concept of genre essay

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Ai, ethics & human agency, collaboration, information literacy, writing process.

• © 2023 by Joseph M. Moxley - University of South Florida

Genre may reference  a type of writing, art, or musical composition; socially-agreed upon expectations about how writers and speakers should respond to particular rhetorical situations; the cultural values; the epistemological assumptions about what constitutes a knowledge claim or authoritative research method; the discourse conventions of a particular discourse community . This article reviews research and theory on 6 different definitions of genre, explains how to engage in genre analysis, and explores when during the writing process authors should consider genre conventions. Develop your genre knowledge so you can discern which genres are appropriate to use—and when you need to remix genres to ensure your communications are both clear and persuasive.

Genre Definition

G enre may refer to

• by the  aim  of discourse
• by discourse conventions
• by  discourse communities
• by a type of technology
• a social construct
• the situated actions of writers and readers
• the situated practices and epistemological assumptions of discourse communities
• a form of  literacy .

Related Concepts: Deductive Order, Deductive Reasoning, Deductive Writing ; Interpretation ; Literacy ; Mode of Discourse ; Organizational Schema; Rhetorical Analysis ; Rhetorical Reasoning ; Voice ; Tone ; Persona

Genre Knowledge – What You Need to Know about Genre

Genre plays a foundational role in meaning-making activities, including interpretation , reading , writing, and speaking.

In order to communicate with clarity , writers and speakers need to understand the expectations of their audiences regarding the appropriate content, style, design, citation style, and medium. Genres facilitate communication between writers and readers, authors and audiences, and writers/speakers and readers/listeners. Genre and genre knowledge increase the likelihood of clarity in communications .

Writers use their knowledge of genre to jumpstart composing: a genre presumes a formula for how to organize a document, how to develop and present a research question , how to substantiate claims–and more. For writers, genres are an efficient way to respond to recurring situations . Rather than reinvent the wheel every time, writers save time by considering how others have responded in the same or a similar situation . Genres are like big Lego chunks that can be re-used to start a new Lego creation that is similar to past Lego creations you’ve created.

In turn, readers use genres to more quickly scan information . Because they know the formula, because they share with the author as members of a discourse community a common language, common topoi , archive , canonical texts , and expectations about what to say and how to say it in, they can skip through a document and grab the highlights.

Six Definitions of Genre

1. genre refers to a naming and categorization scheme for sorting types of writing.

“… [L]et me define “genres” as types of writing produced every day in our culture, types of writing that make possible certain kinds of learning and social interaction.” (Cooper 1999, p. 25)

G enre  refers to types of writing, art, and musical compositions. For instance

• alphabetical texts may be categorized as Expository Writing, Descriptive Writing, Persuasive Writing, or Narrative Writing .
• movies may be categorized as Action & Adventure, Children & Family Movies, Comedies, Documentaries, Dramas.
• music may be categorized as Artist, Album, Country, New Age, Jazz, and so on.

There are many different ways to define and sort genres. For instance, genres may defined based on their content, organization, and style. Or, genres may be defined and categorized based on

• Examples: Drama, Fable, Fairy Tale, etc.
• Move 1 Establish a territory
• Move 2 Establish a niche
• Move 3 Occupy the niche (Swales and Feak 2004)
• A research article written for a scientific audience most likely uses some for of an “IMRAC structure”–i.e., an introduction, methods, results, and conclusion
• An article in the sciences and social sciences would use APA  style for citations
• by the type of technology used by the sender and the receiver of the information.

2. Genre is a Social Construct

“Genres are conventions, and that means they are social – socially defined and socially learned.” (Bomer 1995:112) “… [A] genre is a socially standard strategy, embodied in a typical form of discourse, that has evolved for responding to a recurring type of rhetorical situation.” (Coe and Freedman 1998, p. 137)

Genre is more than a way to sort types of texts by discourse aim or some other classification scheme: Genres are social, cultural, rhetorical constructs. For example,

• writers draw on their expectations about what they believe their readers will know about a genre–how it’s structured ( what it’s formula is! ) and when it’s socially useful.
• readers draw on their past experiences as readers and as members of particular discourse communities. They hold expectations about the appropriate use of particular textual patterns in specific situations.

Or, consider this example: in the social situation of seeking a job, an applicant knows from  the archive , the culture,  the conversations about job seeking , that they are expected to create a  letter of application  and a  résumé . More than that, they know the  point of view  they are to take as well as the  tone –and more.

Writers and readers develop textual expectations tacitly — by reading and speaking with others — and formally: by studying genres in school. Students are inculcated in textual practices of particular disciplines (e.g., engineering or biology) as part of their academic and professional training.

3. Genres Reflect the Situated Actions of Writers and Readers

“a rhetorically sound definition of genre must be centered not on the substance or the form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish” (Miller 1984, p. 151)

Carolyn Miller (1984) extends this social view of genre in her article Genre as Social Action by operationalizing genre from a rhetorical perspective. Miller asserts genres are the embodiment of situated actions. In her rhetorical model of genre, Miller theorizes

• writers enter a rhetorical situation guided by aims (e.g., to persuade users to support a proposal ). The writer assesses the rhetorical situation (e.g., considers audience , purpose , voice , style ) to more fully understand the situation and the motives of stakeholders.
• For instance, a researcher could dip into a research study seeking empirical support for a claim . A graphic designer could open a magazine looking for layout ideas.

4. Genres Embody the Situated Practices and Values of Discourse Communities

“Genre not only allows the scholar to report her research, but its conventions and constraints also give structure to the actual investigations she is reporting” (Joliffe 1996, p. 283).

The textual practices of discourse communities reflect the epistemological assumptions of practitioners regarding what constitutes an appropriate rhetorical stance , research method , or knowledge claim . For instance, a scientist doesn’t insert their subjective opinions into the methods section of a lab report because they understand their audience expect them to follow empirical methods and an academic writing prose style

Academic documents, business documents, legal briefs, medical records—these sorts of texts are grounded in the situated practices of members of particular discourse communities . Practitioners — e.g., scientists in a research lab, accountants in an accountancy firm, or engineers in an engineering firm— share assumptions, conventions, and values about how documents should be researched, written, and shared. Discourse communities develop unique ways of communicating with one another. Their daily work, their situated practices, reflect their assumptions about what constitutes knowledge , appropriate research methods, or authoritative sources . Genres reflect the values of communities . They provide a roadmap to rhetors for how to engage with community members in expected ways. (For more on this, see Research ).

5. Genre Knowledge Constitutes a Form of Literacy

Genres  are created in the forge of recurring  rhetorical situations . Particular  exigencies  call for particular  genres . Applying for a job? Well, then, a résumé and cover letter are called for. Trying to report on an experiment in organic chemistry? Well, then a lab report is due. Thus, being able to recognize which  genre  is called for by  a particular exigency, a particular call to write , is  a form of literacy : If you’re unfamiliar with a genre and your reader’s expectations for that genre, then you may as well be from mars.

Genre Analysis – How to Engage in Genre Analysis

When we enter a rhetorical situation , guided by a sense of purpose like an explorer clutching a compass, we invariably compare the present situation to past situations. We reflect on whether we have read the work of other writers who have also addressed the same or somewhat equivalent rhetorical situation , the topic, we’re facing. If you have a proposal due, for instance, it helps to look at some samples of past proposals–particularly if you can access proposals funded by the organization from whom you are seeking support. 

For genre theorists, these are acts of typification –a moment where we typify a situation: “What recurs is not a material situation (a real, objective, factual event) but our construal of a type” (Miller 157).

In other words, genres are conceptual tools, ways we relate situated actions to recurring rhetorical situations. When first entering a situation, we assess whether this is a recurring rhetorical situation and whether past responses will work equally well for this new situation—or if we’ll need to tweak our response, our text, a bit. For instance, if applying for a job, you might look at previous drafts of job application letters

Genres are like prefabricated Lego pieces that we can use to jumpstart a new Lego masterpiece.

We abbreviate the experiences of our lives by creating idealized versions–i.e., metatexts that capture the gist of those experiences. Or, we access the archive , or our memory of the archive, and seek exemplars — canonical texts , the works of others who addressed similar exigencies , similar rhetorical situations.

To make this less abstract, let’s consider what might go through the mind of a writer who wants to write a New Year’s party invitation. If the writer were an American, they might reflect on the ritual ball drop in Times Square in New York City. They might recall past texts associated with New Year’s celebrations (party invitations, menus, greeting cards, party hats, songs, and resolutions) as well as rituals (fireworks, champagne, or a New Year’s kiss). They might even conduct an internet search for New Year’s Eve party invitations or download a party template from Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Over time, that writer’s sense of the ideal New Year’s party invitation becomes typified —a condensation of the texts and rituals and stories.

Because we tend to have unique experiences and because we have different personalities, motives, and aims , our sense of an ideal New Year’s Eve invitation might be somewhat different from those of our friends and family—or even the broader society. Rather than assuming it’s a good time to go out and party and dance, you may think it’s a good time to stay home and meditate. After all, as writers, we experience events, texts and rituals subjectively and uniquely. Thus, we don’t all have the same ideas about what should happen at a New Year’s party or even what the best party invite should look like. Still, when we sit down to write a party invitation for New Year’s Eve, this is a reoccurring situation for us, and we cannot help but be influenced by all of the past invitations we’ve received, what our friends and loved ones have recommended, and what we see online for party invite templates (if we engage in strategic searching).

Sample Genre Analysis

Below are some sample questions and perspectives you may consider when engaging in Genre Analysis.

1. When During Composing Should I Engage in Genre Analysis?

Early in the writing process — during prewriting — you are wise to identify the genre your audience expects you to follow. Then, engage in strategic searching to identify exemplars and canonical texts that typify the genre.

Next, you might begin your first draft by outlining the sections of discourse associated with the genre you’re writing in. For example, if you are writing an Aristotelian argument for a school paper, you might jumpstart your first draft by listing the rhetorical moves associated with Aristotelian argument as your subject headings:

• Introduce the Topic
• Introduce Claims
• Appeal to Ethos & Persona to Establish an Appropriate Tone
• Appeal to Emotions
• Appeal to Logic
• Present Counterarguments
• Search for a Compromise and Call for a Higher Interest
• Speculate About Implications in Conclusions

That said, it’s important to note that some people prefer not to think about genre at all during drafting. Research in writing studies has found that there is no single, ideal writing process . Instead, our personalities, rhetorical stance , openness to information , rhetorical situation (e.g., contextual factors such as time available and access to information )–and more — influence how we compose.

You may not want to think much about genre when

• You’re the type of writer who needs to write your way to meaning. For you, writing is rewriting
• Your audience may have specific expectations in mind that you haven’t addressed. You may be unfamiliar with how other writers have addressed that situation in the past. You may lack access to the information you need to research how others typically respond to the rhetorical situation you are facing

In summary, thinking about genre and reading the works of other writers addressing similar rhetorical situations will probably help you jumpstart a writing project. However, at the end of the day, only you can decide how to work with genres of discourse.

Coe, R., & Freedman, A. (1998). Genre theory: Australian and North American approaches. In M. L. Kennedy (ed), Theorizing composition: A critical sourcebook of theory and scholarship in contemporary composition studies (p p. 136-147). Greenwood Press.

Joliffe, D. A. (1996). Genre. In T. Enos (ed), Encyclopedia of rhetoric and composition: Communication from ancient times to the information age (pp . 279-284). Garland Publishing.

Miller, R. (1984). Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70 , 151-167.

Swales, J., & C. Feak (2004). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills . University of Michigan Press

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18.3 Glance at Genre: Genre, Audience, Purpose, Organization

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify key genre conventions, including structure, tone, and mechanics.
• Implement common formats and design features for different text types.
• Demonstrate how genre conventions vary and are shaped by purpose, culture, and expectation.

The multimodal genres of writing are based on the idea that modes work in different ways, with different outcomes, to create various vehicles for communication. By layering, or combining, modes, an author can make meaning and communicate through mixed modes what a single mode cannot on its own. Essentially, modes “cooperate” to communicate the author’s intent as they interweave meanings captured by each.

For example, think of a public service announcement about environmental conservation. A composer can create a linguistic text about the dangers of plastic pollution in oceans and support the ideas with knowledge of or expertise in the subject. Yet words alone may not communicate the message forcefully, particularly if the audience consists of people who have never considered the impact of pollution on the oceans. That composer, then, might combine the text with images of massive amounts of human-generated plastic waste littering a shoreline, thus strengthening the argument and enhancing meaning by touching on audience emotions. By using images to convey some of the message, the composer layers modes. The picture alone does not tell the whole story, but when combined with informational text, it enhances the viewer’s understanding of the issue. Modes, therefore, can be combined in various ways to communicate a rhetorical idea effectively.

Audience Awareness

As with any type of composition, knowing your audience (the readers and viewers for whom you are creating) will help you determine what information to include and what genre, mode(s), or media in which to present it. Consider your audience when choosing a composition’s tone (composer’s attitude toward the audience or subject), substance, and language. Considering the audience is critical not only in traditional academic writing but also in nearly any genre or mode you choose. Ask yourself these questions when analyzing your audience’s awareness:

• What (and how much) does the audience already know about the topic? The amount of background information needed can influence what genre, modes, and media types you include and how you use them. You don’t want to bore an audience with information that is common knowledge or overwhelm an audience with information they know nothing about.
• What is the audience’s viewpoint on the subject? Are you creating for a skeptical audience or one that largely agrees with your rhetorical arguments?
• How do you relate to your audience? Do you share cultural understanding, or are you presenting information or beliefs that will be unfamiliar? This information will help you shape the message, tone, and structure of the composition.

Understanding your audience allows you to choose rhetorical devices that reflect ethos (appeals to ethics: credibility), logos (appeals to logic: reason), and pathos (appeals to sympathy: emotion) to create contextually responsive compositions through multiple modes.

It important to address audience diversity in all types of composition, but the unique aspects of multimodal composition present particular opportunities and challenges. First, when you compose, you do so through your own cultural filter, formed from your experiences, gender, education, and other factors. Multimodal composition opens up the ability to develop your cultural filter through various methods. Think about images of your lived experiences, videos capturing cultural events, or even gestures in live performances. Also consider the diversity of your audience members and how that affects the content choices you make during composition. Avoiding ethnocentrism —the assumption that the customs, values, and beliefs of your culture are superior to others—is an important consideration when addressing your audience, as is using bias-free language, especially regarding ethnicity, gender, and abilities.

