camp--which is not to say you are wrong. Where I see us differing is that I think Inoue would value the explicit teaching of genre because too often the mystery of the characteristics of school genres (like the essay or the exam answer) is kept from students, disempowering them. This is sort of what Bartholomae is writing about--he's saying that students don't understand what the genre is and sometimes even if the know the genre, they' don't really get what they are supposed to do in it--they haven't mastered the intellectual capacity to really meet the demands of the genre. I think that to teach students the characteristics of genre and then engage them in authentic writing experiences that meet those characteristics can be powerful--even if it is formulaic. It's always my hope that the formula will eventually give way to real knowledge.
Hi Alyssa, I really like the idea that you ended on, of thinking of writing as conversation and how that can be used to reframe the way we think of writing in general outside of all "genres". As you said, it is definitely something to think about!
Also, the connection that you made in the first paragraph about the working explanation of why we as teachers don't explain the hows and whys of writing for a particular audience, was something that I had been thinking about as well and wasn't able to articulate clearly.
The subject of genre was discussed in a number of ways in this week’s readings. Clark gives us some background on the subject. Originally, genre was used as a way to classify different text types. Over the past 30 years it has developed into a “typified social action,” which includes how people behave in social contexts. Therefore, genre goes beyond just writing. The example that Clark gives is that of writing a letter for a charity. The traditional way of composing the letter would include the necessary information to persuade people to help out in a monetary way for its intended charity. However, as Clark explains, “Current conceptions of genre would view the letter as a typical rhetorical action (the request for money) in response to a recurring situation (the need of charitable organizations for contributions), in which the structure, tone, and style contribute the genre’s effectiveness and thereby become typical” (182). This view of genre writing and behavior may be evident as students progress to higher education, but in the younger grades, genre follows the traditional view. For instance, the Massachusetts Frameworks Standards require students to know how to write in a number of different genres. They must be able to compose narratives, expository essays, and argumentative essays. There is some debate when teaching genres explicitly. Clark references Aviva Freedman on the matter, “That the explicit teaching of genre is not even possible because genre knowledge requires immersion into a discourse community” (185). Students need a foundation when it comes to writing. They need to be taught how to write in different genres; they don’t just magically acquire that knowledge through experience. The progression of their writing may then evolve into relating their writing to personal experiences where they can contribute to specific discourses.
As a student, my view on genre writing is a bit different, or lacking. In “Inventing the University,” Bartholomae discusses the different types of genres first year writing students are expected to write to. He notes that these students are expected to write wearing many different “hats” but they don’t possess the specific content or discourse knowledge to fully develop their voice. That resonated with me because that is how I felt most of my college career when it comes to writing. I do not recall if I was taught explicitly or not the types of writing genres. It took years to feel comfortable writing different types of essays, papers, etc.
I agree that the "hats" we are often demanded to wear are not presented to us in a digestible way. It takes years of reading comments on papers and reviewing our own writing to find a clear voice of our own that can work in academic writing and across all genres. I think it can also be difficult to have two professors with completely different writing expectations, even if they are tackling similar subjects within the courses. As students we are always needing to evolve and be ready for the next shift. It is useful to have experience with different expectations but can also be frustrating as we are attempting to master certain types of writing.
That's true on the K12 level as well. Introducing a variety of writing experiences, even those that are made to be "authentic", takes such a significant amount of time in the classroom that it's hard to imagine how many genres students can truly adopt as writers.
You address two things here. One I've addressed above in response to Alyssa's answer--about how we fail to teach students the characteristics of the genre's we expect them to write in, and that makes students think they are dumb--as if the characteristics of the genre is just some normal, inherent thing that they just don't know. But of course that isn't the case. We, as more proficient writers know that these characteristics are not organic. But we've mastered them. That's my main argument for teaching genre--the genre's of school--as genre. There was some second point, but I think I blurred it into the first point.
In Clarke's writing about "Genre", she mentions the process movement. It's interesting that because there was such a focus on self-expression and personal voice, that "genre" was viewed as "old-fashioned" and "traditional". I have never really thought of genre in writing, but always in terms of classifications in reading. When I think about writing for genre, it reminds me of writing for a purpose or for an audience. Being aware of what and who you are writing about and for. They talk about this in the section about "Genre Awareness and Transferability". It said, "...When students acquire genre awareness, they are learning not only how to write in a particular genre, but also gaining insight into how a given genre fulfills a rhetorical purpose and how various components of a text, the writer, the intended reader, and the text itself are informed by that purpose." (p 188). Bill Hart-Davidson discusses genres and writing too in his section "Genres Are Enacted by Writers and Readers". He said, "In writing studies, the stabilization of formal elements by which we recognize genres is seen as the visible effects of human action, routinized to the point of habit in specific cultural conditions." (p 39). So then is genre supposed to be an act? And how? Carolyn Miller says genres are "habitual responses" to social situations. After reading this, I think genre is supposed to be the aftermath of the writing and not the actual act of it.
Thinking about genre for teaching seems like an individual manner to me. I would argue with Clarke that it actual is more self-created. You create a genre within your own writing. I think teaching genre when categorizing books gives students a sense of their own writing and what they are writing for. It relates to the author's/writer's purpose. When assigning or completing work, there needs to be a balance between genres of writing. For instance, Clarke mentions we focus a lot on the narrative writing and how that might not be beneficial for students. I am not sure when the focus shifted to narrative writing, but it is true that this is not balanced along with research, expository, informative, etc. Even in my own writing career from K-12, the genres of writing did not spread further than the basics. The readings also mentioned that this does not include culturally responsive techniques.
I've hit upon this elsewhere in this discussion board. I like talking and thinking about genre because it's a way to talk about audience. A genre has certain characteristics that a reader expects to see, when they don't, they don't know what to do with the text. I talk about about you can follow the characteristics or break with them, but you have to be prepared for the consequences of that.
Hi Olivia, when I began the readings this week, I too had mainly only thought of "genre" as a reference to the classifications in reading. It took me a little bit to retrain myself to think of what the "genres" in writing are referring to. I really like your idea that writing for a genre, is like writing for a purpose or audience, as that is absolutely at the core of what students need to understand in order to fully acquire the concepts for a genre.
Genre is something that I think about all the time as a student, teacher, and a writer. As a teacher, I'm asking my students to write in multiple genres. We often do personal narratives, poems, and academic writing just to name a few. I think it's important to provide my students with a wide array of genres so that they have many different ways to display their learning to me, and ways to showcase their strengths.
As a student, I mostly work in the genre of academic and argumentative writing. I'd say that this type of writing is one of my strengths. I've always loved being able to research something I care about and support my own ideas on the subject through my writing. I took a poetry workshop last semester that forced me out of my comfort zone when it comes to genre and I never want to go back.
As a teacher, I am constantly trying to focus on the value of academic writing as it pertains to my student's culture and values. In chapter 6, Clark explains how academic writing as a genre can often be viewed as a colonizing force, although does not advocate for the ditching of academic writing all together. Clark explains. Academic writing does not have to be something that teaches marginalized groups to think and write in a "proper" way. Rather, academic writing should be framed as simply supporting your own original thougths and ideas with evidence.
I sound like a broken record, but I want to say that genre is only a colonizing force if we allow our students to imagine that some of us are born knowing how to compose an essay. If we talk about all of their writing as different genres, with different requirements, then we are back to the idea we started class with: you aren't a bad writing; writing is hard. But you can learn it. You can own the genre. It doesn't have to own you.
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