In the past few decades, Swales’ (1990) conceptualization of genre has been critically influential in English for specific purposes (ESP) and English for academic purposes (EAP) scholarship, as it has played a central role in providing a robust framework for researching specialized discourses and offering insight for second language (L2) pedagogy (Paltridge, 2012). A genre, according to Swales (1990), is “a class of communicative events” recognized and employed by particular discourse communities whose “members...share some set of communicative purposes” (p. 58). From this perspective, a genre is characterized by its recurrent rhetorical moves and their linguistic realizations. Further, genres, in this tradition, are considered communicative strategies for accomplishing social actions of specific discourse communities rather than the culture at large (Hyland, 2007).
Inspired by Swales (1990), ESP genre analysts have identified the communicative purposes and schematic structures of a diverse range of academic and professional genres (Paltridge, 2012), which have contributed much to our understanding of the formal patterns of such genres and the ways in which particular communities engage in them. However, this line of research has mostly focused on different varieties of written discourse. Although a few researchers have examined spoken discourse from an ESP genre perspective, including different phases of academic lectures (e.g., Cheng, 2012; Thompson, 1994), little is remarkably known of EAP lessons (Hamp-Lyons & Hyland, 2005), the staple genre of EAP classroom practitioners. This paucity, perhaps, is due to the perceived rhetorical messiness of classroom lessons, as classroom instruction sometimes involves teachers’ making on-th...
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Hyland, K. (2007). Genre pedagogy: Language, literacy and L2 writing instruction. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16, 148-164.
Paltridge, B. (2012). Genre and English for specific purposes. In B. Paltridge & S. Starfield (Eds). The handbook of English for specific purposes (pp. 347-366). New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
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This paper will target ELL students of a secondary age level. It will be assumed they are between levels 3 and 4 of the Ministry of Education ELL/D Performance Standards. This level of student will often need help to elaborate on certain ideas. Sequencing is generally good at this stage, as is accessing prior knowledge, however, a graphic organizer can always benefit a student no matter what level. Grammar is improving greatly through these stages, but things such as homonyms and figures of speech will still be difficult (BC Performance Standards, 2001). Having the students learn how to write a narrative will complete a Prescribed Learning Outcomes for English 10: writing in a variety...
Tan, Amy. “Two Kinds.” Exploring Literature: Writing and Arguing About Fiction, Poetry, Drama and The Essay.4th e. Ed. Frank Madden. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009. 253-261. Print.
The Stases and Other Rhetorical Concepts from Introduction to Academic Writing. N.p.: n.p., n.d. PDF.
Graff, Gerald, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel K. Durst. "They Say/I Say": The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing: With Readings. Vol. 2e. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2012. Print.
While preparing for one of his college lectures, Dennis Baron, a professor and linguistics at the University of Illinois, began playing with the idea of how writing has changed the world we lived in and materials and tools we use in everyday life. This lecture slowly transitioned into “Should Everybody Write?” An article that has made many wonder if technology has made writing too easy for anyone to use or strengthens a writer's ability to learn and communicate their ideas. Baron uses rhetorical strategies in his article to portray to his audience his positive tone, the contrast and comparison of context and his logical purpose.
Paul Dean.The Review of English Studies , New Series, Vol. 52, No. 208 (Nov., 2001) , pp. 500-515
The impact and effectiveness of using proper rhetoric was a strategy of “good” writing that I was not aware of until my senior year of high school. While taking AP Language and Composition my junior year, my fellow students and I believed that we had survived countless essay workshop activities and writing assignments with emphasis on word choices, grammatical structure, syntax, punctuation and spelling. By the time we had entered AP Literature our senior year, we felt we could achieve success; we already knew how to write in the correct format and structur...
Tan, Amy. "Two Kinds". Literature, Reading Reacting,Writing. 5th ed. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Boston: Heinle, 2004.
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Lynne Flowerdew (2009) “Applying corpus linguistics to pedagogy” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 14:3, 393–417
The primary aim of any ESP course is to answer the question “why do the learners need to learn the foreign language”? This means the focal emphasis is on helping the learners to communicate accurately and precisely. Therefore, ESP adapts elements from other approaches as a foundation for its own methods and techniques. An ESP course is thus designed to cater for the appropriate structural, functional, and discourse levels learners might need for developing the needed language competence (Hutchinson & Waters: 1987).
However, their purposes for writing are sometimes not the kind valued by Western academic communities. The nature of academic literacy often confuses and disorients students, “particularly those who bring with them a set of conventions that are at odds with those of the academic world they are entering” (Kutz, Groden & Zamel, 1993, p. 30). In addition, the culture-specific nature of schemata–abstract mental structures representing our knowledge of things, events, and situations–can lead to difficulties when students write texts in L2. Knowing how to write a “summary” or “analysis” in Mandarin or Spanish does not necessarily mean that students will be able to do these things in English (Kern, 2000). As a result, any appropriate instruction must take into consideration the influence from various educational, social, and cultural experiences that students have in their native language. These include textual issues, such as rhetorical and cultural preferences for organizing information and structuring arguments, commonly referred to as contrastive rhetoric (Cai, 1999; Connor, 1997; Kaplan, 1987; Kobayashi & Rinnert, 1996; Leki, 1993; 1997; Matalene, 1985), knowledge of appropriate genres (Johns, 1995; Swales, 1990), familiarity with writing topics (Shen, 1989), and distinct cultural and instructional socialization (Coleman, 1996; Holliday, 1997; Valdes, 1995). In addition to instructional and cultural
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Raman Selden, Peter Widdowson, and Peter Brooker. A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. 4th ed. London: Prentice Hall and Harvester Wheatrsheaf. 1997.