Blogs, Vlogs, and Creative Compositions

Among the modes available to you as a composer, blogs (regularly updated websites, usually run by an individual or a small group) have emerged as a significant genre in digital literature. The term blog , a combination of web and log , was coined in 1999 and gained rapid popularity in the early 2000s. In general, blogs have a relatively narrow focus on a topic or argument and present a distinctive structure that includes these features:

• A headline or title draws in potential readers. Headlines are meant to grab attention, be short, and accurately reflect the content of the blog post.
• An introduction hooks the reader, briefly introducing the topic and establishing the author’s credibility on the subject.
• Short paragraphs often are broken up by images, videos, or other media to make meaning and supplement or support the text content.
• The narrative is often composed in a style in which the author claims or demonstrates expertise.
• Media such as images, video, and infographics depict information graphically and break up text.
• Hyperlinks (links to other internet locations) to related content often serve as evidence supporting the author’s claim.
• A call to action provides clear and actionable instructions that engage the reader.

Blogs offer accessibility and an opportunity to make meaning in new ways. By integrating images and audiovisual media, you can develop a multimodal representation of arguments and ideas. Blogs also provide an outlet for conveying ideas through both personal and formal narratives and are used frequently in industries from entertainment to scientific research to government organizations.

Newer in the family of multimodal composition is the video blog, or vlog , a blog for which the medium is video. Vlogs usually combine video embedded in a website with supporting text, images, or other modes of communication. Vlogging often takes on a narrative structure, similar to other types of storytelling, with the added element of supplementary audio and video, including digital transitions that connect one idea or scene to another. Vlogs offer ample opportunities to mix modalities.

Vlogs give a literal voice to a composer, who typically narrates or speaks directly to the camera. Like a blogger, a vlog creator acts as an expert, telling a narrative story or using rhetoric to argue a point. Vlogs often strive to create an authentic and informal tone, similar to published blogs, inviting a stream-of-consciousness or interview-like style. Therefore, they often work well when targeted toward audiences for whom a casual mood is valuable and easily understood.

Other creative compositions include websites, digital or print newsletters, podcasts, and a wide variety of other content. Each composition type has its own best practices regarding structure and organization, often depending on the chosen modalities, the way they are used, and the intended audience. Whatever the mode, however, all multimodal writing has several characteristics in common, beginning with effective, intentional composition.

Effective Writing

Experimenting with modes and media is not an excuse for poorly developed writing that lacks focus, organization, thought, purpose, or attention to mechanics. Although multimodal compositions offer flexibility of expression, the content still must be presented in well-crafted, organized, and purposeful ways that reflect the author’s purpose and the audience’s needs.

• To be well-crafted, a composition should reflect the author’s use of literary devices to convey meaning, use of relevant connections, and acknowledgment of grammar and writing conventions.
• To be organized, a composition should reflect the author’s use of effective transitions and a logical structure appropriate to the chosen mode.
• To be purposeful, a composition should show that the author addresses the needs of the audience, uses rhetorical devices that advance the argument, and offers insightful understanding of the topic.

Organization of multimodal compositions refers to the sequence of message elements. You must decide which ideas require attention, how much and in what order, and which modalities create maximum impact on readers. While many types of formal and academic writing follow a prescribed format, or at least the general outline of one, the exciting and sometimes overwhelming features of multimodal possibilities open the door to any number of acceptable formats. Some of these are prescribed, and others more open ended; your job will inevitably be to determine when to follow a template and when to create something new. As the composer, you seek to structure media in ways that will enable the reader, or audience, to derive meaning. Even small changes in media, rhetorical appeal, and organization can alter the ways in which the audience participates in the construction of meaning.

Within a medium—for example, a video—you might include images, audio, and text. By shifting the organization, placement, and interaction among the modes, you change the structure of the video and therefore create varieties of meaning. Now, imagine you use that same structure of images, audio, and text, but change the medium to a slideshow. The impact on the audience will likely change with the change in medium. Consider the infamous opening scene of the horror movie The Shining (1980). The primary medium, video, shows a car driving through a mountainous region. After audio is added, however, the meaning of the multimodal composition changes, creating an emphasis on pace—management of dead air—and tone—attitude toward the subject—that communicates something new to the audience.

Exploring the Genre

These are the key terms and characteristics of multimodal texts.

• Alignment: the way in which elements such as text features, images, and particularly text are placed on a page. Text can be aligned at the left, center, or right. Alignment contributes to organization and how media transitions within a text.
• Audience: readers or viewers of the composition.
• Channel: a medium used to communicate a message. Often-used channels include websites, blogs, social media, print, audio, and video-hosting sites.
• Complementary: describes content that is different across two or more modes, both of which are necessary for understanding. Often audio and visual modes are complementary, with one making the other more meaningful.
• Emphasis: the elements in media that are most significant or pronounced. The emphasis choices have a major impact on the overall meaning of the text.
• Focus: a clear purpose for composition, also called the central idea, main point, or guiding principle. Focus should include the specific audience the composer is trying to influence.
• Layering: combining modes in a single composition.
• Layout: the organization of elements on a page, including text, images, shapes, and overall composition. Layout applies primarily to the visual mode.
• Media: the means and channels of reaching an audience (for example, image, website, song). A medium (singular form of media ) can contain multiple modes.
• Mode: the method of communication (linguistic, visual, audio, or spatial means of creating meaning). Media can incorporate more than one mode.
• Organization: the pattern of arrangement that allows a reader to understand text or images in a composition. Organization may be textual, visual, or spatial.
• Proximity: the relationship between objects in space, specifically how close to or far from one another they are. Proximity can show a relationship between elements and is often important in layout.
• Purpose: an author’s reason for writing a text, including the reasoning that accounts for which modes of presentation to use. Composers of multimodal texts may seek to persuade, inform, or entertain the audience.
• Repetition: a unifying feature, such as a pattern used more than once, in the way in which elements (text features, typeface, color, etc.) are used on a page. Repetition often indicates emphasis or a particular theme. Repetitions and patterns can help focus a composition, explore a theme, and emphasize important points.
• Supplementary: describes content that is different in two or more modes, where a composer uses one mode to convey primary understanding and the other(s) to support or extend understanding. Supplementary content should not be thought of as “extra,” for its purpose is to expand on the primary media.
• Text: written words. In multimodal composition, text can refer to a piece of communication as a whole, incorporating written words, images, sounds, and movement.
• Tone: the composer’s attitude toward the subject and/or the audience.
• Transitions: words, phrases, or audiovisual elements that help readers make connections between ideas in a multimodal text, including connections from sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, and mode to mode. Transitions show relationships between ideas and help effectively organize a composition.

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What is a Genre? Definition, Examples of Genres in Literature

Home » The Writer’s Dictionary » What is a Genre? Definition, Examples of Genres in Literature

Genre definition: Genre is the organization and classification of writing.

What is Genre in Literature?

What does genre mean? Genre is the organization of literature into categories based on the type of writing the piece exemplifies through its content, form, or style.

Example of Literary Genre

The poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke fits under the genre of poetry because its written with lines that meter and rhythm and is divided into stanzas.

It does not follow the traditional sentence-paragraph format that is seen in other genres

Types of Literary Genre

There are a few different types of genre in literature. Let’s examine a few of them.

Poetry : Poetry is a major literary genre that can take many forms. Some common characteristics that poetry shares are that it is written in lines that have meter and rhythm. These lines are put together to form stanza in contrast to other writings that utilize sentences that are divided into paragraphs. Poetry often relies heavily on figurative language such as metaphors and similes in order to convey meanings and create images for the reader.

• “Sonnet 18” is a poem by William Shakespeare that falls within this category of literature. It is a structured poem that consists of 14 lines that follow a meter (iambic pentameter) and a rhyme scheme that is consist with Shakespearean Sonnets.

Drama : This literary genre is often also referred to as a play and is performed in front of an audience. Dramas are written through dialogue and include stage directions for the actors to follow.

• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde would be considered a drama because it is written through dialogue in the form of a script that includes stage directions to aid the actors in the performance of the play.

Prose : Prose is a type of writing that is written through the use of sentences. These sentences are combined to form paragraphs. This type of writing is broad and includes both fiction and non-fiction.

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is an example of fictional prose. It is written in complete sentences and divided through paragraphs.

Fiction : Fiction is a type of prose that is not real. Authors have the freedom to create a story based on characters or events that are products of their imaginations. While fiction can be based on true events, the stories they tell are imaginative in nature.

Like poetry, this genre also uses figurative language; however, it is more structural in nature and more closely follows grammatical conventions. Fiction often follows Freytag’s plot pyramid that includes an exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and dénouement.

• The novel Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut is an example of a fictional story about the main character’s experience with his self-acclaimed ability to time travel.

Nonfiction : Nonfiction is another type of prose that is factual rather than imaginative in nature. Because it is more factual and less imaginative, it may use less figurative language. Nonfiction varies however from piece to piece. It may tell a story through a memoir or it could be strictly factual in nature like a history textbook.

• The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel is a memoir telling the story of Wiesel’s experience as a young Jewish boy during the Holocaust.

The Function of Genre

Genre is important in order to be able to organize writings based on their form, content, and style.

For example, this allows readers to discern whether or not the events being written about in a piece are factual or imaginative. Genre also distinguishes the purpose of the piece and the way in which it is to be delivered. In other words, plays are meant to be performed and speeches are meant to be delivered orally whereas novels and memoirs are meant to be read.

Summary: What Are Literary Genres?

Define genre in literature: Genre is the classification and organization of literary works into the following categories: poetry, drama, prose, fiction, and nonfiction. The works are divided based on their form, content, and style. While there are subcategories to each of these genres, these are the main categories in which literature is divided.

Final Example:

The short story “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe is a fictional short story that is written in prose. It fits under the prose category because it is written using complete sentences that follow conventional grammar rules that are then formed into paragraphs.

The story is also identified as fictional because it is an imagined story that follows the plot structure.

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What is a Genre? || Definition & Examples

"what is a genre": a literary guide for english students and teachers.

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What is a Genre? Transcript (English and Spanish Subtitles Available in Video, Click Here for Spanish Transcript)

By Ehren Pflugfelder , Oregon State University Associate Professor of Rhetoric

12 February 2020

You know that moment when you’re watching a movie, and it’s been really captivating, and you’re getting interested in the characters, and a little bit lost in the story, when something shifts and you can sense what might happen next? Well in those moments, you might be experiencing what it’s like to recognize genre. And genre is a term frequently used to define the elements that repeat themselves in similar kinds of movies, books, television shows, music, and more.

I like to define genre. Genre? Jean? Jahnrah?

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Uh, let’s just go with genre (zhan-rah). OK. Genre is what some might call “typified rhetorical action” and what that means is that there are features that repeat again and again, over time, with few differences, in part because audiences expect certain things to happen or because they want certain kinds of experiences. Genre is the name we use to describe the categories that have developed over time for what we read, what we watch, and what we listen to. And the kinds of genres that exist in one culture at one time may not exist in another culture at another time – they’re constantly changing.

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The main kinds of literary genre that you might be familiar with are fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. But those are the biggest categories we can think of, really. For example, non-fiction can encompass everything from a memoir, to a to a biography, to an instruction manual. All are kinds of non-fiction writing – the only thing that ties them together is that they’re not made up. The same is true for fiction and poetry, too, and when we read poetry or prose fiction, we, as the audience, have some expectations as to what should be included. That is, when we read fiction, we expect the narrative to be made up, and when we read poetry, we expect that the each line of a poem match with other lines in a particular way, or it rhyme in the manner of a  sonnet , or break rules of punctuation, or simply take us through a lot of figurative language in a very short amount of time.

But those are the big genre categories. Genre gets especially interesting when we find even smaller categories like action movies, or superhero action movies, or parody superhero action movies. So think of the superhero genre this way: there’s usually an evil villain trying to do something terrible that the superhero is going to try and stop; there’s usually smaller fight scenes throughout the movie and a big fight scene at the end where the superhero, or group of superheroes, triumph, often by using their superpowers. The reason I didn’t have to mention a SPOILER ALERT is because I didn’t give any of the plot away, and you all know that superhero movies follow this pattern. That narrative pattern , and all the other ways that we can describe other repeating features, are what makes up a genre.

What’s more is that more than one genre can exist at once. Think of Ant Man. It’s a superhero movie, an action movie, a comedy, and a parody of other superhero movies. In fact, parodies are where we really see how genres work. After all, the reason Ant Man is funny is because it’s making fun of our expectations of what a superhero movie should be – its making fun of the genre of superhero movies.

ant_man_image.jpg

We use these same terms and descriptions to analyze literary works, works of nonfiction, and poetry, too. So, if I want to understand gothic novels, like Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, or Dracula by Bran Stoker, I’m going to look for literary tropes that they share. Some of those tropes could be similar kinds of characters , plots, settings , or themes . Is there a creepy stranger in a cape? Is there danger lurking in the shadows? Is there a haunted castle? Are you encouraged to think of the sinister side of humanity? If so, you might be reading a gothic novel. When I analyze a genre, I’m likely to compare and contrast those features and try to understand how one novel adheres to the conventions of a particular genre or breaks away from our expectations and does something different. We can describe a genre by showing how similar features are repeated, and those elements include most any of the many literary terms that are featured in the other videos in this series. For a gothic novel, we might see metaphors  that connect events to scary or dangerous things, we might see foreshadowing of horrible events yet to come, or we might see a flashback to something terrifying that happened in them past and that changes how characters act in the present. All of these are features of a particular genre.

Now, one thing not to confuse with the idea of a genre is that of a medium. A medium is the form in which something is delivered, so we might say the medium of gothic novel is a printed book, or the medium of a superhero movie is that of film. Medium describes the kind of technology that is used to convey a story to us, but doesn’t necessarily help us understand the genre of what we’re reading or watching. People often ask me is email a genre of writing? And I respond by asking when writing an email if we’re required to write in a particular way. And for the most part, we’re not. In email, you can write a love letter, you can write an angry message to the company that sold you a dodgy product, or you can write a poem. Email itself might suggest certain kinds of writing – for example, you shouldn’t break up with someone through email – but it’s a medium that can hold lots of different genres – it itself is not a genre. Describing and analyzing genre is a powerful way to understand how narratives work, and a really useful way to make sense of stories and texts that surround us.

Want to cite this?

MLA Citation: Pflugfelder, Ehren. "What is a Genre?" Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms, 12 Feb. 2020, Oregon State University, https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-genre . Accessed [insert date].

