I was fortunate enough to attend IATEFL 2014
in Harrogate for 3 days. I attended lots of really interesting sessions as well
as catching up with some online in the days after. Because of my current teaching and
interests, I went to several sessions that in some way related to academic
writing.
The first one of relevance was by Jennifer MacDonald, called Getting Discipline Specific in the EGAP classroom. This was an excellent talk, full
of useful practical tips for teaching. When talking about writing she
recommended using a genre approach. Genres
are “complex, evolving mental abstractions held by individuals within
communities” (Johns, 1997, p22). In the same way that a holiday postcard would
have certain typical, predictable features (a salutation, “having a lovely time
here in…”, a mention of weather, food and activities, use of present continuous
and present perfect continuous, and so on) an academic genre has certain
conventions that we can help the students to identify. Swales (1990) recommends
using a consciousness-raising approach and that instead of teaching how to
write a genre, we should enable students to analyse texts themselves to develop
an awareness of the texts they have to write.
MacDonald added to this by suggesting some practical tips on
how to approach genre in the classroom. She suggested two good sources for
finding texts: Google Scholar and
the Directory of Open Access Journals. Google
Scholar is my site of choice, but working for Sheffield University, I
automatically have access to a large number of subscription only journals that
others may not, which is why an open access site is a welcome addition. Activities
that come from this include setting students the task of conducting a genre
analysis on a text from their field. An extension of this is to ask students to
write a text in the genre of their chosen field. One problem of this though is
that EAP students’ intended genre is the IMRAD, but in order to write
this, students need research, which they don’t yet have when on a
pre-sessional. MacDonald recommended finding a text from Scientific American and having
students extract which information would go into which section of an IMRAD
report for higher levels or to compare a report and an essay for students at
lower levels. When getting into the details, genre analysis involves
identifying moves and steps: what purpose is achieved by certain sections, or
certain phrases or sentences. MacDonald suggested focussing just on 2 or 3
salient points to make this more manageable for students.
An interesting contrast to this
came from Edward de Chazal. This was not from a presentation but an article in Modern English Teacher
which I was given in the IATEFL resources fair. In it he outlines his focus on ‘Essential Elements’, which involves highlighting
sections of a text and giving them labels, for example, ‘definition’,
‘explanation’ or ‘exemplification’.
Source: Modern English Teacher Volume
23 Number 2, April 2014, p5
The main purpose of this approach seems to be
for reading, helping students to understand and think critically about texts,
and getting them to notice the language used to give these elements. By focussing
on the essential elements, students are drawn away from a bottom-up focus on
vocabulary and grammar. Students can be encouraged to notice the language used
to frame these elements, which helps them in their learning. De Chazal suggests
this approach can aid the development of critical thinking because students can
more effectively question a text when it is broken down into elements.
Source: Modern English Teacher Volume
23 Number 2, April 2014, p6
There are lots of similarities
between the genre approach and essential elements. Both start with reading
texts, both involve dividing a text into sections and giving labels to them,
and both emphasise student noticing of language and features. Essential
elements seems more useful for lower level students (de Chazal says B1+) as the
labels are quite practical and it seems just to be asking “what and how?” The
genre approach is perhaps more suited for higher level students because it asks
more complex questions about purpose and audience, adding “who and why?” to the
inquiry.
I don’t really consider essential
elements to be a new approach; rather it seems to be a way of using the genre
approach with lower level students by creating a set of comprehensible labels
for what Swales refers to as steps. Still, it is a useful addition to the body
of knowledge on teaching reading and writing. Another talk I went to shed
further light on the issue.
On Friday in IATEFL I went to an excellent talk
by Richard
Badger, called ‘Writing Theory as Practice’, which began with the
enlightening quote: “In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice,
they are not”, although he argued though that theory has to be part of
practice. He gave a succinct analysis of 4 approaches to writing: product
and process, genre (see above) and literacy, which emphasises the idea that
writers develop by writing in real life situations. He argued that there were
limits to all 4 approaches:
On a broader level, he argued that product and process are
theories of writing, not of teaching and learning and that, as teachers, we
need to have a more learner-centred approach to teaching writing. We should
look at our learners and assess what elements of writing they are having
problems with. From that we can decide what elements of the 4 approaches we
want to use. Ultimately we should not be asking which model of writing is best,
but asking what our students need.
This really struck a chord with me. A large part of my job
is providing one-to-one
writing support for university students. Each one comes with a different
set of strengths and weaknesses. I need to talk to them, read their work and
decide, on the spot, what kind of advice and support to give them. I therefore
have to be flexible and pragmatic and I need to be able to apply different
approaches depending on the individual student. It was music to my ears to hear
a presentation that advocated a theory-based, student-centred approach to
teaching writing.
References
JOHNS, Ann M. (1997). Text,
Role and Context: Developing Academic Literacies. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
McCLARTY, Robert (ed)
(2014). Modern English Teacher, Volume 23 Number 2. Hove, Pavilion Publishing
and Media.
SWALES, John (1990). Genre
Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
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