?Genre is craft,? and you have to teach it | University Writing Center

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by Valerie Balester, Executive Director

There?s absolutely no reason you can?t write in ANY genre if you are prepared to put the work in. Genre is craft. Craft can be learnt. So learn the conventions of the genre you want to write.

? Lucy Vee

Scriptwriter Lucy Vee is talking about movie genres here: the horror movie, the thriller, the drama, the comedy, the documentary, and so on. However, her observation holds true for all genres of spoken and written discourse.

If you are teaching a W or C course, you should be privy to the genres of that discipline. It may have taken years of practice and much pain in graduate school to learn the language conventions of your discipline. You read extensively, you wrote ?for and presented at conferences, you participated in the life of your academic community. In short, you learned by apprenticeship, and you may not even be aware of all that you learned.

Part of the reason that you had to struggle to demystify and learn disciplinary conventions is that, until recently, we did not even acknowledge that good writing and public speaking were contextual?we assumed that students just learned to write or speak ?proper? English, and that skill would translate into any genre. Unfortunately, it doesn?t. First Year English is not going to get your students writing the way you?d like them to write, and the same goes for basic public speaking. I?m not saying these courses are expendable. They are essential for laying a foundation in basic skills and go a long way toward helping students address general audiences. But they won?t take students much beyond the basic essay or into your discipline?s specific genres. For this, we need participants in the discipline.?If the W or C course in your department is not being taught by disciplinary experts, then it should, at least, be guided by them.

One of the most powerful tools the W or C course instructor can employ is rhetorical analysis of models. This is the process whereby you use what you know about the genre being taught and, by analysis of a model, make it explicit for your students. It should start with an examination of the rhetorical situation?that is, constraints imposed by the audience, the writer?s purpose, the genre (or aim) being produced, and any other factors such as occasion that may affect the final product.

If you want students to join your discipline, think of it as a sort of learning community, and think of yourself as an expert member of that community, the one who ushers in the novice apprentices. Show them and tell them how the community?s language conventions work. Remember that some conventions occur just through repetition, but others serve a purpose within the community. The professional organizations that create style guides did not just pick their favorite conventions. They selected the ones that made the most sense for the discipline. For example, some guides foreground the date in their citations because the currency of research is of paramount importance. Others foreground the author (often in these disciplines, collaboration is not the norm) because they value individual talent over currency.

Some of the points you might want to discuss when reviewing a model, besides the rhetorical situation, include:

1. Format?the sections and subsections, the use of headings, the spacing
2. Paragraph length
3. Diction (word choice)
4. Level of formality
5. The way that research is cited within the text (for example, direct quote, paraphrase)
6. Logic (how rigorous)
7. Evidence (what kind)
8. Visuals (their purpose in the text, their arrangement, level of detail)

Make the use of language an explicit and ongoing class topic. If you are reviewing a proof for the class, go over not only the logic but also the syntax?and show how a different presentation of the proof might affect the audience?s reception of it. If students are reading about atmospheric pressure or economic theory in a textbook, bring in an excerpt from a professional journal that discusses or refers to the same topic, and discuss how they differ in language and assumptions. If students are preparing a 2-minute speech and a Q and A for a poster session, talk about how this is different from presenting their work in an academic paper. It?s your role to make explicit those conventions that you had to discover on your own. By doing so for your students, you may find that your own writing process also gets a little easier, and your own writing might even improve.

Filed under Stand and Deliver: A Faculty Blog
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Source: http://writingcenter.tamu.edu/2012/stand-and-deliver/genre-is-craft-and-you-have-to-teach-it/

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