Further Resources for Teachers

Other examples of texts that parody the genres within which they work include Jorge Luis Borges's short story "Death and the Compass," Karen Russell's "Vampires in the Lemon Grove," Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky," Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Tamarisk Hunter," William Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, and Chris Ware's strange short graphic narrative "Thrilling Adventure Stories (I Guess)." For an example of a character who laughs at the genre he has found himself in, see our "What is a Flashback?" video.

Writing prompt: Select one of the above examples and explain how the author invokes the genre being parodied through the example's form or content. Next, try to explain the significance of the parody. What insight does the parody provide into the limitations of the genre? What tone or attitude does the poem or short story take towards the genre it parodies?

Interested in more video lessons? View the full series:

The oregon state guide to english literary terms, contact info.

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Module 3: Critical Reading

What is genre, learning objectives.

Differentiate between the goals and purposes of various genres of texts

Like movies and books, music is often grouped by genre. How many musical genres can you name?

One important way to empower yourself as a reader (and also a writer) is to learn how to understand genres . The word “genre” (pronounced “john-ruh” with a soft j, like “zhaan-ruh”) comes from the French and roughly means type, kind, category, or class (in keeping with the fact that it’s related to the Latin word genus , which you might recognize from biology). You’re probably already familiar with the term in connection with movies, which are grouped into various genres: horror, Western, drama, romantic comedy, documentary, and so on. Music, as well, has genres: you’ve probably heard of hip-hop, jazz, pop, rap, and rock… but how about glitch hop, vaporwave, lowercase, or pirate metal? Genres can be quite broad, like popular music or instrumental music, or very specific, like soukous or vegan straight edge.

Have you ever watched a movie where you have no idea what the genre is? It can be pretty disconcerting. You don’t know whether you should get ready to laugh, cry, or scream. Similarly, when you go to read something, it can be helpful to know something about the genre in advance. Your approach will change depending on whether you’re reading a research paper, a blog post, a novel, or a grocery list. Each of the four types of writing just named represents a genre (type, category). You can probably think of many more, from biographies to self-help books to cookbooks. (This brings up an important point: “Genre” can refer to the overall form of a text, such as a novel or a textbook, or it can refer to a specific subcategory of that form, such as a mystery novel or a math textbook. Here, we’re more concerned with the first of these, genre-as-form.)

Genres help us communicate better both as readers and as writers. As a reader, you can understand text more easily by developing genre awareness . For example, when you pick up a biography, you know it’s going to tell the life story of a real person, so you approach it with a different set of expectations than you would a novel, which tells a fictional story. If you mistook a biography for a novel, you’d fundamentally misconstrue what you were reading. On the writer’s end, genre awareness helps to plan, organize, and craft the text better, because each genre embodies a set of rules and guidelines for fulfilling a specific purpose and meeting readers’ expectations.

Not incidentally, that’s also your best working definition as we move forward: A genre represents a pattern or set of rules that a given text follows in order to communicate its message effectively to its intended audience . When you read any written text, the aspects of rhetoric that you may have learned about in previous composition classes—purpose, audience, context, and so on—lead you to approach the reading with a certain set of expectations. The concept of genre encompasses these things and provides the added benefit of a pattern or “recipe” for you to follow.

The first step to enjoying this benefit is simply to become more genre-aware. Learn to recognize that virtually everything you read follows the rules of a certain genre. Use this recognition to approach and attack your reading more enjoyably and intelligently.

The Goals and Purposes of Different Academic Genres

The key to understanding a genre is first to understand its purpose. Each genre sets out to accomplish something specific. For example, as mentioned above, the purpose of any biography is to tell someone’s life story. You have to understand this at the outset to understand what you’re reading.

You’ll improve your success as a college student if you understand the goals and purposes of the genres that you’re most likely to encounter in the college setting. These include textbooks, scholarly articles, reference works, journalism, and works of literature. Each of these displays typical features that are related to its primary purpose.

A Note about Academic Genres

When thinking about genres, remember two things about the reading and writing that you’ll do in this class, and also in the entirety of your college career.

First, academic writing forms of its own subset of genres. In a composition class, you may read texts belonging to any or all of the genres you’ve been learning about here. You may also write texts in a variety of genres, including genres that have been developed mainly for classroom learning purposes, such as the five-paragraph essay, the informative research paper, and the persuasive research paper. As you learned in the first section of this module, there’s also an entire world of professional academic/scholarly writing. Student academic writing and professional scholarly writing both follow their own sets of genre recipes for producing writing with specific characteristics to fulfill specific purposes within the educational context.

Second, academic writing is not intrinsically more intelligent, more important, or otherwise “better” than other types of writing. Rather, it’s just one subset of genres among many. It’s a collection of genres that are useful within their intended contexts, for their given purposes. And as with any genre, to be successful in academic ones, it’s simply the case that you need to become familiar with their rules and patterns (such as the use of an academic citation format — MLA, APA, Chicago style, or another — when writing a research paper or scholarly article).

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Ralph Cohen and the Principles of Genre

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Michael B Prince, Ralph Cohen and the Principles of Genre, Essays in Criticism , Volume 71, Issue 1, January 2021, Pages 66–79, https://doi.org/10.1093/escrit/cgaa026

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THE CONCEPT OF GENRE has had great staying power. Aristotle’s method of describing the origin, achievement, and decline of forms in his Poetics retains its force. Open any recent textbook for college composition; consult new work in rhetoric, media, and gender studies; observe the confusion that arises when the digital humanities pursues big data without a theory of classification: today, genre is more relevant than ever. Twenty essays by Ralph Cohen, recently edited by John L. Rowlett, help to explain why. 1

Born on 23 February 1917, Cohen died exactly ninety-nine years later. He received his BA from the City College of New York in 1937. His education was interrupted by the Second World War, during which he served in the US Army Signal Corps. He did not complete his Ph.D. at Columbia University until 1952, when he was 35. By the time Cohen wrote the earliest of the essays collected by Rowlett, essays which span the years 1970-2010, he had been publishing books, essays, reviews, and editions of literary criticism and philosophy for twenty years. His essays articulate a view of literary theory and history that Cohen had developed over the preceding decades.

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COM 1010: Composition and Critical Thinking I

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Understanding What is Meant by the Word "Genre"

What do we mean by genre? This means a type of writing, i.e., an essay, a poem, a recipe, an email, a tweet. These are all different types (or categories) of writing, and each one has its own format, type of words, tone, and so on.  Analyzing a type of writing (or genre) is considered a genre analysis project. A genre analysis grants students the means to think critically about how a particular form of communication functions as well as a means to evaluate it.

Every genre (type of writing/writing style) has a set of conventions that allow that particular genre to be unique. These conventions include the following components:

• Tone: tone of voice, i.e. serious, humorous, scholarly, informal.
• Diction : word usage - formal or informal, i.e. “disoriented” (formal) versus “spaced out” (informal or colloquial).
•   Content : what is being discussed/demonstrated in the piece? What information is included or needs to be included?
•   Style / Format (the way it looks): long or short sentences? Bulleted list? Paragraphs? Short-hand? Abbreviations? Does punctuation and grammar matter? How detailed do you need to be? Single-spaced or double-spaced? Can pictures / should pictures be included? How long does it need to be / should be? What kind of organizational requirements are there?
•   Expected Medium of Genre : where does the genre appear? Where is it created? i.e. can be it be online (digital) or does it need to be in print (computer paper, magazine, etc)? Where does this genre occur? i.e. flyers (mostly) occur in the hallways of our school, and letters of recommendation (mostly) occur in professors’ offices.
• Genre creates an expectation in the minds of its audience and may fail or succeed depending on if that expectation is met or not.
• Many genres have built-in audiences and corresponding publications that support them, such as magazines and websites.
• The goal of the piece that is written, i.e. a newspaper entry is meant to inform and/or persuade, and a movie script is meant to entertain.
• Basically, each genre has a specific task or a specific goal that it is created to attain.
• Understanding Genre
• Understanding the Rhetorical Situation

To understand genre, one has to first understand the rhetorical situation of the communication. 

Below are some additional resources to assist you in this process:

• Reading and Writing for College

Genre Analysis

Genre analysis:  A tool used to create genre awareness and understand the conventions of new writing situations and contexts.  This a llows you to make effective communication choices and approach your audience and rhetorical situation appropriately

Basically, when we say "genre analysis," that is a fancy way of saying that we are going to look at similar pieces of communication - for example a handful of business memos - and determine the following:

• Tone: What was the overall tone of voice in the samples of that genre (piece of writing)?
• Diction : What was the overall type of writing in the three samples of that genre (piece of writing)? Formal or informal?
•   Content : What types(s) of information is shared in those pieces of writing?
•   Style / Format (the way it looks): Do the pieces of communication contain long or short sentences? Bulleted list? Paragraphs? Abbreviations? Does punctuation and grammar matter? How detailed do you need to be in that type of writing style? Single-spaced or double-spaced? Are pictures included? If so, why? How long does it need to be / should be? What kind of organizational requirements are there?
•   Expected Medium of Genre : Where did the pieces appear? Were they online? Where? Were they in a printed, physical context? If so, what?
•   Audience:   What audience is this piece of writing trying to reach?
• Purpose :  What is the goal of the piece of writing? What is its purpose? Example: the goal of the piece that is written, i.e. a newspaper entry is meant to inform and/or persuade, and a movie script is meant to entertain.

In other words, we are analyzing the genre to determine what are some commonalities of that piece of communication. 

For additional help, see the following resource for Questions to Ask When Completing a Genre Analysis . 

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Definition of Genre

Genre originates from the French word meaning kind or type. As a literary device, genre refers to a form, class, or type of literary work. The primary genres in literature are poetry, drama / play , essay , short story , and novel . The term genre is used quite often to denote literary sub-classifications or specific types of literature such as comedy , tragedy , epic poetry, thriller , science fiction , romance , etc.

It’s important to note that, as a literary device, the genre is closely tied to the expectations of readers. This is especially true for literary sub-classifications. For example, Jane Austen ’s work is classified by most as part of the romance fiction genre, as demonstrated by this quote from her novel Sense and Sensibility :

When I fall in love, it will be forever.

Though Austen’s work is more complex than most formulaic romance novels, readers of Austen’s work have a set of expectations that it will feature a love story of some kind. If a reader found space aliens or graphic violence in a Jane Austen novel, this would undoubtedly violate their expectations of the romantic fiction genre.

Difference Between Style and Genre

Although both seem similar, the style is different from the genre. In simple terms, style means the characters or features of the work of a single person or individual. However, the genre is the classification of those words into broader categories such as modernist, postmodernist or short fiction and novels, and so on. Genres also have sub-genre, but the style does not have sub-styles. Style usually have further features and characteristics.

Common Examples of Genre

Genres could be divided into four major categories which also have further sub-categories. The four major categories are given below.

• Poetry: It could be categorized into further sub-categories such as epic, lyrical poetry, odes , sonnets , quatrains , free verse poems, etc.
• Fiction : It could be categorized into further sub-categories such as short stories, novels, skits, postmodern fiction, modern fiction, formal fiction, and so on.
• Prose : It could be further categorized into sub-genres or sub-categories such as essays, narrative essays, descriptive essays, autobiography , biographical writings, and so on.
• Drama: It could be categorized into tragedy, comedy, romantic comedy, absurd theatre, modern play, and so on.

Common Examples of Fiction Genre

In terms of literature, fiction refers to the prose of short stories, novellas , and novels in which the story originates from the writer’s imagination. These fictional literary forms are often categorized by genre, each of which features a particular style, tone , and storytelling devices and elements.

Here are some common examples of genre fiction and their characteristics:

• Literary Fiction : a work with artistic value and literary merit.
• Thriller : features dark, mysterious, and suspenseful plots.
• Horror : intended to scare and shock the reader while eliciting a sense of terror or dread; may feature scary entities such as ghosts, zombies, evil spirits, etc.
• Mystery : generally features a detective solving a case with a suspenseful plot and slowly revealing information for the reader to piece together.
• Romance : features a love story or romantic relationship; generally lighthearted, optimistic, and emotionally satisfying.
• Historical : plot takes place in the past with balanced realism and creativity; can feature actual historical figures, events, and settings.
• Western : generally features cowboys, settlers, or outlaws of the American Old West with themes of the frontier.
• Bildungsroman : story of a character passing from youth to adulthood with psychological and/or moral growth; the character becomes “educated” through loss, a journey, conflict , and maturation.
• Science Fiction : speculative stories derived and/or inspired by natural and social sciences; generally features futuristic civilizations, time travel, or space exploration.
• Dystopian : sub-genre of science fiction in which the story portrays a setting that may appear utopian but has a darker, underlying presence that is problematic.
• Fantasy : speculative stories with imaginary characters in imaginary settings; can be inspired by mythology or folklore and generally include magical elements.
• Magical Realism : realistic depiction of a story with magical elements that are accepted as “normal” in the universe of the story.
• Realism : depiction of real settings, people, and plots as a means of approaching the truth of everyday life and laws of nature.

Examples of Writers Associated with Specific Genre Fiction

Writers are often associated with a specific genre of fictional literature when they achieve critical acclaim, public notoriety, and/or commercial success with readers for a particular work or series of works. Of course, this association doesn’t limit the writer to that particular genre of fiction. However, being paired with a certain type of literature can last for an author’s entire career and beyond.

Here are some examples of writers that have become associated with specific fiction genre:

• Stephen King: horror
• Ray Bradbury : science fiction
• Jackie Collins: romance
• Toni Morrison: black feminism
• John le Carré: espionage
• Philippa Gregory: historical fiction
• Jacqueline Woodson: racial identity fiction
• Philip Pullman: fantasy
• Flannery O’Connor: Southern Gothic
• Shel Silverstein: children’s poetry
• Jonathan Swift : satire
• Larry McMurtry: western
• Virginia Woolf: feminism
• Raymond Chandler: detective fiction
• Colson Whitehead: Afrofuturism
• Gabriel García Márquez : magical realism
• Madeleine L’Engle: children’s fantasy fiction
• Agatha Christie : mystery
• John Green : young adult fiction
• Margaret Atwood: dystopian

Famous Examples of Genre in Other Art Forms

Most art forms feature genre as a means of identifying, differentiating, and categorizing the many forms and styles within a particular type of art. Though there are many crossovers when it comes to genre and no finite boundaries, most artistic works within a particular genre feature shared patterns , characteristics, and conventions.

