Post 3: Genre Based Teaching

Brief Summary

I am going to examine genre through the lens of a teacher, me, who teaches with a genre based syllabus. I will first explain the definition of genre that I will be using, which is a combination of linguistic and rhetorical definitions. I will then explain the syllabus I teach with and then examine a specific assignment that ESL (English as a Second Language) students struggle with, which is known as the Rhetorical Analysis of News. 

Linguistic and Rhetorical Definition of Genre

In linguistics, genres are features of texts that are pervasive throughout many similar texts, such as ‘once upon a time’ in fairy tales, or ‘sincerely yours’ in letters. Many of these features occur only once in the linguistic definition of genre, but automatically trigger background knowledge in the audience when present. Below I have a table that explains the linguistic interpretation of genre based upon the book Register, Genre, and Style (Biber & Conrad, 2009).

Type of Analysis	Genre
Textual focus	Whole text
Linguistic characteristics	Conventions; e.g. what determines this is a newspaper article vs a letter
Distribution of linguistic characteristics	Single indicator/markers that mark that genre (presence/absence) e.g. one newspaper headline; ‘yours truly’ in letters;’ this research demonstrates’ in academic papers
Interpretation	We can identify members of a genre through these shared features, even when some features are absent.

Bazerman (2002) has a similar definition in the field of rhetoric, which will be worked into my discussion, where he describes genre as socially situated “structure and orderliness” (p. 20). Thus, genre, in my use, is the specific features in and around reading and/ or writing a text that signals context and background knowledge from an audience. 

Description of My Teaching Context

I work at something called an IEP, or Intensive English Program. To be an IEP, a program must have students in English study for a minimum of 18 hours of classroom contact per week. IEPs are common at universities for students who do not test well enough in their English skills to attend the university. Students test into various levels in an IEP, and progress through them. Once they have completed their intensive English study, they are often given an exit test, and if they pass, they can begin to take regular university course work. IEPs add anywhere from 1 semester to 3 years to a student’s time in university, depending on their English level. 

To describe the specifics of my own IEP, I will give a brief description of my employer; the PIE at NAU. The Program in Intensive English (the PIE), is Northern Arizona University’s IEP with the letters switched around a little bit. The idea was that students are learning English a slice of pie at a time, but the essential meaning of IEP is the same. 

In my IEP, there are 6 levels of English EAP courses for students to enroll in before attending university. Students test into a particular level, which can be seen in table 1 below, and progress through the IEP one level at a time after the initial placement test. The students take various exams to move through the IEP and must pass all IEP courses with a grade of 70% or higher to move to the next level. The TOEFL and IELTS are international English language tests that all students take before studying at English speaking universities in the U.K., the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, or other English speaking countries. 

Table 1 

Description of proficiency levels at the PIE (PIE, 2020)

Level 1Not currently offered	Beginner level students.
Level 2	Low intermediate level students; students are identified as having a 16-31 TOEFL score or a 2-4 IELTS band.
Level 3	Intermediate level students; students are identified as having a 32-44 TOEFL score or a 4-5 IELTS band.
Level 4	Upper intermediate level students; students are identified as having a 45-56 TOEFL score or a 5-5.5 IELTS band.
Level 5Students have the opportunity to take the university composition class and earn 4 units of university credit.	Lower advanced level students; students are identified as having a 57-69 TOEFL score or a 5.5-6 IELTS band.
Level 6Optional for students who qualify for university but feel as if they need more English practice.	Advanced level students; students are identified as having a 70+ TOEFL score or 6+ IELTS band.

I teach in level 5. Here, there are two writing courses; the IEP writing course or English 105 (my course). Taking English 105 costs an extra $4000 for that semester at the IEP, so students are typically wealthy. Additionally, students enrolled in English 105 can earn 4 units towards their degree at NAU through passing this course. In addition to teaching English 105, I teach another course titled Reader’s Workshop. Both courses are described below. 

Description of Class Contexts

To begin, I teach two classes in level 5, and am in the process of course revitalization for one class that I am teaching (see my blog 1 for more information). Thus, my students are upper-intermediate English learners. 

