Genre and the Language Learning Classroom
B. Paltridge
University of Michigan Press 2001, 154 pp.,
US $24.95
isbn 0 472 08804 1
Genre in the Classroom: Multiple Perspectives
A. M. Johns (ed.)
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 2002, 350 pp.,
US $32.50
isbn 0 8058 3074 X
Regular readers of ELT Journal will be familiar with
the issues addressed in these two books, since this
journal has identified genre as one of the ‘key
concepts in ELT ’ (Allison 1999) and published
several articles on genre-based approaches to
teaching writing (see Badger and White 2000;
Flowerdew 2000; Weber 2001). So it is surprising
to find Ann Johns, editor of Genre in the Classroom,
pondering why ‘some of the finest minds in genre
theory eschew discussion of the pedagogical
implications of their work’ (p. 237). Fortunately,
these finest minds include neither Johns herself nor
Brian Paltridge, author of Genre and the Language
Learning Classroom: both have impressive genre-
oriented publications to their names (e.g. Johns
1997; Paltridge 1997). Their latest achievements are
two books with remarkably similar titles, but
whose aims and target readerships are quite
di¤erent.
As befits a volume in a teaching training series,
Paltridge’s compact monograph is 100 pages of
comfortably-legible text, supported by a host of
charts, diagrams, and examples, while each of the
seven chapters ends with a selected reading list
and a set of tasks and discussion questions. The
introductory chapter demonstrates Paltridge’s skill
at dealing with complicated issues: for example, he
wisely considers the benefits of genre-based
instruction before tackling the thorny problem of
defining genre as a concept. Clearly, Paltridge has a
knack for rendering accessible the often complex
findings and arguments of genre researchers, as is
illustrated by his concise discussion of the relative
weight given to textual features (specialized
vocabulary or structural elements) and contextual
factors (intended audiences or rhetorical
situations) in various schemes for classifying
genres (pp. 11–3). While acknowledging that a
range of theoretical perspectives on genre exists, he
shows that this diversity is a powerful source for
generating teaching applications.
426 Reviews
In Chapter 2, Paltridge examines and illustrates
how genre can serve as an organizing principle for
language-learning programs. He gives clear
presentations of the steps in planning a genre-
based course, selecting appropriate tasks, and
using techniques such as sca¤olding. Throughout
this discussion, and indeed throughout the book,
Paltridge emphasizes the integrating function that a
focus on genre can serve in teaching. For example,
he assists first-year ESL students to acquire key
academic genres through a theme-based course on
ESL that includes explicit instruction on both reader
expectations and the writing process. He thus
integrates elements of the content-, genre-, and
process-based approaches, reflecting calls for more
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balanced approaches to the teaching of writing
(Raimes 1991). This chapter also reflects another
important tendency: the growing recognition that
no genre is an island, and that the performance of
one genre is often dependent on the successful
processing of others, which may be written or oral.
One of the surprises of this book is the amount of
attention it gives to listening and speaking skills.
Chapters 3 through 5 examine how various aspects
of genre knowledge—context, discourse, and
language—can be explored in the language-
learning classroom. All of these chapters provide a
variety of practical suggestions that focus on both
written and oral genres, with a number of activities
designed to highlight the di¤erences or the
connections between the two. For example, in his
discussion of context-building activities (pp.
47–53), Paltridge describes an activity designed to
encourage learners to consider cross-cultural
di¤erences in conversation topics, and provides a
grid for analysing readings with regards to an
author’s intended audience and expectations about
shared knowledge. By showing us how the scope of
genre-based teaching can be broadened to include
reading, listening, and speaking, this book fully
justifies its title of Genre and the Language Learning
Classroom.
The title of the book is also justified by Paltridge’s
recognition of the limitations of genre-based
instruction, and the genuine issues that it raises. In
Chapter 7, he examines areas where there is a need
for further investigations, emphasizing the need for
more and better descriptions of genres in English,
and for the identification and description of genres
in languages other than English; he also examines
the potentially significant linkages that genre-based
instruction has to contrastive rhetoric and corpus
studies. Paltridge addresses some of the tough
issues, including the ongoing debate over whether
genre-based approaches limit learner expression
through their uses of model texts and emphases on
audience expectations. His treatment of the
relationship of genre teaching and critical
discourse is typically balanced and concise, and
should provide a solid foundation for discussion.