Here are some famous examples of genres in other art forms:

• Music : rock, country, hip hop, folk, classical, heavy metal, jazz, blues
• Visual Art : portrait, landscape, still life, classical, modern, impressionism, expressionism
• Drama : comedy, tragedy, tragicomedy , melodrama , performance, musical theater, illusion
• Cinema : action, horror, drama, romantic comedy, western, adventure , musical, documentary, short, biopic, fantasy, superhero, sports

Examples of Genre in Literature

As a literary device, the genre is like an implied social contract between writers and their readers. This does not mean that writers must abide by all conventions associated with a specific genre. However, there are organizational patterns within a genre that readers tend to expect. Genre expectations allow readers to feel familiar with the literary work and help them to organize the information presented by the writer. In addition, keeping with genre conventions can establish a writer’s relationship with their readers and a framework for their literature.

Here are some examples of genres in literature and the conventions they represent:

Example 1: Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow , Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out , brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

The formal genre of this well-known literary work is Shakespearean drama or play. Macbeth can be sub-categorized as a literary tragedy in that the play features the elements of a classical tragic work. For example, Macbeth’s character aligns with the traits and path of a tragic hero –a protagonist whose tragic flaw brings about his downfall from power to ruin. This tragic arc of the protagonist often results in catharsis (emotional release) and potential empathy among readers and members of the audience .

In addition to featuring classical characteristics and conventions of the tragic genre, Shakespeare’s play also resonates with modern readers and audiences as a tragedy. In this passage, one of Macbeth’s soliloquies , his disillusionment, and suffering is made clear in that, for all his attempts and reprehensible actions at gaining power, his life has come to nothing. Macbeth realizes that death is inevitable, and no amount of power can change that truth. As Macbeth’s character confronts his mortality and the virtual meaninglessness of his life, readers and audiences are called to do the same. Without affirmation or positive resolution , Macbeth’s words are as tragic for readers and audiences as they are for his own character.

Like  M a cbeth , Shakespeare’s tragedies are as currently relevant as they were when they were written. The themes of power, ambition, death, love, and fate incorporated in his tragic literary works are universal and timeless. This allows tragedy as a genre to remain relatable to modern and future readers and audiences.

Example 2: The Color Purple by Alice Walker

All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy . I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain’t safe in a family of men. But I never thought I’d have to fight in my own house. She let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I’ll kill him dead before I let him beat me.

The formal genre of this literary work is novel. Walker’s novel can be sub-categorized within many fictional genres. This passage represents and validates its sub-classification within the genre of feminist fiction. Sofia’s character, at the outset, is assertive as a black woman who has been systematically marginalized in her community and family, and she expresses her independence from the dominance and control of men. Sofia is a foil character for Celie, the protagonist, who often submits to the power, control, and brutality of her husband. The juxtaposition of these characters indicates the limited options and harsh consequences faced by women with feminist ideals in the novel.

Unfortunately, Sofia’s determination to fight for herself leads her to be beaten close to death and sent to prison when she asserts herself in front of the white mayor’s wife. However, Sofia’s strong feminist traits have a significant impact on the other characters in the novel, and though she is not able to alter the systemic racism and subjugation she faces as a black woman, she does maintain her dignity as a feminist character in the novel.

Example 3: A Word to Husbands by Ogden Nash

To keep your marriage brimming With love in the loving cup, Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; Whenever you’re right, shut up.

The formal genre of this literary work is poetry. Nash’s poem would be sub-categorized within the genre of humor . The poet’s message to what is presumably his fellow husbands is witty, clear, and direct–through the wording and message of the last poetic line may be unexpected for many readers. In addition, the structure of the poem sets up the “punchline” at the end. The piece begins with poetic wording that appears to romanticize love and marriage, which makes the contrasting “base” language of the final line a satisfying surprise and ironic twist for the reader. The poet’s tone is humorous and light-hearted which also appeals to the characteristics and conventions of this genre.

Synonyms of Genre

Genre doesn’t have direct synonyms . A few close meanings are category, class, group, classification, grouping, head, heading, list, set, listing, and categorization. Some other words such as species, variety, family, school, and division also fall in the category of its synonyms.

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This resource begins with a general description of essay writing and moves to a discussion of common essay genres students may encounter across the curriculum. The four genres of essays (description, narration, exposition, and argumentation) are common paper assignments you may encounter in your writing classes. Although these genres, also known as the modes of discourse, have been criticized by some composition scholars, the Purdue OWL recognizes the wide spread use of these genres and students’ need to understand and produce these types of essays. We hope these resources will help.

The essay is a commonly assigned form of writing that every student will encounter while in academia. Therefore, it is wise for the student to become capable and comfortable with this type of writing early on in her training.

Essays can be a rewarding and challenging type of writing and are often assigned either to be done in class, which requires previous planning and practice (and a bit of creativity) on the part of the student, or as homework, which likewise demands a certain amount of preparation. Many poorly crafted essays have been produced on account of a lack of preparation and confidence. However, students can avoid the discomfort often associated with essay writing by understanding some common genres.

Before delving into its various genres, let’s begin with a basic definition of the essay.

What is an essay?

Though the word essay has come to be understood as a type of writing in Modern English, its origins provide us with some useful insights. The word comes into the English language through the French influence on Middle English; tracing it back further, we find that the French form of the word comes from the Latin verb exigere , which means "to examine, test, or (literally) to drive out." Through the excavation of this ancient word, we are able to unearth the essence of the academic essay: to encourage students to test or examine their ideas concerning a particular topic.

Essays are shorter pieces of writing that often require the student to hone a number of skills such as close reading, analysis, comparison and contrast, persuasion, conciseness, clarity, and exposition. As is evidenced by this list of attributes, there is much to be gained by the student who strives to succeed at essay writing.

The purpose of an essay is to encourage students to develop ideas and concepts in their writing with the direction of little more than their own thoughts (it may be helpful to view the essay as the converse of a research paper). Therefore, essays are (by nature) concise and require clarity in purpose and direction. This means that there is no room for the student’s thoughts to wander or stray from his or her purpose; the writing must be deliberate and interesting.

This handout should help students become familiar and comfortable with the process of essay composition through the introduction of some common essay genres.

This handout includes a brief introduction to the following genres of essay writing:

• Expository essays
• Descriptive essays
• Narrative essays
• Argumentative (Persuasive) essays

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7 Understanding Discourse Communities

This chapter uses John Swales’ definition of discourse community to explain to students why this concept is important for college writing and beyond. The chapter explains how genres operate within discourse communities, why different discourse communities have different expectations for writing, and how to understand what qualifies as a discourse community. The article relates the concept of discourse community to a personal example from the author (an acoustic guitar jam group) and an example of the academic discipline of history. The article takes a critical stance regarding the concept of discourse community, discussing both the benefits and constraints of communicating within discourse communities. The article concludes with writerly questions students can ask themselves as they enter new discourse communities in order to be more effective communicators.

Last year, I decided that if I was ever going to achieve my lifelong fantasy of being the first college writing teacher to transform into an international rock star, I should probably graduate from playing the video game Guitar Hero to actually learning to play guitar. [1] I bought an acoustic guitar and started watching every beginning guitar instructional video on YouTube. At first, the vocabulary the online guitar teachers used was like a foreign language to me—terms like major and minor chords, open G tuning, and circle of fifths. I was overwhelmed by how complicated it all was, and the fingertips on my left hand felt like they were going to fall off from pressing on the steel strings on the neck of my guitar to form chords. I felt like I was making incredibly slow progress, and at the rate I was going, I wouldn’t be a guitar god until I was 87. I was also getting tired of playing alone in my living room. I wanted to find a community of people who shared my goal of learning songs and playing guitar together for fun.

I needed a way to find other beginning and intermediate guitar players, and I decided to try a social media website called “Meetup.com.” It only took a few clicks to find the right community for me—an “acoustic jam” group that welcomed beginners and met once a month at a music store near my city of Sacramento, California. On the Meetup.com site, it said that everyone who showed up for the jam should bring a few songs to share, but I wasn’t sure what kind of music they played, so I just showed up at the next meet-up with my guitar and the basic look you need to become a guitar legend: two days of facial hair stubble, black t-shirt, ripped jeans, and a gravelly voice (luckily my throat was sore from shouting the lyrics to the Twenty One Pilots song “Heathens” while playing guitar in my living room the night before).

The first time I played with the group, I felt more like a junior high school band camp dropout then the next Jimi Hendrix. I had trouble keeping up with the chord changes, and I didn’t know any scales (groups of related notes in the same key that work well together) to solo on lead guitar when it was my turn. I had trouble figuring out the patterns for my strumming hand since no one took the time to explain them before we started playing a new song. The group had some beginners, but I was the least experienced player.

perienced player. It took a few more meet-ups, but pretty soon I figured out how to fit into the group. I learned that they played all kinds of songs, from country to blues to folk to rock music. I learned that they chose songs with simple chords so beginners like me could play along. I learned that they brought print copies of the chords and lyrics of songs to share, and if there were any difficult chords in a song, they included a visual of the chord shape in the handout of chords and lyrics. I started to learn the musician’s vocabulary I needed to be familiar with to function in the group, like beats per measure and octaves and the minor pentatonic scale . I learned that if I was having trouble figuring out the chord changes, I could watch the better guitarists and copy what they were doing. I also got good advice from experienced players, like soaking your fingers in rubbing alcohol every day for ninety seconds to toughen them up so the steel strings wouldn’t hurt as much. I even realized that although I was an inexperienced player, I could contribute to the community by bringing in new songs they hadn’t played before.

Okay, at this point you may be saying to yourself that all of this will make a great biographical movie someday when I become a rock icon (or maybe not), but what does it have to do with becoming a better writer?

You can write in a journal alone in your room, just like you can play guitar just for yourself alone in your room. But most writers, like most musicians, learn their craft from studying experts and becoming part of a community. And most writers, like most musicians, want to be a part of community and communicate with other people who share their goals and interests. Writing teachers and scholars have come up with the concept of “discourse community” to describe a community of people who share the same goals, the same methods of communicating, the same genres, and the same lexis (specialized language).

What Exactly Is a Discourse Community?

John Swales, a scholar in linguistics, says that discourse communities have the following features (which I’m paraphrasing):

• A broadly agreed upon set of common public goals
• Mechanisms of intercommunication among members
• Use of these communication mechanisms to provide information and feedback
• One or more genres that help further the goals of the discourse community
• A specific lexis (specialized language)
• A threshold level of expert members (24-26)

I’ll use my example of the monthly guitar jam group I joined to explain these six aspects of a discourse community.

A Broadly Agreed Set of Common Public Goals

The guitar jam group had shared goals that we all agreed on. In the Meetup.com description of the site, the organizer of the group emphasized that these monthly gatherings were for having fun, enjoying the music, and learning new songs. “Guitar players” or “people who like music” or even “guitarists in Sacramento, California” are not discourse communities. They don’t share the same goals, and they don’t all interact with each other to meet the same goals.

Mechanisms of Intercommunication among Members

The guitar jam group communicated primarily through the Meetup.com site. This is how we recruited new members, shared information about when and where we were playing, and communicated with each other outside of the night of the guitar jam. “People who use Meetup.com” are not a discourse community, because even though they’re using the same method of communication, they don’t all share the same goals and they don’t all regularly interact with each other. But a Meetup.com group like the Sacramento acoustic guitar jam focused on a specific topic with shared goals and a community of members who frequently interact can be considered a discourse community based on Swales’ definition.

Use of These Communication Mechanisms to Provide Information and Feedback

Once I found the guitar jam group on Meetup.com, I wanted information about topics like what skill levels could participate, what kind of music they played, and where and when they met. Once I was at my first guitar jam, the primary information I needed was the chords and lyrics of each song, so the handouts with chords and lyrics were a key means of providing critical information to community members. Communication mechanisms in discourse communities can be emails, text messages, social media tools, print texts, memes, oral presentations, and so on. One reason that Swales uses the term “discourse” instead of “writing” is that the term “discourse” can mean any type of communication, from talking to writing to music to images to multimedia.

One or More Genres That Help Further the Goals of the Discourse Community

One of the most common ways discourse communities share information and meet their goals is through genres. To help explain the concept of genre, I’ll use music since I’ve been talking about playing guitar and music is probably an example you can relate to. Obviously there are many types of music, from rap to country to reggae to heavy metal. Each of these types of music is considered a genre, in part because the music has shared features, from the style of the music to the subject of the lyrics to the lexis. For example, most rap has a steady bass beat, most rappers use spoken word rather singing, and rap lyrics usually draw on a lexis associated with young people. But a genre is much more than a set of features. Genres arise out of social purposes, and they’re a form of social action within discourse communities. The rap battles of today have historical roots in African oral contests, and modern rap music can only be understood in the context of hip hop culture, which includes break dancing and street art. Rap also has social purposes, including resisting social oppression and telling the truth about social conditions that aren’t always reported on by news outlets. Like all genres, rap is not just a formula but a tool for social action.

The guitar jam group used two primary genres to meet the goals of the community. The Meetup.com site was one important genre that was critical in the formation of the group and to help it recruit new members. It was also the genre that delivered information to the members about what the community was about and where and when the community would be meeting. The other important genre to the guitar jam group were the handouts with song chords and lyrics. I’m sharing an example of a song I brought to the group to show you what this genre looks like.

This genre of the chord and lyrics sheet was needed to make sure everyone could play along and follow the singer. The conventions of this genre—the “norms”—weren’t just arbitrary rules or formulas. As with all genres, the conventions developed because of the social action of the genre. The sheets included lyrics so that we could all sing along and make sure we knew when to change chords. The sheets included visuals of unusual chords, like the Em7 chord (E minor seventh) in my example, because there were some beginner guitarists who were a part of the community. If the community members were all expert guitarists, then the inclusion of chord shapes would never have become a convention. A great resource to learn more about the concept of genre is the essay “Navigating Genres” by Kerry Dirk in volume 1 of Writing Spaces .

A Specific Lexis (Specialized Language)

To anyone who wasn’t a musician, our guitar meet-ups might have sounded like we were communicating in a foreign language. We talked about the root note of scale, a 1/4/5 chord progression, putting a capo on different frets, whether to play solos in a major or minor scale, double drop D tuning, and so on. If someone couldn’t quickly identify what key their song was in or how many beats per measure the strumming pattern required, they wouldn’t be able to communicate effectively with the community members. We didn’t use this language to show off or to try to discourage outsiders from joining our group. We needed these specialized terms—this musician’s lexis—to make sure we were all playing together effectively.

