Chat about genre with graduate students at Georgia State University
Diane Belcher, Professor
Monday, April 19, 2004 4:54pm
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*+**** Ann--Johns entered AL9370dxb_Room1. Monday, April 19, 2004 4:54pm
Ann Johns>>I'm ready when you all are...Ann
*+**** LAUREN--LUKKARILA entered AL9370dxb_Room1. Monday, April 19, 2004 5:00pm
*+**** Diane--Belcher entered AL9370dxb_Room1. Monday, April 19, 2004 5:00pm
Diane Belcher>>Hi, Ann. Welcome to our chatroom!
*+**** Iryna--Kozlova entered AL9370dxb_Room1. Monday, April 19, 2004 5:01pm
*+**** Brent--Poole entered AL9370dxb_Room1. Monday, April 19, 2004 5:01pm
Ann Johns>>Thanks. I haven't restudied the questions, but I'll try to do my best...
*+**** WEIMIN--ZHANG entered AL9370dxb_Room1. Monday, April 19, 2004 5:01pm
*+**** MAGDI--KANDIL entered AL9370dxb_Room1. Monday, April 19, 2004 5:01pm
MAGDI KANDIL>>Hello Dr. Johns. this is magdi, from egypt
WEIMIN ZHANG>>Hi, Dr Johns, I'm Weimin, from China. Very excited to chat with you.
LAUREN LUKKARILA>>Hi. Dr. Johns. I'm Lauren.
Ann Johns>>ahlan wa sahlan, Magdi. We spent two years in Egypt. I was a student at AUC.
Brent Poole>>Hi Dr. Johns, I'm Brent from here in the states!
Iryna Kozlova>>Hello, Dr. Johns. I am Iryna fom Ukraine
Ann Johns>>And Weimin, I had a Fulbright to China (80=81. Very interesting.
Ann Johns>>I can't claim to have been to the US...but I have been to GA!
WEIMIN ZHANG>>I'm from Tsinghua University.
Ann Johns>>And now, the questions?
Diane Belcher>>Ann, could you tell us how you first became interested in genre?
Ann Johns>>I began to realize that process writing (as interpreted in the 70s) just didn't fit with the needs of my ESL/EFL students. Then, I began to read John Swales (who is a friend, too) and to be interested in the Australian work. It appealed to me, to my ESL students, and to the teachers I worked with. It involved context and audience in very serious ways--not to mention text format and function.
Ann Johns>>Are you sitting there in a room deciding who asks the next question?
Diane Belcher>>Ann, do you still see yourself as an ESP genre specialist or as eclectic?
Diane Belcher>>Yes, we are in the same room, listening to each other type and trying to be polite.
Ann Johns>>Well, since ALL good teaching is ESP (considers student needs, etc), I think I'm still an ESP teacher. Do all of you know about TENOR, Teaching English for No Obvious Reason? That's non-ESP teaching!
Ann Johns>>Next question?
LAUREN LUKKARILA>>There's much discussion these days about genre systems, or genre sets. What are the pedagogical implications of genre systems? Should we teaching genre systems instead of discrete genres?
Ann Johns>>Oh, I love this question! I am in the process of writing a composition textbook, and I'm trying to show students how systems work in their lives, both academic and non-academic. They get it, generally. They also understand intertextuality. Recently, I wrote an opinion column (interesting genre) for the local paper (without formal citations), but it was highly intertextual!
Diane Belcher>>Could you give us the citation? It'd be fun to read.
Ann Johns>>PS. I like the Bhatia comments on systems in my Genre and the Classroom book. But this work also needs to consider context. See, for example, the Samraj chapter in that text.
Ann Johns>>I'll send the opinion article to you, Diane. Apparently, it's not retrievable on-line. The university blacked it out? Anyway, there were at least eight people whose work contributed to that piece---in addition to sources from the university.
LAUREN LUKKARILA>>What are your thoughts on using a genre theory based approach to teaching reading in the L2 classroom?
Diane Belcher>>Yes, there's a lot out there about using genre approaches to writing pedagogy, but doesn't seem to be much on reading
Ann Johns>>Genre theory may be more important to reading than to writing. Currently, I'm working with high schools on student research, and (I'll send you that handout) one of the purposes is to have students understand how genre influences function---and the way we should read a text. I use genre in reading all the time.
Brent Poole>>How can we tell if explicit instruction really does result in improved genre acquisition? Of course, we can see if students can do an assignment, but does this necessarily mean that the students have aquired the genre? Have there been longitudinal studies that really support the claims made for explicit genre teaching?