For one class, as mentioned above, I teach a first year composition writing course titled English 105: Critical Reading And Writing In The University Community at Northern Arizona University, which will be, and has been, referred to as English 105. I have taught this 15 week course for four semesters, and have spent the past two semesters teaching the course to English as a Second Language (ESL) students. Before this, I taught American students the same course as part of a Graduate Teaching Assistantship (GTA). 

Additionally, I teach a class titled “Reader’s Workshop” (RWS), which I am revitalizing with three other  people. The class is intended to support English 105 in the context of the IEP, where all students are ESL students. As English 105 is not designed for ESL students, RWS is intended to act as a support course. RWS is failing in this regard, but that is a topic for another time (like blog 1). 

This semester, my class size is 14 students. I teach two classes, each with the same 14 students, and feel blessed for the class size. My students are between 18 and 20 years old and are all from China. Some students completed time at the IEP in level 4, some students took level 5 last semester and are repeating after course failures, and some students have just moved from China. A few students are freshmen, but a majority are sophomores in college and completed college credits at home universities in China. They are in a 1+2+1 program where they spend their middle two years in the United States, and their freshman and senior college years in China. 

In English 105, I have a given syllabus with strict major assignments. I lesson plan and give out minor assignments, but each student taking English 105 does the same major writing assignments. For RWS, I have control over the syllabus and content. 

Where Genre Comes in

It is widely accepted in the NAU writing program that different disciplines require different types of writing, so English 105 has a genre-based syllabus that is intended to teach many genres of writing. As Kress mentions, my students must be active participants in genre (2003) to be successful, so this is built into my new syllabus. The syllabus is designed to help students learn a variety of genres and how to decode a variety of rules for their future writing in their discipline. The English 105 syllabus is also designed to have Reading-writing integration (you learn to read and write critically), which is even challenging for native-speaking students (NS), and is an area that requires extra efforts for non-native students (NNS) (Grabe & Zhang, 2013). 

For ESL students in English 105, they must learn the specific genres while learning how to write academically and while improving their English very quickly. The genres chosen are all rooted in American discourse and culture, so an added layer of assimilation is part of my English 105 course for ESL students.

In addition to the specifics of the genres in the English 105 course, first year writing courses at American universities in general are seen as different from other types of ESL writing (Grabe & Zhang, 2013), so students who have English as a second language often struggle in courses such as freshman composition. In the course at NAU, the struggle has become so stark and significant that many ESL support courses have been created both inside (RWS and free tutoring) and outside the IEP (English 100, English 107, and free tutoring). 

For ESL students, the genre-aspect of the syllabus leads them into a world in which they cannot navigate through hard work or intelligence.  As Kress states, “we need to understand that meaning is articulated in this way in a specific mode, and in this other way in another mode” (Kress, p. 39), which means that my students must begin to build a background knowledge that they do not have. They are at an inherent disadvantage simply because they are not American and lack this background knowledge of ways and modes where meaning is incorporated.

The Most Challenging Essay in My ESL Class

“But Ms. Clark, I just got here. I just learned the word ‘president’. I don’t understand the news and it is too hard for me. How can I write this paper?” – a student of mine this semester.

I have a challenging essay for my ESL students in this context; the dreaded rhetorical analysis. My English 105 course has 5 major essays, and the rhetorical analysis is the second major essay they write after about 4 weeks in my class. I have included the prompt here for those who are interested. 

This paper requires that students have several types of knowledge at the start of the paper, which I will list below from my own experience. Even though I am listing them, and you are welcome to read each item, part of this list is to show you the sheer monument of a task that this paper is for any student, but especially for ESL students. If you get the picture, feel free to scroll or read carefully.

Requirements of the RA for any student

The students must:

1. Have at least a basic understanding of the divides in American political culture, especially in respect to republicans and democrats.
2. Be able already to analyze and critically observe written phenomena.
3. Be able to read a newspaper or news article online, ignoring advertisements and other elements. 
4. Be able to recognize fake news.
5. Be aware of what is left unsaid in news articles through having read, heard about, or understood recent American culture.
6. Have at least a prior knowledge of U.S. history in the topic that they read about.
7. Be familiar with American search engines. 
8. Have at least an implicit knowledge of bias, and that writers have opinions that show in their writing.
9. Be familiar with quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing and how these are different from plagiarism.
10. Be familiar with connotations of certain words.
11. Be familiar with common slang likely to be understood by Americans.