A Threshold Level of Expert Members 

If everyone in the guitar jam was at my beginner level when I first joined the group, we wouldn’t have been very successful. I relied on more experienced players to figure out strumming patterns and chord changes, and I learned to improve my solos by watching other players use various techniques in their soloing. The most experienced players also helped educate everyone on the conventions of the group (the “norms” of how the group interacted). These conventions included everyone playing in the same key, everyone taking turns playing solo lead guitar, and everyone bringing songs to play. But discourse community conventions aren’t always just about maintaining group harmony. In most discourse communities, new members can also expand the knowledge and genres of the community. For example, I shared songs that no one had brought before, and that expanded the community’s base of knowledge.

Why the Concept of Discourse Communities Matters for College Writing

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Florida, I didn’t understand that each academic discipline I took courses in to complete the requirements of my degree (history, philosophy, biology, math, political science, sociology, English) was a different discourse community. Each of these academic fields had their own goals, their own genres, their own writing conventions, their own formats for citing sources, and their own expectations for writing style. I thought each of the teachers I encountered in my undergraduate career just had their own personal preferences that all felt pretty random to me. I didn’t understand that each teacher was trying to act as a representative of the discourse community of their field. I was a new member of their discourse communities, and they were introducing me to the genres and conventions of their disciplines. Unfortunately, teachers are so used to the conventions of their discourse communities that they sometimes don’t explain to students the reasons behind the writing conventions of their discourse communities.

It wasn’t until I studied research about college writing while I was in graduate school that I learned about genres and discourse communities, and by the time I was doing my dissertation for my PhD, I got so interested in studying college writing that I did a national study of college teachers’ writing assignments and syllabi. Believe it or not, I analyzed the genres and discourse communities of over 2,000 college writing assignments in my book Assignments Across the Curriculum . To show you why the idea of discourse community is so important to college writing, I’m going to share with you some information from one of the academic disciplines I studied: history. First I want to share with you an excerpt from a history course writing assignment from my study. As you read it over, think about what it tells you about the conventions of the discourse community of history.

Documentary Analysis

This assignment requires you to play the detective, combing textual sources for clues and evidence to form a reconstruction of past events. If you took A.P. history courses in high school, you may recall doing similar document-based questions (DBQs).

In a tight, well-argued essay of two to four pages, identify and assess the historical significance of the documents in ONE of the four sets I have given you.

You bring to this assignment a limited body of outside knowledge gained from our readings, class discussions, and videos. Make the most of this contextual knowledge when interpreting your sources: you may, for example, refer to one of the document from another set if it sheds light on the items in your own.

Questions to Consider When Planning Your Essay

• What do the documents reveal about the author and his audience?
• Why were they written?
• What can you discern about the author’s motivation and tone? Is the tone revealing?
• Does the genre make a difference in your interpretation?
• How do the documents fit into both their immediate and their greater historical contexts?
• Do your documents support or contradict what other sources (video, readings) have told you?
• Do the documents reveal a change that occurred over a period of time?
• Is there a contrast between documents within your set? If so, how do you account for it?
• Do they shed light on a historical event, problem, or period? How do they fit into the “big picture”?
• What incidental information can you glean from them by reading carefully? Such information is important for constructing a narrative of the past; our medieval authors almost always tell us more than they intended to.
• What is not said, but implied?
• What is left out? (As a historian, you should always look for what is not said, and ask yourself what the omission signifies.)
• Taken together, do the documents reveal anything significant about the period in question? (Melzer 3-4)

This assignment doesn’t just represent the specific preferences of one random teacher. It’s a common history genre (the documentary analysis) that helps introduce students to the ways of thinking and the communication conventions of the discourse community of historians. This genre reveals that historians look for textual clues to reconstruct past events and that historians bring their own knowledge to bear when they analyze texts and interpret history (historians are not entirely “objective” or “neutral”). In this documentary analysis genre, the instructor emphasizes that historians are always looking for what is not said but instead is implied. This instructor is using an important genre of history to introduce students to the ways of analyzing and thinking in the discourse community of historians.

Let’s look at another history course in my research. I’m sharing with you an excerpt from the syllabus of a history of the American West course. This part of the syllabus gives students an overview of the purpose of the writing projects in the class. As you read this overview, think about the ways this instructor is portraying the discourse community of historians.

A300: History of the American West

A300 is designed to allow students to explore the history of the American West on a personal level with an eye toward expanding their knowledge of various western themes, from exploration to the Indian Wars, to the impact of global capitalism and the emergence of the environmental movement. But students will also learn about the craft of history, including the tools used by practitioners, how to weigh competing evidence , and how to build a convincing argument about the past.

At the end of this course students should understand that history is socially interpreted, and that the past has always been used as an important means for understanding the present. Old family photos, a grandparent’s memories, even family reunions allow people to understand their lives through an appreciation of the past. These events and artifacts remind us that history is a dynamic and interpretive field of study that requires far more than rote memorization. Historians balance their knowledge of primary sources (diaries, letters, artifacts, and other documents from the period under study) with later interpretations of these people, places, and events (in the form of scholarly monographs and articles) known as secondary sources . Through the evaluation and discussion of these different interpretations historians come to a socially negotiated understanding of historical figures and events.

Individual Projects

More generally, your papers should:

• Empathize with the person, place, or event you are writing about. The goal here is to use your understanding of the primary and secondary sources you have read to “become” that person–i.e. to appreciate their perspectives on the time or event under study. In essence, students should demonstrate an appreciation of that time within its context.
• Second, students should be able to present the past in terms of its relevance to contemporary issues. What do their individual projects tell us about the present? For example, what does the treatment of Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asian Americans in the West tell us about the problem of race in the United States today?
• Third, in developing their individual and group projects, students should demonstrate that they have researched and located primary and secondary sources. Through this process they will develop the skills of a historian, and present an interpretation of the past that is credible to their peers and instructors.

Just like the history instructor who gave students the documentary analysis assignment, this history of the American West instructor emphasizes that the discourse community of historians doesn’t focus on just memorizing facts, but on analyzing and interpreting competing evidence. Both the documentary analysis assignment and the information from the history of the American West syllabus show that an important shared goal of the discourse community of historians is socially constructing the past using evidence from different types of artifacts, from texts to photos to interviews with people who have lived through important historical events. The discourse community goals and conventions of the different academic disciplines you encounter as an undergraduate shape everything about writing: which genres are most important, what counts as evidence, how arguments are constructed, and what style is most appropriate and effective.

The history of the American West course is a good example of the ways that discourse community goals and values can change over time. It wasn’t that long ago that American historians who wrote about the West operated on the philosophy of “manifest destiny.” Most early historians of the American West assumed that the American colonizers had the right to take land from indigenous tribes—that it was the white European’s “destiny” to colonize the American West. The evidence early historians used in their writing and the ways they interpreted that evidence relied on the perspectives of the “settlers,” and the perspectives of the indigenous people were ignored by historians. The concept of manifest destiny has been strongly critiqued by modern historians, and one of the primary goals of most modern historians who write about the American West is to recover the perspectives and stories of the indigenous peoples as well as to continue to work for social justice for Native Americans by showing how historical injustices continue in different forms to the present day. Native American historians are now retelling history from the perspective of indigenous people, using indigenous research methods that are often much different than the traditional research methods of historians of the American West. Discourse community norms can silence and marginalize people, but discourse communities can also be transformed by new members who challenge the goals and assumptions and research methods and genre conventions of the community.

Discourse Communities from School to Work and Beyond

Understanding what a discourse community is and the ways that genres perform social actions in discourse communities can help you better understand where your college teachers are coming from in their writing assignments and also help you understand why there are different writing expectations and genres for different classes in different fields. Researchers who study college writing have discovered that most students struggle with writing when they first enter the discourse community of their chosen major, just like I struggled when I first joined the acoustic guitar jam group. When you graduate college and start your first job, you will probably also find yourself struggling a bit with trying to learn the writing conventions of the discourse community of your workplace. Knowing how discourse communities work will not only help you as you navigate the writing assigned in different general education courses and the specialized writing of your chosen major, but it will also help you in your life after college. Whether you work as a scientist in a lab or a lawyer for a firm or a nurse in a hospital, you will need to become a member of a discourse community. You’ll need to learn to communicate effectively using the genres of the discourse community of your workplace, and this might mean asking questions of more experienced discourse community members, analyzing models of the types of genres you’re expected to use to communicate, and thinking about the most effective style, tone, format, and structure for your audience and purpose. Some workplaces have guidelines for how to write in the genres of the discourse community, and some workplaces will initiate you to their genres by trial and error. But hopefully now that you’ve read this essay, you’ll have a better idea of what kinds of questions to ask to help you become an effective communicator in a new discourse community. I’ll end this essay with a list of questions you can ask yourself whenever you’re entering a new discourse community and learning the genres of the community:

• What are the goals of the discourse community?
• What are the most important genres community members use to achieve these goals?
• Who are the most experienced communicators in the discourse community?
• Where can I find models of the kinds of genres used by the discourse community?
• Who are the different audiences the discourse community communicates with, and how can I adjust my writing for these different audiences?
• What conventions of format, organization, and style does the discourse community value?
• What specialized vocabulary (lexis) do I need to know to communicate effectively with discourse community insiders?
• How does the discourse community make arguments, and what types of evidence are valued?
• Do the conventions of the discourse community silence any members or force any members to conform to the community in ways that make them uncomfortable?
• What can I add to the discourse community?

Works Cited

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces , vol. 1, edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, Parlor Press, 2010, pp. 249–262.

Guitar Hero . Harmonics, 2005.

Meetup.com . WeWork Companies Inc., 2019. www.meetup.com.

Melzer, Daniel. Assignments Across the Curriculum: A National Study of College Writing . Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2014.

Swales, John. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings . Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990.

Twenty One Pilots. “Heathens.” Suicide Squad: The Album , Atlantic Records, 2016.

Young, Neil. “Heart of Gold.” Harvest , Reprise Records, 1972.

Teacher Resources for Understanding Discourse Communities by Dan Melzer

Overview and teaching strategies.

This essay can be taught in conjunction with teaching students about the concept of genre and could be paired with Kerry Dirk’s essay “Navigating Genres” in Writing Spaces , volume 1. I find that it works best to scaffold the concept of discourse community by moving students from reflecting on the formulaic writing they have learned in the past, like the five-paragraph theme or the Shaffer method, to introducing them to the concept of genre and how genres are not formulas or formats but forms of social action, and then to helping students understand that genres usually operate within discourse communities. Most of my students are unfamiliar with the concept of discourse community, and I find that it is helpful to relate this concept to discourse communities students are already members of, like online gaming groups, college clubs, or jobs students are working or have worked. I sometimes teach the concept of discourse community as part of a research project where students investigate the genres and communication conventions of a discourse community they want to join or are already a member of. In this project students conduct primary and secondary research and rhetorically analyze examples of the primary genres of the discourse community. The primary research might involve doing an interview or interviews with discourse community members, conducting a survey of discourse community members, or reflecting on participant-observer research.

Inevitably, some students have trouble differentiating between a discourse community and a group of people who share similar characteristics. Students may assert that “college students” or “Facebook users” or “teenage women” are a discourse community. It is useful to apply Swales’ criteria to broader groups that students imagine are discourse communities and then try to narrow down these groups until students have hit upon an actual discourse community (for example, narrowing from “Facebook users” to the Black Lives Matter Sacramento Facebook group). In the essay, I tried to address this issue with specific examples of groups that Swales would not classify as a discourse community.

Teaching students about academic discourse communities is a challenging task. Researchers have found that there are broad expectations for writing that seem to hold true across academic discourse communities, such as the ability to make logical arguments and support those arguments with credible evidence, the ability to use academic vocabulary and write in a formal style, and the ability to carefully edit for grammar, syntax, and citation format. But research has also shown that not only do different academic fields have vastly different definitions of how arguments are made, what counts as evidence, and what genres, styles, and formats are valued, but even similar types of courses within the same discipline may have very different discourse community expectations depending on the instructor, department, and institution. In teaching students about the concept of discourse community, I want students to leave my class understanding that: a) there is no such thing as a formula or set of rules for “academic discourse”; b) each course in each field of study they take in college will require them to write in the context of a different set of discourse community expectations; and c) discourse communities can both pass down community knowledge to new members and sometimes marginalize or silence members. What I hope students take away from reading this essay is a more rhetorically sophisticated and flexible sense of the community contexts of the writing they do both in and outside of school.

• The author begins the essay discussing a discourse community he has recently become a member of. Think of a discourse community that you recently joined and describe how it meets Swales’ criteria for a discourse community.
• Choose a college class you’ve taken or are taking and describe the goals and expectations for writing of the discourse community the class represents. In small groups, compare the class discourse community you described with two of your peers’ courses. What are some of the differences in the goals and expectations for writing?
• Using Swales’ criteria for a discourse community, consider whether the following are discourse communities and why or why not: a) students at your college; b) a fraternity or sorority; c) fans of soccer; d) a high school debate team.
• The author of this essay argues that discourse communities use genres for social actions. Consider your major or a field you would like to work in after you graduate. What are some of the most important genres of that discourse community? In what ways do these genres perform social actions for members of the discourse community?

The following are activities that can provide scaffolding for a discourse community analysis project. To view example student discourse community analysis projects from the first-year composition program that I direct at the University of California, Davis, see our online student writing journal at fycjournal.ucdavis.edu .

Introducing the Concept of Discourse Community

To introduce students to the concept of discourse community, I like to start with discourse communities they can relate to or that they themselves are members of. A favorite example for my students is the This American Life podcast episode that explores the Instagram habits of teenage girls, which can be found at https://www.thisamericanlife.org/573/status-update . Other examples students can personally connect to include Facebook groups, groups on the popular social media site Reddit, fan clubs of musical artists or sports teams, and campus student special interest groups. Once we’ve discussed a few examples of discourse communities they can relate to on a personal level, I ask them to list some of the discourse communities they belong to and we apply Swales’ criteria to a few of these examples as a class.

Genre Analysis

One goal of my discourse community analysis project is to help students see the relationships between genres and the broader community contexts that genres operate in. However, thinking of writing in terms of genre and discourse community is a new approach for most of my students, and I provide them with heuristic questions they can use to analyze the primary genres of the discourse community they are focusing on in their projects. These questions include:

• Who is the audience(s) for the genre, and how does audience shape the genre?
• What social actions does the genre achieve for the discourse community?
• What are the conventions of the genre?
• How much flexibility do authors have to vary the conventions of the genre?
• Have the conventions of the genre changed over time? In what ways and why?
• To what extent does the genre empower members of the discourse community to speak, and to what extent does the genre marginalize or silence members of the discourse community?
• Where can a new discourse community member find models of the genre?