This chapter also considers the limitations of the
genre approach and the obstacles to applying it—
another topic that will surely stimulate discussion
among teachers who are considering how it may be
integrated into their repertoires.
Of course, the book is not without its flaws: Chapter
6, on Assessment, for example, is both the shortest
chapter and, in terms of content, the thinnest. The
six principles Paltridge suggests for genre-based
assessment are inadequate, since they are mostly
banal (‘learners should know that, at some stage,
they will be assessed’), or vague (‘the assessment
should be related to the aims and objectives of the
program that the students are undertaking’) (p.
105); the examples of genre-informed assessment
provided are interesting, but more guidance should
have been o¤ered for selecting and adapting them
to a range of teaching contexts. The volume would
also have benefited from a glossary, though
Paltridge is generally good at defining specialized
terms as he uses them, and the subject index will
guide adept readers to the relevant page. Another
complaint involves editing glitches: six lines of text
(p. 68) nearly match those on p. 8—and even repeat
the error of attributing the same quotation to Louise
instead of Lisa Delpit, while inexplicably providing
di¤erent page references. In fact, both page
numbers are wrong, and the quotation does not
appear at all in the reprinted source that Paltridge
cites (Delpit 1998), but rather in one of Delpit’s
earlier publications (1988). However, these are
isolated flaws in a book I would recommend not
only to teachers and trainers predisposed to genre-
based instruction, but also to die-hard process-
writing teachers, who may be surprised to find that
Paltridge, along with others (Bamforth 1992/93;
Badger and White 2000), endorses the view that
genre and process should be complementary, rather
than rival approaches.
As its subtitle indicates, Genre in the Classroom is
an edited collection of essays emphasizing the
‘multiple perspectives’ that have contributed to the
development and vitality of the genre approach.
Johns’s stated aim is ‘to bring together various
understandings of genre and discussions of the
ways in which this complex concept has been
realized, or critiqued, as teachers attempt to apply
it to academic classrooms’ (p. 12). Not only is the
Reviews
main focus here on university classrooms: it is also
exclusively on the teaching of writing. In 300 pp. of
dense, but generally well-written text, this volume
o¤ers 17 original essays (none of them reprints)
that have been thoughtfully grouped into seven
sections.
Each of the three main perspectives within genre
analysis has its own section: ‘The Sydney School’
consists of chapters by Mary Macken-Horarik and
Susan Feez, ‘English for Specific Purposes’ has
chapters by John Swales and Stepanie Lindemann,
and Sunny Hyon, and chapters on ‘The New
Rhetoric’ by Christine Adam and Natasha
Artemeva, and by Richard Coe. This threefold
schema does not seek to provide a comprehensive
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overview, but rather to illustrate how each
perspective has been operationalized in specific
settings. The strengths of these contributions are
well illustrated by Feez’s chapter, which examines
‘heritage and innovation’ in Australia’s Adult
Migrant English Program (AMEP ). Feez does not
simply trace the history of this program, but shows
how AMEP teachers have responded to crises in the
development of teaching methodologies, and
thereby contributed, firstly, to the shaping of a
learner-centred, needs-based communicative
curriculum and, subsequently, to a genre pedagogy
based on systemic–functional linguistics. As
teachers adopt and adapt new methods, they both
draw on the existing heritage of ELT and introduce
innovations. In her study of AMEP , Feez shows how
collaboration between teachers and researchers
has led to the ongoing development of genre-based
instruction in Australia. The readers of this journal
will certainly welcome her conclusion that
‘classroom-based experimentation and reflection …
is driving some of the most interesting theoretical
developments in genre today’ (p. 69).
