Professional
Activities


Curriculum Vitae


Conference Handouts and Power Points

Publications

Professional Activities

My retirement from San Diego State has provided for me some professional flexibility, which I am taking advantage of in a number of ways. I continue to write articles and book chapters, particularly on English for Specific Purposes, genre and the teaching of composition. I also present plenaries and papers at conferences. Here are some of my more recent publications. [See also the publications link and "Conference Handouts and Power Points."]

• I have contributed a chapter entitled History of ESP research to the Handbook of English for Specific Purposes, edited by Brian Paltridge and Sue Starfield and published by Blackwell.
• With my VESL (Vocational ESL) colleague, Donna Price, I am writing a chapter on current and future issues in English for Specific Purposes teaching and research, to appear in the 4th edition of "the appled book," Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, edited by Marianne Celce-Murcia, Donna Brinton, and Ann Snow (Heinle/Cengage, 2011 or 2012).
• With Leketi Makalela, my colleague from the University of Limpopo, South Africa, I completed a book chapter entitled "Needs analysis, critical ethnography and context: Perspecives from the client--and the consultant," to appear in Belcher, D., A.M. Johns, & B. Paltridge [eds.]. (2011) New directions in ESP research. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• For a special issue on genre (11/1) in the Journal of Second Language Writing, edited by Christine Tardy, I wrote an article entitled "The future of genre in L2 writing: Fundamental, but contested, decisions,"which appeared in Spring, 2011.
• A book chapter, "Situated invention and genre analysis: Assisting Generation 1.5 students to develop rhetorical flexibility ,appears in a volume edited by Mark Roberge, Meryl Siegal, and Linda Harklau entitled Generation 1.5 in College Composition: Theory, Research, and Pedagogy. (Routledge, 2009).
• "Tertiary undergraduate ESP: Problems and possibilities" can be found in a volume edited by Diane Belcher entitled English for Specific Purposes in Theory and Practice, (University of Michigan Press, 2009)
• An article based upon my plenary at the 2007 American Association of Applied Linguistics Conference entitled "Genre awareness and the novice student: An on-going quest," was published in Language Teaching, 41, 239-54, April, 2008.

However, acting on the belief that we should apply our knowledge directly to pedagogies, most of my professional efforts since retirement has been devoted to consulting about or designing curricula for secondary and first-year university students in the United States e.g., (for the AVID Center), on my first Senior Fulbright to South Africa (for the University of Limpopo, 2007), and on a second Senior Fulbright with Antonine University in Beirut (2009). For more on these projects, see the "Curriculum Projects" link on this website.

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And now, for a bit of history:

Teaching, especially the teaching of academic reading and writing, has been the focus of my professional life. Fortunately, I have been able to design research projects that complement the work in my classroom. Over the years, my major focus has been upon the Freshman Success courses that enroll first-generation, diverse students recruited to the San Diego State campus by the Educational Opportunity Program. These students are bright and articulate. Their voices shine through my published work as they reflect upon their growth and frustrations when coping with the literacy tasks in their academic classes. [See my CV.]

My interest in these students, in addition to teaching classes for future teachers at the upper-division and graduate levels, led me to explore genre theory and pedagogies and eventually to preparing two volumes, Text, role, and context: Developing academic literacies (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and Genre in the classroom: Multiple perspectives (edited for Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003). For several years, I attempted to write a composition textbook for freshmen (and failed).  Now, I am publishing some of that material in articles and book chapters.

In addition to writing for publication, I serve on a number of editorial boards and review book and journal manuscripts regularly. I have particularly enjoyed my work over the years with English for Specific Purposes: An international journal. Initially, John Swales and I were co-editors (1985-93); now we serve as "Editors Emeritus" while continuing to review manuscripts. I also serve on the editorial boards for Journal of Second Language Writing (JSLW) and English for Academic Purposes, and occasionally I review for other journals such as Applied Linguistics and TESOL Quarterly. Other service includes the 2005 guest editorship of a special issue on linguistically diverse students for Across the Disciplines, an on-line journal sponsored by the national Writing-Across-the-Curriculum Movement. Ann Snow and I also edited a special issue of the Journal of English for Academic Purposes (JEAP) devoted to academic English in the secondary schools.