Academic Writing and Genre: A Systematic Analysis
Ian Bruce
Language: English
Pages: 202
ISBN: 1441103082
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The focus of this book is the use of genre-based approaches to teaching academic writing. Genre-based courses enable second language learners to integrate their linguistic, organisational and contextual knowledge in a variety of different tasks. The book reviews pedagogical approaches to genre through English for Specific Purposes and Systemic Functional Linguistics to present a synthesis of the current research being undertaken in the field. From this theoretical base, Ian Bruce proposes a new model of genre-based approaches to academic writing, and analyses the ways in which this can be implemented in pedagogy and curriculum design. Academic Writing and Genre is a cutting-edge monograph which will be essential reading for researchers in applied linguistics.
and questions of considerable importance to later cognitive psychology and information processing. The extreme brevity of his remarks and, therefore, their own lack of full contextualization means that they remain open to a range of interpretation, and thus serve as little more than an illustration of his thesis. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein's discomfort with any concept of stable categories, unrelated to context, is clear. Thus, Wittgenstein prefigures many of the ideas of modern cognitive
assist in COGNITIVE GENRES IN ACADEMIC WRITING 85 the teaching of writing to both young learners and more advanced-level learners receiving instruction in academic writing. 4.2 Cognitive genres and young learners To avoid, initially at least, the complexity involved in the synthesis of rhetorical patterns that appear in authentic texts, educators have often found it useful to identify cognitive genres (such as narration, description and exposition) discretely for pedagogic purposes. These
claimed to characterize the notional/functional syllabuses' (1990, p. 136). Therefore the synthetic syllabus, be it structural or notional/ functional, would appear to assume that language learning is a systematic and cumulative process. However, as Nunan points out: [Learners] do not learn one thing perfectly, one item at a time ... the rate of growth is determined by a complex interplay of factors related to speech processing constraints (Pienemann and Johnston, 1987), pedagogical interventions
Reveal About the Mind. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980), Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Langacker, R (1987), Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol. 1. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lave, J, and Wenger, E. (1991), Situated Learning: Legitimate, Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 178 ACADEMIC WRITING AND GENRE Lea, M. R. and Street, B. (1998), 'Student writing in higher education: an academic
the questionnaire. When you have finished the questionnaire please hand in your papers. APPENDICES 189 Appendix 4: Example of an analysed script from Study 2 Task 3 (Relating to Discussion Rhetorical Type): The New Zealand government should restrict the number of admissions of New Zealanders to university degree programmes as there are insufficient employment opportunities for university graduates in New Zealand today. Analysed Script: 190 ACADEMIC WRITING AND GENRE Appendix 5: Results