Beyond the “Essay”: From Generic Writing to Writing Genres

Nigel A. Caplan
Assistant Professor, University of Delaware English Language Institute, USA

I had two degrees before I knew what a thesis statement was, and I am not sure I have ever
consciously written a topic sentence.1 That is not to say my papers never had a thesis nor that I
write in a stream of consciousness, but I had never considered the formal features of what is
reductively called “the academic essay” until I had to teach from a traditional ESL writing
textbook. Suddenly, I had to demand a formulaic structure for every assignment, restrict the
number of paragraphs, and anticipate endless repetition. The results were mediocre: my weaker
students produced dull essays devoid of analysis, creativity, and voice. My strongest student was
driven to tears trying to fit her complex, original thoughts into a straightjacket of conventions.
There had to be a better way to teach writing.

For some years after this, I would present with my colleagues at conferences, railing against the
five-paragraph essay. We were often preaching to the choir: fellow teachers who needed to hear
affirmation that paragraphs are less important than ideas, thesis statements irrelevant without an
argument, and topic sentences only one aspect of cohesion. However, from time to time, a
skeptical voice from the back would ask, “If we don’t teach the five-paragraph essay, what
should we teach?” I now have an answer to that valid question: we should teach genres. And
that’s my thesis for this essay and the rationale behind Inside Writing.

The essential difference between traditional ESL and genre-based writing pedagogies is that a
genre approach requires far greater attention to the context of writing. The five-paragraph essay
model with its predictable structure, neat connecting lines, and suggested word counts per
paragraph is generic and decontextualized: it implies that one size will fit all assignments. While
this can be a useful tool, especially in timed persuasive essays, the five-paragraph essay quickly
breaks down: what is the thesis for a narrative, and why would the writer give away the message
of the story at the end of the first paragraph? Why does a procedural text need a thesis, given that
thesis means an argument (“only in this way shall you make the perfect egg salad!”)? If a writer
has two really good supporting ideas, does one need to be split up to meet the tripartite structure?
Or, as one student nervously asked me, is it ever acceptable to write six paragraphs?

By contrast, researchers in the various “schools” of genre studies (Hyon, 1996) contend that
communication can only occur within genres because “we cannot not mean genres” (Martin,
2009). Genre theories are sociocultural in origin: that is, they are concerned with the role that
writing (the action and the outcome) plays in different cultural contexts (Martin & Rose, 2008).
This week, for instance, I have written emails to colleagues, friends, new acquaintances, and my
director; messages on discussion boards; TESOL conference proposals for three different session
types; data analyses and reports; a PowerPoint™ presentation; a textbook chapter; Facebook
status updates; blog comments; feedback on student papers; and this article. Each task required
me to choose an appropriate form and medium, use different sets of conventions (including
paragraphing), select relevant information at an appropriate level of detail, and adopt an effective
register. To generalize across these tasks would be futile. To apply a five-paragraph essay model
would be ineffective. To write them all in the same style would be catastrophic. Context is
everything.

Although real and important differences exist between the different approaches to genre studies
(see Hyland, 2004, for a clear review), common themes exist, which are valuable for classroom
teachers. First and foremost, there is no single written product that can usefully be called “the
essay.” There are many types of essay, and they vary enormously across disciplines and even
over time. Furthermore, essays are not the only form of academic writing. Nesi and Gardner
(2012), for example, identified thirteen “families” of genres in an extensive review of
undergraduate writing in British universities. In the tradition of the Systemic Functional
Linguistics (SFL) orientation to genre studies, they divide the “essay” family into its constituent
genres (cf. Rose & Martin, 2012): challenge, commentary, consequential or factorial essay,
discussion, and exposition (argument), many of which can be found in the unit assignments of
Inside Writing. Each genre has its own staging and purpose, and each is very different from other
academic assignments, such as literature reviews, critiques, and design proposals. Melzer (2009)
found a slightly reduced but still broad range of writing assignments for undergraduates at U.S.
universities. At the graduate level, Cooper and Bikowski (2007) found that only 7% of courses
across 20 disciplines assigned “essays.” Even the most common assignment in their study, the
research paper, has been shown to be not a fixed genre but a “loose” label that covers at least two
quite different tasks (Samraj, 2004).

One reason for this variation is that genres emerge from and are inextricably embedded in
academic disciplines. Consequently, as Elizabeth Wardle (2009) has argued, attempts to teach
them outside their native habitats risk devolving into mindless mimicry, genres whose purpose is
just “to write the genre.” The resulting “mutt genres” are empty because they have been divorced
of their social function: to create and transmit knowledge between members of a disciplinary
discourse community (Wardle, 2009). This raises difficult questions for ESL, and especially
English for Academic Purposes (EAP), teachers. Is it possible to teach the underlying skills of
academic writing outside the context of an actual content-area graduate or undergraduate class?
Many scholars in Rhetorical Genre Studies would resist such generic genre teaching (e.g. Miller,
1984), but others are more hopeful that genres can be effectively taught in sheltered classes. This
is why in each unit of Inside Writing, students explore an academic field through reading,
analysis, and discussion before they write in the target genre.