Research Questions about the Discourse Community

You could choose to have the focus of students’ discourse community projects be as simple as arguing that the discourse community they chose meets Swales’ criteria and explaining why. If you want students to dig a little deeper, you can ask them to come up with research questions about the discourse community they are analyzing. For example, students can ask questions about how the genres of the discourse community achieve the goals of the community, or how the writing conventions of the discourse community have changed over time and why they have changed, or how new members are initiated to the discourse community and the extent to which that initiation is effective. Some of my students are used to being assigned research papers in school that ask them to take a side on a pro/ con issue and develop a simplistic thesis statement that argues for that position. In the discourse community analysis project, I push them to think of research as more sophisticated than just taking a position and forming a simplistic thesis statement. I want them to use primary and secondary research to explore complex research questions and decide which aspects of their data and their analysis are the most interesting and useful to report on in their projects.

• This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) and are subject to the Writing Spaces Terms of Use. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ , email [email protected] , or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA. To view the Writing Spaces Terms of Use, visit http://writingspaces.org/terms-of-use . ↵

Understanding Discourse Communities Copyright © 2020 by Dan Melzer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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This research investigates the changes in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ psychological attributes in relation to awareness of the lexicogrammatical features and generic structures of a discussion genre essay. This was achieved by implementing a genre-based approach to text-based writing lessons during a 15-week course. The following lesson procedure was implemented: stage (1): modeling and deconstruction of a text, stage (2): writing of target texts, stage (3): genre analysis of peers’ essays, and stage (4): writing of an analysis reflection. The results indicated specific improvements in genre-based writing, particularly among low-proficiency English learners. Results suggest that their understanding of “interpersonal meaning” such as modal verbs improved. Improvements in the use of modal auxiliaries were also noted, in that the word “should” did not appear in pre-writing texts; however, the frequency improved in post-writing texts, especially in the final paragraph, which comprised the writers’ opinions and suggestions.

Introduction

Systematic functional linguistics (SFL) is a theoretical approach that analyzes the relationship between social contexts and linguistic aspects (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014 ). The core concepts of SFL are language as functional and language as meaning-making (Halliday, 1978 ). The first concept refers to language attributes: understanding a language means understanding how people use the language in context and how it is structured for use (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014 ). According to the second concept, language as meaning-making, speakers and writers have a systematic choice in a particular context (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014 ). When writing an email message to a friend, person A chooses particular lexicogrammatical functions, which are different from those used when the same person writes an email message to inquire about a job. Thus, the context of a situation is related to the meaning-making choice.

The common focused features of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning in high school classrooms in Japan among 2134 high school teachers in 2015 were reading texts aloud, practicing pronunciation, and explaining the uses of lexicogrammar (Benesse Educational Research and Development Institute, 2016 ). Having learners write sentences or essays about their opinions and summarizing textbook contents were less focused during EFL lessons at Japanese high schools (Benesse Educational Research and Development Institute, 2016 ). One study revealed how 140 EFL learners at a private university in Japan considered the importance of learning English: 28% of them considered improving listening skills to be important, while 11% of them agreed that learning how to write texts in English was important (Yamashita, 2012 ). Sugiura ( 2017 ) explores the changes of 37 Japanese university students’ understanding of their English learning styles from when they were high school students to when they became university students through an analysis of narrative frameworks. Many of them learned lexicogrammar of English using textbooks provided in a teacher-dominated setting in high school, while they tended to be taught mostly through practicing verbal communication while at university (Sugiura, 2017 ). Their narratives, however, said far less about the ways that they learned how to write in English. Murakoshi ( 2015 ) reported that writing practices and activities in classrooms tended to consist of opportunities for EFL learners to practice writing sentences and paragraphs in order to establish linguistic knowledge. The aim of this paper is (1) to introduce an SFL-genre-based approach to teaching methodology that reckons with the changes in EFL learners’ awareness of target genre in particular learning contexts, and (2) to explore the idea that learning how to write consists of more than creating a cognitive network in terms of linguistic knowledge as it is processed by learners’ brains. Language as functional and language as meaning-making purposes is applicable or not within the EFL classroom contexts.

Literature review

Systematic functional linguistics and genre.

In SFL theory, the relational concept of linking the context of a situation with linguistic choices is called register. Register has three features; Field, Tenor, and Mode, which are related to the following metafunctions (see Table  1 ; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014 ; Martin & Rose, 2008 ). The Field facilitates understanding of how and when people use particular lexicogrammatical features such as mental verbs and elements of cohesion; these are ideational metafunctions that allow us to understand what is occurring in the text. The Tenor facilitates understanding of how and when the writer chooses particular modalities and appraisal systems; this interpersonal metafunction helps us to understand the relationship between writers and readers . Finally, the Mode facilitates analysis and understanding of the Theme and Rheme as well as cohesive devices; this textual metafunction allows us to understand how the text is organized.

Genre in SFL represents the systems of social processes that constitute a culture (Martin & White, 2005 ). Rose ( 2013 , p. 209) claimed that the approach of genre has been influenced by features: “Halliday’s ( 1975 ) theory of language regarding the social semiotic process, Bernstein’s ( 1990 ) sociological theory, and a series of large-scale action research projects in literacy education (Martin, 1999 ; Rose, 2008 ).” Bhatia ( 2004 ) summarized some common features of genre studies: Genre refers to language in a stylized communicative setting in order to allow speakers and writers to express a definitive set of communicative goals of a disciplinary or social institution. Genre gives us stable structural forms, including the use of lexicogrammatical and semiotic resources (Bhatia, 2004 ).

Genre was defined differently in English for specific purposes (ESP) by Swales ( 1990 , p. 58), who defined the key concepts in ESP as “discourse community, communicative purpose, and genre.” Here, genre is a category of communicative events holding some communicative purpose. In other words, genres in ESP are understood as communicative tools in the social context of the discourse community, and understanding the functions of generic structure and lexicogrammar help us to understand the communicative goals (Fakhruddin & Hassan, 2015 ). In sum, genres in ESP are forms of communicative action.

Martin ( 1984 , p. 25) stated that genre in SFL is “goal-oriented and has a social activity purpose:” writers and speakers who use the genre engage in these activities as “members of their culture.” Eggins ( 2004 ) proposed that each genre text has a different cultural purpose based on its generic structure and realizational pattern. Realization of the relationship between (1) social purposes and (2) contexts as specific linguistic interactions is the key concept in SFL (Fakhruddin & Hassan, 2015 ). Understanding social purposes and contexts allows us to discern the meaning of the language and specific social actions (Fakhruddin & Hassan, 2015 ).

In this study, genre is defined as types of written text that help us to understand the relationship between the text’s social purpose and structure, which influence writers’ linguistic actions.

Previous research on the SFL genre (text)-based approach of writing in EFL contexts

Most current research on the genre-based approach (GBA) and SFL have implied improvement in learners’ generic structural awareness rather than in their lexicogrammatical meaning-making choices. Chen and Su ( 2012 ) and Feez ( 2002 ) emphasized that the use of GBA with the teaching-learning cycle (TLC) has five stages: (1) setting of the context, (2) modeling, (3) joint construction, (4) independent construction, and (5) comparison. The GBA and TLC were effective in terms of learners’ summarization ability, especially their organization of the narrative genre text’s structure rather than vocabulary and language use (Chen & Su, 2012 ; Feez, 1998 ; Feez, 2002). Carstens ( 2009 ) investigated the effectiveness of using GBA with SFL grammar as the theoretical framework for teaching academic writing to second-year undergraduate students of Humanities at the University of Pretoria. Although it is challenging for many tertiary-level learners to acquire specific knowledge and skills to write particular academic genre texts, genre-based writing has the capability to enhance their writing abilities. However, very little empirical research has been conducted in this area. Carstens’ ( 2009 ) study applied a mixed methods design using genre analysis, discourse analysis, survey of writing tasks, and pre- and posttest essay ratings. The results indicated that the following genre types were required to write academic essays: argumentation, discussion, explanation, and description genre texts (Carstens, 2009 ). Despite limited research, studies on EFL writing based on SFL-GBA teaching and learning have found that learners improved their understanding of the logico-semantic relationship. In Srinon’s ( 2011 ) study, learners’ use of resources to construct a logico-semantic relationship increased; that is, the frequency of using single-clause sentences reduced, and sentences including hypotaxis and parataxis increased.

SFL-GBA teaching usually involves the TLC, which is a systematic approach guiding EFL learners on how to interrelate lexicogrammatical features as well as functions and writers’ shared experiences in the context when they write. The original TLC has three stages: deconstruction of the target genre’s written texts, joint construction, and independent construction (Feez, 1998 ; Feez, 2002 ). Many studies on SFL-GBA writing have reported the benefits of applying this TLC to explore the degree to which genre-based teaching allows learners to gain genre awareness and improve writing quality when they write argumentative essays (Tsou & Lin, 2013 ). However, in their study, Tsou and Lin ( 2013 ) found that the control group learners’ understanding of genre awareness did not improve significantly. The concept of TLC allows EFL teachers and instructors to utilize the scaffolding strategy. Syarifah and Gunawan ( 2015 ) observed improvement in six EFL learners’ writing performance of a discussion genre text; in particular, the social function, schematic structure, and language features improved because of the SFL-GBA writing lesson. Thus, their results showed that scaffolding was embedded in the TLC. Viriya and Wasanasomsithi ( 2017 ) used the genre approach to writing lessons while using the TLC (Feez, 2002 ) for a 12-week period. The target for these learners was to produce a genre text that was informative and persuasive. However, there was little improvement in the learners’ awareness of the reader-writer relationship and what they should write about. Viriya and Wasanasomsithi ( 2017 ) concluded that these learners’ discourse community was within the classroom, and therefore they knew that their audience, that is, the reader of the text, would only be the instructor. Therefore, awareness of the reader-writer relationship did not improve significantly in the post-task. In SFL theory, the concept of Tenor indicates the degree of formality, power, and effect that usually influence interpersonal choices in terms of linguistics systems (Halliday, 1978 , p. 143). However, this idea might have been omitted in the learning classroom context in Viriya and Wasanasomsithi’s ( 2017 ) study.

Finally, although the majority of research on GBA teaching and learning has found that the SFL-GBA pedagogy is useful for EFL learners, most studies have demonstrated little understanding regarding which features of the approach are useful. Many studies have focused on learners’ generic awareness improvement but not on the changes in teachers’ understanding of how to teach writing using SFL and GBA. Shi ( 2015 ) applied a qualitative case study method by analyzing interviews, classroom observations, and students’ writing data. These students’ target genre was a discussion text. The authors found that through the workshop training, teachers’ (1) curricular knowledge, (2) subject matter content knowledge, and (3) pedagogical content knowledge about the target genre was improved. These teachers realized that their former approach of teaching how to write the target genre text was too general, with insufficient details about the generic structure. They found that genre pedagogy can provide learners with step-by-step instructions on how to write the target text. The teachers’ content knowledge of the target genre text allowed them to gain subject matter content knowledge and curriculum knowledge. These teachers believed that the modeling stage of the TLC in particular, allowed students to gain awareness of the textual features within target genre texts.

SFL-GBA writing research on EFL contexts in Japan

Contemporary genre research into the Japanese language has been conducted since the 1970s, focusing in particular on Japanese discourses. Therefore, the study of genre in Japanese language using the concept of SFL as a framework is now a well-established field of research (Thomson, de Silva Joyce, & Sano, 2017 ). However, EFL research on writing using the concept of SFL in the classroom context in Japan has not yet been fully established. The concept of SFL has recently been appreciated in EFL-based countries, and its theory and practicums have been integrated into English classes. Tatsuki ( 2006 ) analyzed the relationship between generic structures and lexicogrammatical features, and introduced the concept of SFL theory and practical application using genre texts with real situations.

Cornelius and Cotsworth ( 2015 ) clearly explained possibilities for applying SFL-GBA teaching in classroom learning contexts. Novice writers may find the conventionalities of EFL academic writing problematic, especially for lower English proficiency learners in the EFL classroom contexts of Japanese universities (Cornelius & Cotsworth, 2015 ). Cornelius and Cotsworth found that the Australian School of Genre approach (i.e., the TLC) can be an alternative solution that allows EFL learners to understand how the text is composed using a holistic approach and also allows EFL teachers to teach by explaining the target genre texts’ purpose, generic structures, and linguistic markers. Moreover, through this GBA of learning, learners have the responsibility for the output and their interaction (Cornelius & Cotsworth, 2015 ). During EFL learning in Japan, many learners might think that the grammar function, vocabulary, and meaning of a genre are separate aspects; however, the core concept of SFL and GBA is that “grammar and vocabulary are related to the meaning of the genre and not viewed as separate aspects” (Cornelius & Cotsworth, 2015 , p. 19). It is important for EFL learners to become familiar with the text’s purpose, structure, and language features by engaging in tasks with sample texts that allow them to recognize the particular genre (Cornelius & Cotsworth, 2015 ). The GBA method of learning writing benefits novice EFL learners in Japan by ensuring the above (Cornelius & Cotsworth, 2015 ). In addition, EFL learners need to be aware of the different social contexts when they engage in writing; however, it can be challenging for EFL learners to understand these differences (Badger & White, 2000 ), as they affect the choice of appropriate lexicogrammar and generic structure that are suited to the social context. For example, writing factual description texts and writing option essays use different lexicogrammatical features such as modalities. Learning to write using the GBA can solve the above issue.

Watanabe ( 2016 ) analyzed 50 writing tasks given in university entrance examinations in Japan. Learning of English in junior and senior high schools in Japan is highly entrance-examination driven; in other words, learners at high schools are familiar with how to write these particular genre texts through classroom lessons, although they do not have sufficient exposure to other genres. Thirty EFL learners in Japan, who were in two different proficiency groups, participated in the GBA with the SFL framework; these learners’ understanding of tone, register, and audience awareness were improved in the post-writing task (Yasuda, 2012 ).

Yasuda ( 2015 ) used SFL as the research framework to investigate the changes in EFL learners’ generic and language features. This author identified changes in learners’ understanding of interpersonal and textual meanings through SFL-informed genre analysis tasks. Yasuda ( 2015 ) concluded that genre-specific language learning with an SFL framework can enhance writers’ awareness of ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings in summary writing. One limitation of Yasuda’s ( 2015 ) study, however, was the focus on learners with different English proficiency levels. Therefore, this study attempts to examine two groups: learners with higher and lower English proficiency.