Ann Johns>>That's right, Diane. But let me say this about genre and writing: there are very few N.American textbooks on the issue (see Devitt and Bawarshi, though). My future teachers love the Australian work by Susan Feez on both reading and writing.
Ann Johns>>Brent: Great question. And a wonderful research topic for you. What we need to do first is to determine what our goals for genre instruction are. Then, we can begin to assess whether goals are met. People say to me, "I'm using a genre approach." What does that mean? What are their goals?
Ann Johns>>More questions?
Diane Belcher>>We've been reading some of a. freeman's work, which claims that being able to produce something that looks like a genre doesn't mean they really "know" the genre.
MAGDI KANDIL>> Can genre theory and pedagogy be helpful in fields like architecture that have ?fuzzy? genres? Does it make sense to attempt to teach such genres, especially if the instructor is not a member of the discipline the genre belongs to?
Ann Johns>>That's right. She also says we can't export genres from their contexts. And I agree at one level. But I think that we can work with the students' own genres and have them research genres in their academic classes. I do this in a learning communities environment...and it's interesting. But here is where reading can come in, too: they can read in genres and analyze them.
Ann Johns>>Magdi: Haram! Aren't all genres fuzzy? See Berkenkotter and Huckin (after Bakhtin) about the forces that make every text different. We have to be very careful about not teaching genres as templates but as variable social actions.
WEIMIN ZHANG>>What should we make of Aviva Freedman's claim that explicit genre instruction is unnecessary and possibly harmful? Are there really times when it is unnecessary and actually harmful?
MAGDI KANDIL>>yeh, this is haram
Diane Belcher>>Students hardly ever want to hear that genres are "fuzzy"
Ann Johns>>Perhaps Aviva Freedman is haram! Anyway, I think she's off the mark. The only ESL person she's read is Steve Krashen, and I think that others might have more to say about teaching our diverse students. We all know that students have had little experience with a variety of texts, so we need to give them some help. Harmful? I don't think so. What does Jim Martin say? The process approach is an invention of Berkeley types who don't understand linguistic diversity.
Iryna Kozlova>>There is much talk among genre theorists about "exigency." Is it possible to simulate in a classroom the types of exigency that motivates real world genres? Or, are classroom genres always inevitably too different from real world genres to allow effective simulation of real-world, even real-academic-world, genres?
Ann Johns>>Yes, Diane. They don't like fuzzy. They want ANSWERS. However, when we compare two texts, supposedly from the same genres, they begin to see that there is always variation.
Ann Johns>>We do a great deal on line to work with the "exigency" issue. We also talk about exigency and the famous five para essay. Yes, it's a useful genre for some contexts! We also talk about the fact that academics in this country call most student texts they assign "essays." That's why student research is necessary.
Ann Johns>>And?
LAUREN LUKKARILA>>Can genre pedagogy be as useful in FL language teaching (Spanish to Anglo-Americans) especially given such students' lack of motivation and opportunities or desires to actually use the target language? (I realize that opportunities are abundant in San Diego but there are many places where they are not.)
Diane Belcher>>Lauren is trying to find a way to use genre in her Spanish language classes.
Ann Johns>>And our students are motivated to write? Have you seen that wonderful "essay" by Ilona Leki in the new Kroll volume? Nobody much wants to write---it's a post-literate world. However, the students write e-mails and chat all the time. So I think we're facing the same issues whether we're in Spain, the US or China.
Diane Belcher>>But Laurent thinks ESL students are definitely more motivated than American FL students
Ann Johns>>Her Spanish language classes in the US? What an opportunity? I took a French class for business majors and the teacher never dealt with the genres of French businesses. Not even the old Hinds and Jenkins materials! So I see great opportunities. Start with news articles.
LAUREN LUKKARILA>>Yes, I'm working on designing a reading course based precisely on news articles
Ann Johns>>Yes. She's right. What can I say? I was just on line with Le Monde in French. Why not do some current events work with editorials in Spanish? Oh, yum!
Diane Belcher>>Lauren is taking news articles from US Spanish language papers and Latin American papers
Ann Johns>>Great. Now, they can be studied as genre. Why not compare the same stories and/or genre in English and Spanish? The social construction of texts...and now that the Spanish have left Iraq...
LAUREN LUKKARILA>>Exactly what I'm planning to do. I'm comparing articles on the same topics.
