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Date Posted: 14:40:27 07/15/03 Tue
Author: Andréa Maria da Silva
Subject: Task 11

Genre is mostly seem as a culturally, socially and historically determined and situated practice. It defines abstract, socially recognized ways of using language. When speaking or writing certain conventions are followed for organizing messages because the listener/reader must be able to recognize the social purposes of the communication.
By being introduced to different genres, students are introduced to a range of different contexts preparing them for situations not solely located within familiar settings and involving personal relationships, but also those involving institutionalized contexts. The use of genres allows not only to the acquisition of adequate linguistic or content knowledge, but rather signifies knowledge about how the two relate to each other - in other words, understanding the greater context. Genre may in fact lend insight into how these two interact, thereby giving the students a sense as language practitioners of what each texts can potentially provide.
It is customary to distinguish three broad approaches to genre, each of which conceptualists and analyses genre in a different way.
- A Systemic Functional view: a genre is defined as a staged, goal oriented social process. This involves the interaction of participants using language in a conventional, step-wise structure.
- An ESP perspective: a genre comprises a class of communicative events linked by shared purpose recognized by the members of a particular community. These purposes are the rationale of the genre and help to shape the ways it is structured and the choices of content and style it makes available.
- A New Rhetoric view: gives less emphasis to the form of discourse and more to the action it is used to accomplish, seeking to establish the connections between genre and repeated situations and to identify the way in which genres are seen as recurrent rhetorical actions.
Genres thus provide us with resources for getting things done in all areas of life. It gives students a repertoire of appropriate responses they can call on to engage in recurring situations, from shopping lists to job applications. Genre analysts have sought to elaborate many of these for the better understanding and teaching of ESP.
In order to understand language, lock the language the students need to be able to understand genre in terms of register which is made up of field, tenor and mode.
- Genre Register: Register is sometimes known as the context of situation, it is made up of three basic aspects: field, tenor and mode.
- Field: "The field of discourse refers to what is happening, to the nature of the social action that is taking place..." (Halliday & Hasan, 1989, 12). Examples within the university context might be students asking for an extension of time to complete an assignment, socializing in the cafe, or participating in a tutorial. All of these fields have particular individual requirements.
- Tenor: "The tenor of discourse refers to who is taking part, the nature of the participants, their statuses and roles..."(Halliday & Hasan, 1989, 12). In the university context it means such things as whether both the participants are students and hence of equal status or whether one is a student and the other a professor and of unequal status. The frequency of contact of the participant can also be another variable. The more frequent the more likely the level of formality will reduce over time. Another element in tenor is what is called "affect", which relates to how the participants feel about each other. Within the University context, if a student needs to consult a professor they will most likely expect the level of language to be formal and highly structured.
- Mode: "The mode of discourse refers to what part the language is playing, what it is that the participants are expecting the language to do for them in that situation: the symbolic organization of the text, the status that it has, and its function in the context, including the channel (is it spoken or written or some combination of the two?) and also the rhetorical mode, what is being achieved by the text in terms of such categories as persuasive, expository, didactic, and the like?"(Halliday & Hasan, 1989, 12) Often the observation is made that mode is related to speaking or writing . This is true but factors such as distance in space or time are also relevant. Reid(1987) makes the observation that to be successful within the language a person must make the appropriate language choices, which are socially determined from the context of the situation.
The curriculum cycle employed in Australian K-12 public schools is an example of how genre can be used in teaching. This cycle reflects language as a social phenomenon, with teachers modeling a particular genre and assisting with joint construction of a similar text before having students attempt to create a text independently. Vocabulary and grammar appropriate to the genre are dealt with as required during the development of the text, which is organized in a structure appropriate to the intended social purpose.
An other example, would be the use in some German institutions. Just as particular genres employ particular linguistic means, so too are certain content areas better suited for certain genres. Casual conversation used in Level I, for example, allows speakers to engage in such personally centered topics as Talents, Plans and Duties, one of the six units in the first semester course. In Level II, we find two genres, TV docudrama and short opinion poll answers used to illustrate East German society after the Fall of the wall. The first portrays post-GDR life; the second highlights the issues predominant in GDR society via a Question/Answer format. Both of these are situated within the institution of education. The genres used at Level III, particularly the interviews, deal with recent historical events and give learners insight into the interviewees' personal reflections concerning changes in the secondary school system. One of the three thematic units in the Level IV course deals with developing students' understanding of the system of higher education in Germany, most specifically developing familiarity with the major policy issues that are currently heard in the German-speaking press. Here, one finds a number of expository genres that present viewpoints and arguments for and against a proposed reform of the German educational system. Through these genres, students can acquire knowledge of the role of education in the personal and public discourses of German society.
Genre-approach is more commonly used on the teaching of writing. However, it requires that before attempting to write in a particular genre, the students have been exposed to the genre by reading, analyzing and discussing examples of it. The interconnection between reading and writing is stressed in most language programs, though often the genre of the reading is different to that which the students are required to write. Nevertheless, it must be kept in mind that since genres have typical structures according to their purpose, and characteristic patterns of language features, it is possible to imagine many conversational exchanges, from opinions to introductions to sales transactions, which can be written as box diagrams representative of the text structure appropriate for the purpose, and described in terms of their typical language features. What is needed now is research to identify and further develop genres in the spoken mode.

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