Johns’s editorial vision is not confined to these
three subdivisions, and she recognizes that the
borderlands between the established schools are
fertile. The section ‘Related Approaches’ consists of
chapters by Brian Paltridge and John Flowerdew
that straddle the systemic–functional and ESP
approaches, and the ‘Bridging Text and Context’ of
chapters by Terence Pang and Betty Samraj, that
illustrate ways that the contextual concerns of the
New Rhetoric can enrich ESP . In his chapter,
Flowerdew provocatively characterizes the theories
of the Australian1 school and ESP as linguistic—
‘applying theories of functional grammar and
discourse and concentrating on the lexico-
grammatical and rhetorical realization of the
communicative purposes embodied in a genre’—
427
and the New Rhetoric as nonlinguistic—focusing on
‘the purposes and functions of genres and the
attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviours of
members of the discourse communities within
which genres are situated’ (p. 91). While she rejects
the term nonlinguistic in favour of contextually-
grounded, Johns acknowledges that some
significant voices in the contextually-grounded
camp are doubtful about—or even reject outright—
the notion that genres can be usefully taught
(Freedman 1994), and that the linguistic camp is
clearly united around the feasibility of—indeed, the
need for—explicitly teaching them. Unlike
Paltridge’s book, this volume draws attention to
such issues, and examines their implications for
classroom practices: Flowerdew, for example,
argues that teaching materials for his EFL students
must systematically present and practise the
structural and linguistic features of targeted
genres; moreover, he suggests that a ‘moderately
prescriptive’ pedagogy (p. 102) is suited to the
setting he describes. Other contributors to this and
the ‘New Rhetoric’ sections of the book challenge
Flowerdew’s perspective, and will encourage
readers to consider the degree to which it is the
di¤ering theoretical concerns or classroom settings
that have led to the diversity of views on
appropriate teaching strategies.
Another innovative section, ‘Pedagogical
Quandaries’, is composed of three chapters that
explore problematic aspects of the genre-based
teaching of academic writing. Virginia Gule¤
challenges the tendencies towards the codification
of the process approach and the product orientation
of the genre approach by showing how pre-writing
activities can be expanded to take social context into
account. Tony Dudley-Evans observes that the
classroom genre of the essay lacks the sequential
move structure of the academic article, and
proposes a course that helps MA students to
develop appropriate academic stances for specific
readerships; Johns suggests that university
students need assistance in overcoming the rigid
and limited views about written genres that they
bring from previous educational experiences. In
her chapter, Johns observes that the inherent
tensions between genres as complex abstractions,
and as pedagogical devices, may account for the
reticence on the part of some genre theorists to
discuss the classroom implications of their work—
and it is to her credit that she has brought some of
these finest minds together in this thought-
provoking volume.
The concluding section of the book is ‘unusual’, or
428 Reviews
so Johns warns us in the Preface (p. i). It consists of
a chapter by William Grabe that argues for the
existence of two broad macro-genres—the narrative
and the expository—each of which ‘emphasize[s]
di¤erent functions and purposes … imposes
constraints on formal text production … [and] o¤ers
unique ways to learn’ (p. 264). Johns tells us that
this argument challenges the ideas of the rest of the
book, and has invited responses by J. R. Martin,
Vijay Bhatia, and Carol Berkenkotter, who are
o¤ered as representatives of the main theoretical
positions (pp i; 11). This format seems to be at
odds with the overall structure of the book, which
challenges the usual and limiting portrayal of the
genre approach as three discrete schools. But this
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is not the main problem. Grabe’s makes his case by
surveying several fields—including educational
literacy, cultural psychology, and cognitive
development—but he studiously avoids referring to
the genre literature itself. There are certainly
interesting points here, and the review is
undoubtedly competent, but this essay seems out
of place, since it almost entirely ignores the
arguments presented throughout the rest of the
book—as the responses make abundantly, though
tactfully, clear. Some innovations are failures, and
in my view this one does not achieve the clarifying
purpose that Johns apparently intended. This is a
pity, since the rest of the book is an integrated
compilation of essays that deserves to be read and
pondered collectively.
For anyone interested in genre and classroom
practices, at least one of these two books belongs
not only on your—or your institution’s—shelves,
but also on the top of that ever-mounting stack of
‘must reads’. Johns’s volume is a major
contribution to the literature for those already
involved in the teaching or researching of academic
literacy. Paltridge’s volume is highly recommended
for those who are seeking to expand their teaching
repertoires, or are responsible for selecting
materials for teacher-training programs.