Contribution of this study

The efficacy of the approach of genre-based pedagogy (GBP) in teaching EFL academic writing and in learners’ learning of specific genres has not been well discussed in theoretical and anecdotal research. Few empirical studies have been conducted to assess whether the GBP approach benefits learners in their learning of a target genre. The use of the GBA with the SFL framework is a relatively new method of teaching English language writing to undergraduate university students in Japan. Therefore, this study was conducted to answer the following research questions:

RQ 1 How does the learners’ awareness of the target genre text change in terms of their use of generic structures and appropriate lexicogrammatical choice in the General English for Academic Purposes writing class?

RQ 2 How do learners understand words that have interpersonal meanings, and how do they use modal auxiliaries in writing a discussion genre essay?

Participants

The study participants comprised 27 first-year university students who belonged to two different classrooms: 13 EFL learners (female: n  = 9, male: n  = 4) in the higher English proficiency class, which is equivalent to IELTS 5.5 (upper-intermediate level) and 14 learners (female: n  = 11, male: n  = 3) in the lower English proficiency group, which was equivalent to IELTS 4.0 (pre-intermediate level). The common academic goals in their discourse community were (1) to participate in studies abroad, a university requirement for graduation and (2) to improve their meaning-making lexicogrammatical choices when writing academic essays such as discussion genre essays. Their English proficiency and understanding of a variety of genre texts were very limited; most participants with lower English proficiency had difficulty comprehending academic writing papers with several paragraphs. All participants were informed of the research purpose and asked to fill in their informed consent form at an early stage in the semester, before they participated in this research. The research purpose and preservation of participant anonymity were explained to them whenever they participated in tasks.

The following theories were applied as the framework in a 15-week semester sequence of genre-based EFL instruction. The particular concept from Halliday and Matthiessen ( 2014 ) and Martin and Rose ( 2008 ) for theoretical framework has been applied in this reaching. The contents of tasks and activities include submaterials for each GBA lessons were applied from Carstens ( 2009 ), Chen and Su ( 2012 ), NSW Department of School Education ( 1989 ). Moreover, Feez’s ( 2002 ) TLC was also applied three times during the 15-week lesson. The target genre text for the first cycle within 4 weeks was an “exposition (hortatory) genre text,” that for the second cycle was an “exposition (analytical) genre text,” and the third target genre was a “discussion genre text” during the last cycle. The fundamental lesson procedure for the TLC was as follows: (1) modeling and deconstructing a text, (2) writing the target text, (3) analyzing the genres of peers’ essays, and (4) writing the analysis reflection sheet.

In stage (1), learners had an opportunity to analyze the structure and language features of the modeling text. After decoding the model text, learners were asked to find a text similar to the target genre text online and then analyze it. That is, the learners were provided a great deal of input and time to expose themselves to the target genre in order to allow them to see how the purpose of the genre text is conveyed through the text organization and language features (Cornelius & Cotsworth, 2015 ; Hammond et al., 1992 ).

In stage (2), learners completed a timed writing exercise within 50 to 60 min. In stage (3), they analyzed the target genre essay’s generic structure and language features using peers’ essays; questions for the analysis were taken from Shi ( 2015 ). First, a move analysis was conducted for the first, second, and third paragraphs of the discussion type essay to assess learners’ understanding of the generic structure (see Fig.  1 ). Second, learners identified the frequency of the use of personal nouns and action verbs to assess the writers’ appropriate lexicogrammatical field choices. They then analyzed the frequency of word modalities, such as modal verbs and adverbs, to evaluate the appropriate tenor choices. Next, the frequency of word construct conjunctions, that is, appropriate mode choices, was assessed. The final task was to reflect on the learners’ genre analysis results.

An example of a learner’s discussion genre text with genre analysis from the lower English proficiency group during stage (3) of the TLC

Data sources

In phase 1, to elicit in-depth qualitative insights to answer RQ 1, 21 learners conducted genre analysis reflection of written texts (higher-level: n  = 9, lower-level: n  = 12). Six students did not complete this task, as they were absent. In stage (4) of Feez’s ( 2002 ) TLC, immediately after the learners completed the segment analysis of their peers’ essays, they completed the reflection writing task using the analysis reflecting sheet, which took approximately 40 min; this was conducted at the end of the semester. Learners were given open-ended reflection questions on which they needed to reflect based on their understanding of the target genre text. The questions were based on Nagao ( 2017 ), Shi ( 2015 , p. 263), and Yasuda ( 2015 ). The questions for the analysis sheets are follows: Q1: Please summarize the features that provided new information and knowledge through this genre analysis of a peer’s discussion essay and Q2 : Please summarize the result of the genre analysis. Discuss why the results were different from yours.

In Phase 2, discussion type essays that learners produced at the beginning and end of the semester as a non-instructional and instructional writing task, respectively, were explored in order to answer RQ 2: How do learners understand words that have interpersonal meanings, and how do they use modal auxiliaries in writing a discussion genre essay? The writing topics were “Does the individual have the right to privacy?” for the pre-writing task and “Should academic achievement be a primary consideration for college admission?” for the post-writing task. Twenty-one learners participated in these tasks (higher-level: n = 9, lower-level: n = 12).

The attribution discussion genre essay was adopted from the NSW Department of School Education’s ( 1989 ) Metropolitan East Disadvantaged Schools Program and Srinon ( 2011 ). The function of the discussion genre essay is for writers to present information and explain arguments from both sides (for and against; pros and cons) of the topic and issue. Based on these evidential explanations, writers introduced their own opinions and recommendations in the final paragraph. During the post-instructional writing task, learners had the opportunity to consider who could be an appropriate audience for the target genre texts. The generic (schematic) structure of the discussion genre essay comprises four paragraphs: introduce the topic and issue, write arguments for (or against), write arguments against (or for), and write recommendations and the writer’s opinion. The language features of the discussion genre essay are: some vocabulary items embedded in the (1) ideational meaning (Field) such as human and non-human participants and mental and action verbs, (2) interpersonal meaning (Tenor) such as modal verbs and adverbs, and (3) textual meaning (Mode) such as construct conjunctions.

Phase 1—12 criteria from Burns, Joyce, and Gollin ( 1996 ) were applied to assess the self-reflection content written to explore how learners used generic structure and lexicogrammar in their essays (see Table  2 ). All 318 sentences (higher-level: n  = 172, lower-level: n  = 146) of the learners’ self-reflection written texts were coded with the 12 criteria.

Phase 2—Pre- and post-timed writing: This study focuses on modal-makers based on the SFL framework (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014 ), which is classified into two different types: modality-type and modal semantics. The modality type is categorized into verbal modality and nonverbal modality. In verbal modality, modal auxiliaries such as can, may, and could , semi-modal verbs such as have to and ought to , and lexical verbs such as allow and oblige are listed. This study analyzes the frequency of modal auxiliaries. According to Halliday and Matthiessen ( 2014 ) and Halliday and Hasan ( 1989 ), modal verbs have different degrees of certainty, probability, or obligation, and choosing appropriate modal verbs is essential to realizing the interpersonal functions and expressing the social roles of writers and readers. Moreover, writers and speakers use these modal verbs to reflect their attitudes such as judgment (e.g., You must know a lot of things now. ) and possibilities (e.g., I can participate in the meeting tomorrow .) toward a situation or event, which are called values. These values are classified as high, median, and low (Table  3 ). For example, one hypothesis is that a large number of modal auxiliaries with high values— must, should, ought to, need to, has to, or is to —will possibly appear in the final paragraph of the discussion genre text for writers to express their strong opinions. The other hypothesis is that the modal auxiliary, will , may appear in the introduction paragraph of the discussion genre essay. EFL learners from the 15-week lesson used in this research were taught the different value degrees of modal verbs (see Table 3 ) during stage (1) of the TLC for modeling and deconstructing a text. First, the results of the statistical description were analyzed using the UAM corpus tool, which facilitates linguistic annotation of text corpora. Second, the frequencies of modal auxiliaries such as can, may, and could were identified for each paragraph of the learners’ pre- and post-writing essays (Shi, 2015 ). Before writing the post-essay, learners were taught the precise classification of the values of modal auxiliaries. Dates for the collection of the essays (data) are provided in Table  4 .

Phase 1: genre analysis of peers’ reflection essay results

To answer RQ 1, the learners’ reflections on the results of the genre analysis, primarily regarding the generic structure and language features of their peers’ essays were explored. From the reflection analysis sheets, 172 sentences from the higher English proficiency group and 146 sentences from the lower English proficiency group were analyzed. The results of phase 1 are illustrated in Table  5 . As for the result of the generic structure, more learners in the higher English proficiency group than in the lower English proficiency group tended to present data analysis and discussion about their outcomes (higher-level: n  = 70, lower-level: n  = 44). Similar results were observed for the reflection on genre purpose (higher-level: n  = 8, lower-level: n  = 3). For instance, for the generic structure analysis such as move analysis of the first paragraph for the discussion genre, one learner stated the following:

My partner’s structure in the introduction part was in this order: (1) describe the current situation, (2) introduce the essay topic, (3) explain the background issue of the topic, and then finally (4) provide some explanation that played a bridge function for readers to understand what the second and third paragraphs would explain. On the other hand, the first paragraph of the introduction part of my essay had the following structure: (1) describe the background information, (2) describe the current situation, (3) introduce the essay topic, and (4) provide some statistical data. Overall, through this move analysis of the first paragraph, I realized that the last sentence of the paragraph with the bridge function made it easier for me to understand the essay. (extracted from the reflection sheet of Student no. 6 from the higher English proficiency group)

In terms of the generic structure analysis, some learners analyzed the second, third, and final paragraphs. An example is given as follows:

In my partner’s essay, the content of the second, third, and concluding paragraphs was in the order of (1) argument against, (2) argument for, and (3) argument against. I wrote the same pattern. This pattern is good for readers because readers can compare the arguments given in the second and third paragraphs and then read the content of the final paragraph; in this case, the “argument against” is emphasized. So, I think this pattern of writing can be effective for readers to remember what the writer wanted to say. (extracted from the reflection sheet from Student no. 2 in the lower English proficiency group)

Regarding the results of the lexicogrammatical features for making appropriate ideational meaning (Field), a few learners in the higher English proficiency group analyzed the use of personal pronouns, while learners in the lower English proficiency group did not mention the process (verbs). Vocabulary items related to interpersonal meaning were analyzed by a large number of learners in both the higher- and lower-level groups. Learners clearly showed understanding of how to write modalities such as will , can , should , and need to , as well as how to write adverbs such as typically , absolutely , and definitely in their reflection analysis sheets (higher-level: n  = 50, lower-level: n  = 46). Appropriate lexicogrammatical features of textual meaning, especially the use of “construct conjunctions” and “signposts,” received attention from EFL learners in the lower English proficiency group (higher-level: n  = 14, lower-level: n  = 30). For example, Student no. 9 in the lower English proficiency group wrote in an analysis comment, “I think that these signposts, such as In fac t and Besides , are persuasive for readers.”

Phase 2 : pre non-instructional timed writing and post instructional timed writing tasks

In phase 1, in both the higher and lower English proficiency groups, the data analysis result suggests that many learners illustrated their understanding in their reflection sheets of how to use vocabulary items related to the interpersonal meaning of the target text, especially the use of modal verbs, will , can , should , and need to . In phase 2, the answer to RQ 2 was explored.

In this phase, pre-instructed essays and post-instructed essays were analyzed. The total number of words in the text was counted (higher-level: n  = 1433, lower-level: n  = 1017), the total number of sentences (higher-level: n  = 105, lower-level: n  = 88), and the frequency of the nine modal auxiliaries in each paragraph of learners’ pre- and post-discussion genre texts (see Table  6 ).

The results show that the frequency of the modal auxiliary, shall , did not change from the pre-writing texts to post-writing texts in either the higher- or lower-level groups. That is to say, no learner used the word shall in either their pre- or post-writing essays. The frequency of the use of must was 2 in the pre-writing texts and 0 in the post-writing texts. The results of these modal auxiliaries, can , will , and should , showed a significant change from pre- to post-writing. The total frequency (both classes) of can in the first and second paragraphs was large in the pre-writing texts, and most appearances of can were in the second and third paragraphs of the post-writing texts. The results show that the frequency of the modal auxiliary will changed dramatically between the pre- and post-writing texts. The frequency was 1 in the first paragraph in the pre-writing texts, but 9 for the post-writing texts in total. A similar change was found in the second paragraph. Finally, the frequency of the modal auxiliary should also changed dramatically, especially in the final paragraph; in the final paragraphs, the frequency was 12 for the post-writing texts but only 3 for the pre-writing texts, and even then, it was only found among higher proficiency learners. No learners in the lower level wrote should in the pre-writing; its use frequency was 1 in the first paragraph, 3 in the second paragraph, 1 in the third paragraph, and 8 in the final paragraph in post-writing texts. To sum up, the post-test results for lower-proficiency learners showed a dramatic increase in the use of the words should and will , which did not appear at all in their pre-writing texts; will was used frequently in the first paragraph of the post-tests, which denotes intention, while should appeared often in the final paragraph.

To sum up the frequency of the modal verb will in pre-writing tasks, the result shows that n  = 1 in the first paragraph, n  = 2 in the second paragraph, and n = 1 in the conclusion of essays from the higher-level group; will was not used in any essay from the lower English proficiency group.

Learners in the higher-level group wrote sentences including the modal verb will in their pre-writing texts. The following is an example from the second paragraph: “[s] ome people think they have the right to privacy because they have to be protected by it. If someone uses their information for crime, their privacy will disappear” (extracted from Student no. 1). The use of will in the above sentence can be interpreted as indicating probability. Student No. 6 writes as follows in the first paragraph: “If it had not been for individual privacy many people can know our privacy and it will cause problems”; this use of will reflects the writer’s opinion of probability. Finally, the first paragraph of Student no. 8 states, “[t] his essay will discuss both views.” This will can be interpreted as an obligation; the writer is supposed to introduce both views on the topic in the discussion genre essay.

Learners in the higher-level group wrote sentences including the modal verb will in their post-writing texts ( n  = 4 in the first paragraph, n = 4 in the second paragraph, n = 2 in the third paragraph, and n  = 6 in the final paragraph). The common feature of the use of will in the first paragraph is that the writers used it to denote “obligation,” which was the same result as in the pre-writing texts. In paragraph 2 of the post-writing texts, will appeared with the meanings of probability (n = 2) and obligation (n = 1). For example, Student no. 4 stated the following: “According to [newspaper’s name] (2013), they decided that the National Center Test for University Admissions will be banned in the next few years and the new system will be adopted.” This meaning of will possibly has a different meaning. Will denoting probability also appeared in both the third (n = 2) and fourth paragraphs ( n  = 5).