LAUREN LUKKARILA>>Except that I'm comparing them in U.S. based Spanish, vs. non-US Spanish, vs. English
Ann Johns>>You're way ahead of me. Now, can I take your course? I have been SO bored with my language courses...(Chinese, Spanish, French, Arabic)
Diane Belcher>>Can I ask about critical genre analysis? I have a feeling that most ESL students aren't really interested in critical approaches or feel they have time to be critical.
Ann Johns>>That's very interesting. What we find if we look at the genres that our students are actually using is that they are involved in critique all of the time. One of my students reads and writes on-line critique (sdpunk.org); others critique the flyers and other material they get. Wonderful student newspaper critiques. Our problem is that we ask them to critique that which they don't understand. And we do it all the time. This is where Freedman is definitely on track.
Diane Belcher>>I was thinking of the students who beg for formulas and aren't terribly interested in discovering what's out there and how much variation there is. It's hard to resist giving some students "formulas"
Diane Belcher>>At OSU we used both Weissberg and Buker and Swales and Feak; the students loved W&B but the teachers much preferred S&F, so we used both
Ann Johns>>Yes. Just tell me how to do it! Well, I let them develop tentative formulae out of a number of texts from (supposedly) the same genre. Then, I give them a new situation in which they have to play with their formulae. I also work with essays all of the time, e.g., Anna Quindlen in Newsweek.
Ann Johns>>I'm not surprised. Of course, Bob Weissberg would be the first to admit that their book is S&F watered down! But we have grad students who love S and W..."changed my life," said one.
LAUREN LUKKARILA>>Do you ask them to discover the formula when you're teaching reading or do you give them some kind of idea of what it might be as a way to enhance their reading abilities?
Ann Johns>>I have a question: How do you combine genre and process?
Diane Belcher>>If process means mainly drafting with multilple feedback options, I see no problems with developing a process genre pedagogy
Diane Belcher>>In other words, I don't think process and genre need to be seen as mutually exclusive, though Vivian Zamel may disagree with me
Ann Johns>>Me, either. Have you read GENRE AND THE INVENTION OF THE WRITER by Bawarshi? Great stuff. He and I will be with a group of folks (Bazerman, Coe, Tardy, Paltridge) presenting at AILA, I hope.
Ann Johns>>We
Diane Belcher>>I think my students would like to tell you about some of their genre research plans
Ann Johns>>Woops! We'll leave Vivian out of this, I think. I have students reflect on their processes as they approach different genres. I also have an invention grid that I built after I read Anis Bawarshi's book.
Ann Johns>>Good.
Diane Belcher>>Weimin, for instance, wants to look at job application letters received in China, sent by both American and Chinese applicants. a different perspective!
Diane Belcher>>I don't know anyone who's really looked at Anglo American rhetoric from the vantage point of the PRC, ie, how well it works there.
Ann Johns>>Sounds very good. He could begin with some general contrastive work, then consider how that genre is taught in the US (in books)...Are there now Chinese books on how to write letters? I know that there are Japanese ones: how women should write them...and men!
Diane Belcher>>Great idea!
Ann Johns>>Are you a woman, Weimin? I never get that straight!
WEIMIN ZHANG>>Yes, we've some books on how to write business letters. (a man)
Diane Belcher>>If he is, he's cleverly disguised
MAGDI KANDIL>>I am planning to compare the strategies of ideology and opinion expression in US and Arabic editorilas
Ann Johns>>Oh, dear.
MAGDI KANDIL>>I waqnna focus on the recent news in the occupied lands
Ann Johns>>I don't know what you mean, Magdi. That is, I don't understand "strategies of ideology and opinion expression" Are ideology and opinion different. Yes, the occupied lands is a good topic.
MAGDI KANDIL>>How each group talk about group vs state terrorism ..etc
Ann Johns>>Oh, good. So you have specific topics and you want to look at a) language, b) text structure, and c?
MAGDI KANDIL>>How writers' ideologies seem to be reflected in the discourse structures of their texts
MAGDI KANDIL>>basically from cda point of view
Ann Johns>>I have just been looking at the Hamas and Zionist responses to the Balfour Declaration, lo those many years ago! Such different discourse--and structures in their responses. OK: I would go beyond structures to looking at evaluation and stance of the authors. See Hunston and Thompson, for example. Or Hyland.
Diane Belcher>>Iryna is very interested in how narrative works as academic discourse in qualitative research articles. What makes a story sound academic?
Iryna Kozlova>>I am going to analyze academic narratives and how narrators can claim "scientific authority" while remaining accurate reporters' of others' life stories.
