Professional Documents
Culture Documents
April 2011
doi:10.1598/JA AL.54.7.6
2011 International Reading Association
(pp. 525 533)
he problem with much writing in schools is how false it is. For example,
many students write literary essays mimicking journal articles of a type
they have never read. They write for unspecified audiences, which really
means individual teachers, or they write for teachers or examiners posing as
outside audiences, as in letters to the principal that are never sent. They
write in genres they have never read, or they read without attention to the
work as situated in any particular discourse community other than that of the
classroom. Most of the writing they do is first-try writing in a genre, and then
they move right on to another without a chance to try again. Or, alternately,
they write again and again, with much explicit teaching, in a genre that they
encounter on tests while in school but will rarely, if ever, encounter again
outside of schoolthe timed test essaydoing so mechanically and without
attention to the origins of this genre or its connection to other genres they
might find in the wild, such as other forms of the essay.
As teachers, the three of usa high school English teacher along with a
professor of English education and a doctoral student in education who are
also former high school English teachershave all struggled to do better
than this in framing writing opportunities for our students. How can we help
students learn to write in a range of genres in the way that genres are actually
learned in the world outside schoolthrough authentic exposure and immersionrather than writing to the specifications of a teacher in contrived
circumstances?
Together, we undertook an exploration in genre study with a class of
high school writers. We wanted to see students develop into f lexible, adaptable writers who felt comfortable working in a variety of forms and could try
on styles and experiment with new ways of composing. We hoped for a class
in which kids broke free of some of their habits as writers that had frustrated
us as teachers for years, habits they had obviously formed under the inf luence
of teachers just like us, such as following formulas like the five-paragraph essay even when it did not make sense to do so, or writing only in first drafts
and deciding whether it was done by asking a teacher, Is this OK?
525
54(7)
April 2011
526
Genre has often been taught as long lists of characteristics that teachers should make explicit for students.
There are some good reasons to do this; for example,
there are times when the discourses embodied in a
genre are so nonoverlapping with students own because of socioeconomic or historical contexts that students need a tour guide, and if we can be that guide, it
is wrong to withhold our support (Cope & Kalantzis,
1993). Yet, in practice, teaching genre often becomes
teaching genres, that is, offering genres to students
as preformed, discrete, and rigid vessels into which
students ideas might be poured. Instead, to teach
genre well is to teach students to understand genres in
their social functions.
Many have called for more deliberate attention to
genre at the secondary school level, such as Fleischer
and Andrew-Vaughan (2009), Lattimer (2003), Dean
(2008), and Sipe and Rosewarne (2006). These authors
are working from a body of theory that conceptualizes
genre as typified social action (Miller, 1984). That is,
over time, people in recurring social situations develop
consensual, conventional ways of understanding and
responding. These genres are not only forms for action within situations, but they also shape the situations
themselves and constrain, in helpful ways, the meanings one might make therein. Thus, genres are not
fixed structures that some great arbiter of writing and
its forms has decreed long ago from on high, much as it
might seem that way to student writers. Instead, genres
are living traditionstemporary, f lexible agreements
about how to get communicative jobs done.
527
April 2011
54(7)
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy
528
Students final products varied in form and content more than their initial analyses of the nature
writing genre might indicate. Although approximately three quarters of the class elected to write poems,
the content of the poems went beyond the isolated
speaker expressing many emotions that their discussions might have led us to expect. Soren, for example,
offered a commentary on connectedness in nature in
his poem Mutation:
A slight mutation
Can save the lives of thousands
Or take life away
Dean:
It has a prince.
529
54(7)
April 2011
530
imaginary col-
531
54(7)
April 2011
532
References
Andrew-Vaughan, S., & Fleischer, C. (2006). Researching writing: The unfamiliar-genre research project. English Journal,
95(4), 3642.
Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (1993). The power of literacy and
the literacy of power. In B. Cope & M. Kalantzis (Eds.), The
glm11@scasd.org.
533
Copyright of Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy is the property of International Reading Association and
its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's
express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.