Note
1 Johns insists on using the term ‘Sydney School’,
even though all of the writers she identifies as part
of it reject the label, and would seem to prefer a
broader term, such as ‘Australian’.
References
Allison, D. 1999. ‘Key concepts in ELT : genre’. ELT
Journal 53/2: 144.
Badger, R. and G. White. 2000. ‘A process genre
approach to teaching writing’. ELT Journal 54/2:
153–60.
Bamforth, R. 1992/93. ‘Process versus genre:
anatomy of a false dichotomy’. Prospect 8/1–2:
89–99.
Delpit, L. 1988. ‘The silenced dialogue: power and
pedagogy in educating other people’s children’.
Harvard Educational Review 58/3: 280–98.
Delpit, L. 1998. ‘The politics of teaching literate
discourse’ in V. Zamel and R. Spack (eds.).
Negotiating Academic Literacies. Mahwah, NJ :
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Flowerdew, L. 2000. ‘Using a genre-based
framework to teach organizational structure in
academic writing’. ELT Journal 54/4: 369–78.
Freedman, A. 1994. ‘“Do as I say”: the relationship
between teaching and learning new genre’ in A.
Freedman and P. Medway (eds.). Genre and the
New Rhetoric. London: Taylor and Francis.
Johns, A. M. 1997. Text, Role, and Context:
developing academic literacies. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Paltridge, B. 1997. Genre, Frames and Writing in
Research Settings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Raimes, A. 1991. ‘Out of the woods: emerging
traditions in the teaching of writing’. TESOL
Quarterly 25/3: 407–30.
Weber, J.-J. 2001. ‘A concordance- and genre-
informed approach to ESP essay writing’. ELT
Journal 55/1: 14–20.
The reviewer
Mark Beittel teaches English at the Universities of
Trento and Bolzano in northern Italy. He has an MA
in Sociology (State University of New York), and is
completing a distance MA in Linguistics (TESOL )
at the University of Surrey. His main areas of
interest are teaching and assessing EAP writing,
and developing classroom and self-access
materials for ESP learners.
Email: Mark.Beittel@lett.unitn.it
Reviews
English for Primary Teachers
M. Slattery and J. Willis
Oxford University Press 2001,148pp., £9.95
isbn 0–19–4375625
This very useful book and cd set is addressed at
those who teach English to children whose ages
range from 4 to 12, an age group which can be
either intensely stressful or immensely rewarding.
It can be used for self-study or as part of a training
course. While many native teachers will find English
for Primary Teachers interesting, there is no doubt
that it will also be a very welcome contribution to
the bookshelves of any primary teachers of English
Downloaded from http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Washington on April 4, 2015
who wish to increase the e¤ectiveness of their
classroom language. In the same way, it will be
particularly useful for non-native teachers and for
trainers.
This is not just another resource book simply
o¤ering practice activities for teaching young
learners; instead, each of the ten units considers an
aspect of teaching children, and—starting out from
a succinct consideration of its methodological
underpinning—provides a series of interesting
classroom activities to support a coherent
programme intended principally to encourage,
expand, and enhance the teacher’s use of English in
the classroom when she uses those same activities.
The authors (who have taught and trained in many
di¤erent countries) believe that if teachers are
confident that their classroom language is e¤ective,
and that they have a wide range of potential
activities at their disposal, the stress of dealing with
young learners can e¤ectively be limited, and
teaching itself will become more productive and
rewarding as a direct consequence. One specific
aim of the authors is to consciously help non-native
teachers to gain the confidence to use more English
in their classes, as well as to provide specific
language which is relevant to everyday teaching
situations.
Another fundamental feature of the book is that a
number of native and non-native teachers, drawn
from a wide variety of teaching environments, were
involved directly in its creation. The teachers—
whose personal details can be found at the end of
the book (p. 143)—were asked to contribute by
recording their classes and sending the results to
the authors, who then designed and wrote the ten
units using ‘real language from real lessons’ (p.
vii). The classroom extracts which these teachers
provided are samples of good practice with a wide
range of activities but, more importantly from the
429