The total frequency of can in the first and second paragraphs was large in the pre-writing texts (first paragraph: n  = 13, second paragraph: n  = 17), while most appearances of can were in the second and third paragraphs in the post-writing texts. The frequency of must was n = 2 in the pre-writing texts but n  = 0 in the post-writing texts, and only among the lower English proficiency group.

Most EFL learners in Japan are told to memorize the literal meanings of vocabulary items without being taught their functional meanings. Thus, many English learners are taught that the word can denotes possibility, and to memorize the phrase be able to as it has the same meaning as can ; this can be a typical way to teach. However, teaching writing based on SFL-GBA can provide EFL learners with the opportunity to learn that the word can has the meaning of possibility and also has a degree of value. Thus, when the writer wants to express and control his or her opinions or judgments, s/he can use the word can appropriately to create meaning between the writer and readers without making the first person I explicit (Halliday, 2001 ). The word must carries the highest probability among other modal verbs, as identified by Halliday ( 1985 ). Wang ( 2014 ) interpreted that the modal verb will shows the willingness of the writers and is also subjective and implicit.

In phase 1, in-depth, qualitative reflection sheets for genre analysis of peers’ essays were used to analyze the students’ meaning-making choices, demonstrating how much they understood the target genre text. In terms of understanding the generic structure and genre purpose, more learners with higher, rather than lower, English proficiency tended to show better understanding.

Regarding understanding of the lexicogrammar, lower English proficiency learners showed improvement in understanding some vocabulary items related to interpersonal meaning (Table 5 ; higher level group = 29%, lower-level group = 31%). Improvement in the understanding of modal auxiliaries (interpersonal meaning) in the target genre to examine their improvement of awareness was the focus. Interpersonal meanings are expressed by modality (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014 ), and there are links between the language systems and vocabulary choices made by the writer (Eggins, 2004 ). Choosing an appropriate modal auxiliary in discussion genre texts is related to writers’ level of familiarity with their audience and their attitudes and judgments (Eggins, 2004 ). These features were found in the learners’ reflection sheets. According to Student no. 9 of the higher-level group:

The genre analysis comparison data showed that, in my partner’s essay, her opinion was against the topic and there was little supporting evidence. Therefore, it was hard for me to understand her (as the writer) opinion. My suggestion is to add some auxiliary verbs such as “can, must, should” in this final paragraph in order to show her strong opinion so that I (as the reader) can understand her opinion clearly.

Finally, in phase 2, to examine learners’ proficiency improvement, frequency analysis of the modal auxiliaries in the pre- and post-genre essays was conducted. The results showed that the frequency of the modal auxiliaries can , will , and should changed significantly from pre- to post-writing. The modal verb will is explained as being closely related to the human activity of communication; in particular, will can denote “probability, usuality, obligation, or inclination” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014 , p. 186, p. 691). Moreover, the results imply that use of this verb was associated with different meanings. However, it could not be confirmed whether learners used these different meanings of will intentionally.

The total frequency (for both classes) of can in the first and second paragraphs was large in the pre-writing texts, while most appearances of can occurred in the second and third paragraphs in the post-writing texts.

The most remarkable result was the frequency of the modal auxiliary should , particularly in the final paragraph of the lower English proficiency group. In the conclusion paragraph of the discussion genre text, no EFL writer in the lower English proficiency group chose to write should in the pre-writing task; however, should appeared several times in the post-writing texts ( n  = 8).

In phase 1, between the higher and lower English proficiency groups, the data analysis result suggests that many of the learners illustrated their understanding in their reflection sheets of how to use vocabulary items related to the interpersonal meaning of the target text, particularly the use of the modal verbs will , can , should , and need .

The results in phase 2 show that the frequency of use of the modal auxiliary shall in both classes did not change from the pre-writing to post-writing texts; none of the learners wrote the word in either their pre- or post-writing essays. This may be because they did not need to use it or they did not know how to use it, even though they had previously been taught its meaning.

Although no learner in either group used must in the post-writing, must includes a variety of meanings: It reflects the writer’s certainty and can denote always, required, or determined. One interpretation of the fact that must , which has a high value, was used less often is that the writer’s purpose was possibly not to show the degeneration of the writer’s status and power or the writer’s uncertainty; rather, the writer may have tried to present their demands and take responsibility (Wang, 2014 ). This can be considered the learners’ understanding of the purpose of the “discussion genre essay,” which is to present different points of view (especially from both sides: pros and cons and advantages and disadvantages) in order to make an informed decision.

Improving their L2 writing skills can be challenging for EFL learners, because, first, they tend to have difficulties generalizing and organizing ideas using appropriate lexicogrammatical functions and, second, they tend to have little ability to implement such choices into intelligible text (Rajagopalan & Jie, 2016 ).

One limitation of this study is the small number of participants; therefore, these results are merely tendencies, and it cannot be concluded that all EFL lower English proficiency learners improved their understanding of generic structure and lexicogrammatical features. However, the SFL-GBA method allowed EFL learners to increase their awareness of text-type in terms of language and text features. This understanding may link with the aspect of how to turn ideas into intelligible text (the discussion genre text). Similarly, the other limitation of this research is that it was not possible to provide a deterministic evaluation of how much the learners precisely understood the different degrees of modal verbs’ values and managed to reflect their interpersonal meaning when they chose to use these modal verbs in the post-writing tasks. To solve the above issue, follow-up interviews with the target learners will be necessary in future research.

This study has investigated the changes in Japanese EFL learners’ awareness of language features and generic structures of “discussion genre texts” through the genre-based approach to text-based writing lessons during a 15-week course. This paper has described an SFL activity-based GBA for teaching writing to EFL learners with higher and lower English proficiencies. It found that the GBA paired with a sequenced and well-structured teaching methodology can be an effective teaching methodology in writing lessons. This approach included macro and micro scaffolding to assist learners to organize their writing and understand the nature of the target text in the classroom learning context. The results suggested that teaching EFL learners to write by developing their rhetorical awareness was a challenge in this particular classroom setting.

Abbreviations

English as a Foreign/ Second Language

English as a Second Language

English for Speakers of Other Languages

English for specific purposes

Genre-based approach

Systematic functional linguistics

Teaching-learning cycle

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Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge Dr. Peter Mickan (The University of Adelaide). His thoughtful comments and feedback on SFL GBA lesson plans significantly improved the manuscript.

I would like to thank reviewers and editors for their valuable feedback.

This research was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) Grant Number JP16K16891 from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

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Nagao, A. The SFL genre-based approach to writing in EFL contexts. Asian. J. Second. Foreign. Lang. Educ. 4 , 6 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-019-0069-3

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What I’ve Learned From My Students’ College Essays

The genre is often maligned for being formulaic and melodramatic, but it’s more important than you think.

By Nell Freudenberger

Most high school seniors approach the college essay with dread. Either their upbringing hasn’t supplied them with several hundred words of adversity, or worse, they’re afraid that packaging the genuine trauma they’ve experienced is the only way to secure their future. The college counselor at the Brooklyn high school where I’m a writing tutor advises against trauma porn. “Keep it brief , ” she says, “and show how you rose above it.”

I started volunteering in New York City schools in my 20s, before I had kids of my own. At the time, I liked hanging out with teenagers, whom I sometimes had more interesting conversations with than I did my peers. Often I worked with students who spoke English as a second language or who used slang in their writing, and at first I was hung up on grammar. Should I correct any deviation from “standard English” to appeal to some Wizard of Oz behind the curtains of a college admissions office? Or should I encourage students to write the way they speak, in pursuit of an authentic voice, that most elusive of literary qualities?

In fact, I was missing the point. One of many lessons the students have taught me is to let the story dictate the voice of the essay. A few years ago, I worked with a boy who claimed to have nothing to write about. His life had been ordinary, he said; nothing had happened to him. I asked if he wanted to try writing about a family member, his favorite school subject, a summer job? He glanced at his phone, his posture and expression suggesting that he’d rather be anywhere but in front of a computer with me. “Hobbies?” I suggested, without much hope. He gave me a shy glance. “I like to box,” he said.

I’ve had this experience with reluctant writers again and again — when a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously. Of course the primary goal of a college essay is to help its author get an education that leads to a career. Changes in testing policies and financial aid have made applying to college more confusing than ever, but essays have remained basically the same. I would argue that they’re much more than an onerous task or rote exercise, and that unlike standardized tests they are infinitely variable and sometimes beautiful. College essays also provide an opportunity to learn precision, clarity and the process of working toward the truth through multiple revisions.

When a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously.

Even if writing doesn’t end up being fundamental to their future professions, students learn to choose language carefully and to be suspicious of the first words that come to mind. Especially now, as college students shoulder so much of the country’s ethical responsibility for war with their protest movement, essay writing teaches prospective students an increasingly urgent lesson: that choosing their own words over ready-made phrases is the only reliable way to ensure they’re thinking for themselves.

Teenagers are ideal writers for several reasons. They’re usually free of preconceptions about writing, and they tend not to use self-consciously ‘‘literary’’ language. They’re allergic to hypocrisy and are generally unfiltered: They overshare, ask personal questions and call you out for microaggressions as well as less egregious (but still mortifying) verbal errors, such as referring to weed as ‘‘pot.’’ Most important, they have yet to put down their best stories in a finished form.

I can imagine an essay taking a risk and distinguishing itself formally — a poem or a one-act play — but most kids use a more straightforward model: a hook followed by a narrative built around “small moments” that lead to a concluding lesson or aspiration for the future. I never get tired of working with students on these essays because each one is different, and the short, rigid form sometimes makes an emotional story even more powerful. Before I read Javier Zamora’s wrenching “Solito,” I worked with a student who had been transported by a coyote into the U.S. and was reunited with his mother in the parking lot of a big-box store. I don’t remember whether this essay focused on specific skills or coping mechanisms that he gained from his ordeal. I remember only the bliss of the parent-and-child reunion in that uninspiring setting. If I were making a case to an admissions officer, I would suggest that simply being able to convey that experience demonstrates the kind of resilience that any college should admire.

The essays that have stayed with me over the years don’t follow a pattern. There are some narratives on very predictable topics — living up to the expectations of immigrant parents, or suffering from depression in 2020 — that are moving because of the attention with which the student describes the experience. One girl determined to become an engineer while watching her father build furniture from scraps after work; a boy, grieving for his mother during lockdown, began taking pictures of the sky.

If, as Lorrie Moore said, “a short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage,” what is a college essay? Every once in a while I sit down next to a student and start reading, and I have to suppress my excitement, because there on the Google Doc in front of me is a real writer’s voice. One of the first students I ever worked with wrote about falling in love with another girl in dance class, the absolute magic of watching her move and the terror in the conflict between her feelings and the instruction of her religious middle school. She made me think that college essays are less like love than limerence: one-sided, obsessive, idiosyncratic but profound, the first draft of the most personal story their writers will ever tell.

Nell Freudenberger’s novel “The Limits” was published by Knopf last month. She volunteers through the PEN America Writers in the Schools program.

Defining Modern Programming: Core Concepts and Evolutions in Software Development

This essay about modern programming explores core concepts and the evolution within the field. It discusses how programming has transitioned from basic commands to complex systems that manage abstraction, modularity, efficiency, maintainability, interoperability, and scalability. Highlighted are modern methodologies like Agile and DevOps, as well as the integration of AI and machine learning, showing how these developments enhance software capabilities and adapt to technological advancements and societal needs.

How it works

Programming, at its essence, is the art and science of instructing computers to perform tasks. Over the decades, it has evolved from basic binary code to sophisticated languages that abstract complex operations into simpler, more human-readable forms. This transformation has been driven by advances in technology, shifts in methodology, and changes in the demands placed on software. Today’s modern programming landscape is characterized by several core concepts and continuous evolutions that define and shape software development.

Abstraction is a fundamental concept in modern programming.

It allows programmers to handle complexity by hiding the intricate details of certain operations behind simpler interfaces. For example, object-oriented programming (OOP) languages like Java and Python allow developers to use objects to represent and manipulate real-world entities without exposing the inner workings of their implementations. This not only makes the code more manageable but also enhances its reusability and scalability.

Modularity is another crucial concept. It involves decomposing a program into smaller, independent pieces that can be developed, tested, and maintained separately. This not only aids in abstraction but also facilitates collaborative development practices as different modules can be worked on by different teams simultaneously. Modern development environments support modularity through various features like packages, modules, and namespaces, which help in organizing code logically and preventing conflicts.

Efficiency remains a priority in programming, where the goal is to optimize performance and resource utilization. This has become especially important as applications have grown in size and complexity. Modern programming languages and compilers come equipped with sophisticated algorithms to optimize code during compilation and execution. Moreover, with the rise of cloud computing and the proliferation of mobile devices, efficiency in terms of power consumption and minimal memory usage has become as critical as speed of execution.

Maintainability is a core aspect of modern software development, reflecting the need for software to evolve over time due to changes in user requirements, technology, and the operating environment. High maintainability is achieved through readable code, comprehensive documentation, and adherence to coding standards that promote consistency. Languages that support clear syntax and offer powerful debugging tools, like Python and JavaScript, help sustain maintainability standards.

Interoperability refers to the ability of software systems to communicate and operate with other systems. In a world where different technologies often coexist and need to interact within the same ecosystem, interoperability is vital. Modern programming approaches and standards, including APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and protocols like REST and SOAP, are designed to ensure that software components can interact seamlessly, regardless of the languages or platforms used to create them.

Scalability is the capability of a system to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources to the system. In programming, scalability must be considered from the start of the design phase. Modern cloud-native applications, for example, are built to scale horizontally (by adding more machines) or vertically (by adding resources to the same machine) based on demand, thus ensuring that the application can grow with user needs.

The evolution of programming is not just limited to concepts but also includes methodologies like Agile and DevOps. Agile methodologies focus on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams. DevOps, on the other hand, emphasizes collaboration between software developers and IT professionals to automate the process of software delivery and infrastructure changes. These methodologies have significantly improved the speed and quality of software development.

Furthermore, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in programming has introduced a new paradigm where programs can learn from data, identify patterns, and make decisions with minimal human intervention. Languages like Python have become popular largely due to their robust ecosystems of libraries and frameworks that simplify AI and ML development.

In conclusion, modern programming is characterized by a range of evolving concepts and methodologies that cater to the dynamic needs of technology and society. From abstraction and modularity to the latest trends in AI, the landscape of programming continues to evolve, pushing the boundaries of what can be created with code. As these trends progress, they not only redefine the tools and techniques used by developers but also enhance the ways in which software integrates into our daily lives and drives innovation across industries.

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