Exactly how to teach genres effectively is an ongoing debate. The SFL approach argues that all
students need to expand their linguistic repertoires in order to write in genres that will recur and
be recombined in different contexts (Rose & Martin, 2012). EAP, on the other hand, holds that
ESL teachers can help students investigate, understand, and learn the genres that meet the
communicative needs of their current or future fields of study (Johns, 2011; Swales & Feak,
2012). In addition to the grammatical patterns that are typical of academic writing in most fields
(Caplan, 2012), students can be taught the strategies that successful writers in their major or
discipline employ. This is more fraught, but not impossible, for undergraduate students, who
may have to negotiate genres across multiple disciplines. However, the need for students to
develop versatility and genre awareness (Johns, 2011) remains, even if the full range of writing
contexts cannot be predicted.
Both SFL and EAP, therefore, eschew generic formulae on the basis that “students should have
clear guidelines for how to construct the different kinds of texts they have to write” (Hyland,
2004). Therefore, genres are taught through their typical organization, or staging, although the
stages may be defined differently (roughly, SFL looks for linguistic patterns, while EAP
examines the shifting communicative purposes in a text). For instance, Swales & Feak (2012)
teach the typical structures of general-specific, specific-general, and problem-solution texts, as
well as “sub-genres” such as data commentaries and research paper introductions. For each genre
in Inside Writing, the authors have provided a description of the genre and its typical stages (look
for “About the Genre worksheets”). These stages are not immutable formulae that can be applied
regardless of context, and they do not necessarily correspond to paragraphs. They are functional
in particular social contexts in order to achieve specific communicative goals (Rose & Martin,
2012). Furthermore, certain linguistic resources (grammar and vocabulary) can be identified as
characteristic of each stage, so that genre and language can and should be taught and learned
together.

One of the most widely implemented genre-based writing pedagogies is Rothery’s (1996)
Teaching-Learning Cycle (TLC), which forms the basis of the unit structure of Inside Writing.
The TLC is a model for curriculum design which differs significantly from the familiar “writing
process,” as David Rose (2012) has explained: process writing starts with learners’ current stage
of linguistic, conceptual, and rhetorical development (brainstorm everything you know now),
which teachers then have to remediate through feedback and successive drafts. The TLC, by
contrast, starts with the target and then supports learners’ development towards that goal; genre
staging and language are taught in the context of a “shared experience” (Martin, 2009), and
learners only write independently when they are ready to succeed.

Specifically, instruction in the TLC begins with “deconstruction” of one or more examples of the
target genre in which students, guided by the teacher, deduce the required and optional staging of
the genre, build “field” (content knowledge), and develop pertinent grammar and vocabulary.
This is called “Prepare to Write” in Inside Writing and includes analysis of a model text, a
writing skill that author used, and a focus on target grammar and vocabulary. Next, students
work in groups or as a class to write a new text in the same genre together, the teacher recasting
their sentences and modeling effective writing strategies. This is the crucially important
collaborative writing stage in Inside Writing. Finally, they are prepared for the independent
writing stage, in which students plan, write, revise, and edit their writing using the skills and
language they have learned. This text-based approach helps students understand the choices
writers make, the constraints genres impose, and the variation that occurs between instances of
the same genre.

Here, then, is a partial answer to the question of what ESL/EFL writing classes can teach if we
break our unhealthy attachment to generic writing. Writers need explicit instruction in (some of)
the genres they will encounter. They need tools for identifying and analyzing writing tasks and
assignments, understanding how they are similar to and different from their prior genre
knowledge. They need a broad linguistic repertoire and the ability to make appropriate choices in
the right registers to instantiate their target genres. They need practice constructing meaningful
texts in authentic genres through content-based instruction. And in place of formulae, restrictions,
and the usual commandments of good writing, they need to be shown George Orwell’s (1946)
final rule of writing: “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”

Notes
1
This article is adapted from a conference review published in SLW News, the online newsletter
of TESOL’s Second Language Writing Interest Section (October, 2013). I would like to thank to
the editors and reviewers of SLW News for their feedback on an early draft of the article, and to
Christine Feak of the University of Michigan, with whom I have presented at TESOL several
times, for ideas and inspiration.

Nigel A. Caplan is an assistant professor at the University of Delaware English Language

Institute, located in Newark, Delaware in the United States. His research interests include genre-
based pedagogy, collaborative writing, and support for matriculated ESL university students.
For Oxford University Press, Nigel is the co-author of Inside Writing 2 and 4 as well as Q:
Skills for Success, Reading/Writing 5.

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