Ann Johns>>Oh, nice. Not just what makes the story look academic, but how is it framed? How does this "story" differ from standard story structure? How is it intertextual with the research question? etc.
Diane Belcher>>Iryna's topic is an issue that I've seen many qual. dissertation writers struggle with.
Ann Johns>>Oh, none of us is accurate. All of us construct our discourses for specific purposes...and those narratives are constructed that way. Diane, have you seen that Casanave/Vandrick book on publishing? wonderful narrative---but purposeful.
Diane Belcher>>Not yet. I'm eager to see it
Diane Belcher>>Brent is looking at how computer mediated communication affects interaction styles
Ann Johns>>Or those narratives we wrote about how we become comp. teachers---for Michigan. VERY difficult to write, I assure you.
Brent Poole>> Do you have any advice as to where I should start with my analysis?
Brent Poole>>I am thinking of looking at turn taking, or taking a discourse Analysis approach
Ann Johns>>Sounds a bit broad, Brent. Unless you have a specific analysis in mind. Do you want to compare this with other types of interaction by the same students? That might be interesting. Case studies.
Brent Poole>>Yes, I am going to use case studies
Diane Belcher>>For the book I did with Ulla, we finally had to just include interviews. Some academics just can't bring themselves to write personal narratives.
Ann Johns>>Hmm. It may be a bit old-fashioned. This is what I did a while back: compared my students' e-mails with their more formal texts. In all cases, there were real similarities among one student's works.
Ann Johns>>I had to turn down Chris Casanave, who loves to collect narratives. I like to tell stories, but I think telling narratives and getting published (without some kind of framework) is cheating.
Diane Belcher>>Lauren and others are struggling with analysis strategies/methods, having a hard time deciding which methods to use
Ann Johns>>Yes, it's difficult. I taught a course called "Reading and Writing Rhetorically," and I found that the most useful person in terms of texts and analyses was Hyland. His work is very competent yet accessible. And what he studies is very interesting!
LAUREN LUKKARILA>>What are some of the sources that you used for the reading rhetorically part of your course?
Ann Johns>>Here's a problem my current students face: looking into the data and finding what it "says." That's why Ken Hyland's work...and some of the corpus work, may be useful if people are just beginning to conduct research.
Diane Belcher>>Of course, Hyland is really into corpus studies. Some genre folks aren't so enthusiastic about collecting corpus data. How do you feel about it?
Ann Johns>>Actually, I look at the processes as two sides of the coin. We read analytically and rhetorically...and then we wrote.
Ann Johns>>But e-mail me about some sources.
Ann Johns>>Corpus is bottom-up. Genre is more top-down. However, if we begin with the "Scenes of Writing" (Devitt, Reiff, Bawarshi) and select our texts and contexts...and then do corpus work, we have a great combo.
Diane Belcher>>It seems the fear is that corpus types get too much into counting text features and/or looking for certain preconceived characterics
Ann Johns>>Absolutely. And they are WAY too casual about genre and context. So I would like to take a New Rhetoric stand...then use our corpus linguistics to see what's going on in text.
Diane Belcher>>Bridging text and context is research seems the goal, but we seldom see it in articles we read
Ann Johns>>You're right. But it's useful for teaching. What's our problem in publishing? The reviewers and editors want to see a clean study.
Diane Belcher>>Schryer, for instance, talks about the need for studies of text and context together but her own work doesn show evidence of doing this
Ann Johns>>Oh, I like the MICASE Corpus because it combines text features and contextual ones.
Ann Johns>>Yes. Right.
Diane Belcher>>I think our time is up already! It's been great chatting with you!
Diane Belcher>>I'll send a transcript of our chat if you'd like a copy
Ann Johns>>Ah, the New Rhetoric folks don't know about linguistics...Rick Coe told me that he fears talking about language the way we do. So here's our chance to cross disciplines.
LAUREN LUKKARILA>>Thanks for all of the great feedback
Ann Johns>>OK. And I'll send my opinion piece and some exercises. Thanks. It was fun.
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Iryna Kozlova>>Thank you very much Dr. Johns.
Brent Poole>>Yes, thank you very much.
MAGDI KANDIL>>Ma3a assalama, Dr. Johns. It has been a pleasure talking to you
WEIMIN ZHANG>>Thank you so much, Dr. Johns. Zai Jian.
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Session in AL9370dxb_Room1 ended. (all participants have left).
Monday, April 19, 2004 6:02pm
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