Writing pedagogies: genre and process

Process writing

• is decontextualized.

• views writing as essentially learnt, not taught.

• is contextualized.

• is teacher-centered.

• does not explicility teach the structure of target text types.

Answer explanation

"Process represents writing as a decontextualised skill by foregrounding the

writer as an isolated individual struggling to express personal meanings." (Students) are expected to discover appropriate forms in the process of writing itself,

gleaning this knowledge from unanalysed samples of expert writing, from the growing experience of repetition, and from suggestions in the margins of their drafts. This deflects attention from language and presupposes a knowledge of

genre outcomes.

What is the teacher's role in process writing?

Answer explanation

"Writing in this view is essentially learnt, not taught,

and the teacher’s role is to be non-directive and facilitating, assisting writers to

express their own meanings through an encouraging and co-operative environment

with minimal interference."

According to the author process models 1) can expose how

some writers write, but they do not reveal why they make certain linguistic and

rhetorical choices. 2) empower teachers and cast them as role models.

• 1) True

  2) True

• 1) False

  2) False

• 1) True

  2) False

• 1) False

  2) True

Answer explanation

"Basically, the writer needs to draw on general principles

of thinking and composing to formulate and express his or her ideas. But while this

view directs us to acknowledge the cognitive dimensions of writing and to see the learner as an active processor of information, it neglects the actual processes of language use." "This is a model of learning based on individual motivation, personal freedom, self-expression and learner responsibility, all of which might be stifled by too much teacher intervention."

What is your opinion about the usefulness of process writing in teaching L2 students to write? (<25 words)

Answer explanation

"Progressive pedagogies have done much to inform the

teaching of writing by moving us away from grammar practice and authoritarian teaching roles to facilitate more equal, respectful and interactive relationships in settings that value reflection and negotiation. I have simply tried to highlight the

problems posed by an approach uninformed by an explicit theory of how language works or the ways that social context affects linguistic outcomes."

Genre refers to _______, socially recognised ways of using language.

Answer explanation

"It is based

on the assumptions that the features of a similar group of texts depend on the social context of their creation and use, and that those features can be described in a way that relates a text to others like it and to the choices and constraints acting on

text producers."

"Language is seen as ________ in (and constitutive of) social

realities, since it is through recurrent use of conventionalised forms that indivi-

duals develop relationships, establish communities, and get things done."

Answer explanation

"Genres, then, are ‘‘the

effects of the action of individual social agents acting both within the bounds of their history and the constraints of particular contexts, and with a knowledge of existing generic types’’ (Kress, 1989, p. 10, Kress’s emphasis)."

Which approaches to genre have influenced L2 teaching?

• New Rhetoric

• the Australian school

• ESP

Answer explanation

Halliday’s theory of language systematically links language to its _______ of use,

Answer explanation

"Basically, Halliday’s theory systematically links language to its contexts of use,

studying how language varies from one context to another and, within that variation, the underlying patterns which organise texts so they are culturally and socially recognised as performing particular functions.""Genres are rhetorical actions that writers draw on to respond to perceived repeated situations; they are choices which represent effective ways of getting things done in familiar contexts."

Discourse _________ is a concept central to genre views of writing as it is a

powerful metaphor joining writers, texts and readers in a particular discursive

space (Porter, 1992; Swales, 1990, 1998). While often criticised as altogether too

structuralist, static, and deterministic, the notion of discourse ________ fore-

grounds the socially situated nature of genre and helps illuminate something of

what writers and readers bring to a text, implying a certain degree of inter-

community diversity and intra-community homogeneity in generic forms."

Answer explanation

"Communities are where

genres make sense; they are the systems where the multiple beliefs and practices of text users overlap and intersect (Swales, 1998).

Genres are homogenous structures.

• True

• False

Answer explanation

"Communities are where

genres make sense; they are the systems where the multiple beliefs and practices of text users overlap and intersect (Swales, 1998).

It. "standing. Genres help unite the social and the cognitive because they are central to how writers understand, construct, and reproduce their social realities. But while a shared sense of genre is needed to accomplish understanding, it is not necessary to assume that these are fixed, monolithic, discrete and unchanging."