When teaching the paper titled The Rhetorical Analysis of News to Americans, I had to teach:

1. Rhetorical terms like ethos, pathos, logos, fallacies, arrangement, tone, bias.
   1. Students were familiar with these concepts but had not heard the words. I would have 1-4 students in a class of 24 who had no background knowledge of these ideas and they would come into my office. 
2. MLA format and quote choice.
3. Thesis statement reminders.
4. How to identify fake news.
5. The difference between their opinion and analyzing the writing style. 
6. How to use BBLearn.
7. Editing and revising techniques. 

Extra Knowledge Required of my ESL Students

Now, when teaching the paper titled The Rhetorical Analysis of News, I teach the following in this order:  

1. How to use American search engines like Google.
2. How to use Microsoft Word and Google Documents.
3. How to attach a document to turn in work on BBLearn.
4. How to send an email on American email services. 
5. How to write paragraphs where one sentence connects to the other.
6. How to write an introduction with a hook and a thesis. 
7. How to write transition sentences.
8. How to create a paragraph structure that can be understood by American audiences (we use the Point, Example, Explanation, Analysis structure in the beginning).
9. How to find news articles.
10. What democrats and republicans are. 
11. The basics of the American political system and our divides, which color the news. 
12. Aspects of popular culture and knowledge that are important for understanding the news, such as what Twitter is.
13. That the news in the United States is biased, and what biased means. As Chinese students, they are taught that journalists are truth tellers who are fired or imprisoned for lying. It takes weeks for them to understand that American journalism has no such penalties. 
14. How to analyze. The students are strongly discouraged from using analysis or their own opinions while writing or speaking in school in China, and instead use the words of others to express thoughts. 
15.  The idea that people here loudly and openly disagree with government officials.

How I Teach My ESL Students

Then, I teach # 1-11 above, as they have no background knowledge or culturally situated knowledge of any of this information. Finally, I teach them what I typically teach American students. This is all taught while the students are learning English, and are nowhere close to the English levels required of this course (think it takes an hour and a half to write a paragraph about a time that they felt happy level). 

In addition to teaching these aspects of writing to ESL students, I also teach them to read critically. Stoller and Robinson (2018) advocate the importance of reading in teaching writing, especially in genre-based classrooms, and this is an idea that I have followed whole-heartedly. We spend time in my classroom reading together and learning to pick apart texts in the ways that American students (upper middle class and white usually) are trained. 

The difficulty that my students have is that they are learning a genre while also learning easily 15 other concepts, and it is so hard for them to keep track. To help my students, I utilize a word wall around my classroom (two full walls are covered in cork board), where I hang up important vocabulary with definitions or pictures. For example, I hung up the pictures below:

My students usually come quite far in the rhetorical analysis, and I create some buy-in by telling them that they should know the basics, at least, of any country that they’re living in. We talk about their visas, and how to keep track of news regarding information that impacts them. 

Also, we talk about racism, discrimination, title XI, and other challenges that international students are more prone to. These students, as mentioned in my blog 4, come from very different cultures where students have different rights. It is important to me that I can use the rhetorical analysis essay to help my students become aware of not only the news and genre, but how current events impact their daily lives, and how to navigate this new knowledge. 

References

British Council. (2020). IELTS Home. https://www.ielts.org/en-us. Accessed March 2, 2020. 

Center for English Language Learning. (2020). Best Practices for IEP. https://www.aieaworld.org/assets/docs/Conference_Materials/2018/session_materials/best%20practices%20in%20esl%20oversight%20.pdf. Accessed Feb. 16

English Testing Services. (2020). TOEFL Home. https://www.ets.org/toefl. Accessed March 2, 2020.

Grabe, B. & Zhang, C. (2013). Reading and Writing Together: A Critical Component of English for Academic Purposes Teaching and Learning. TESOL Journal. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/tesj.65?casa_token=jrZtjRQfXwMAAAAA%3AqKiTypyEXbM11c-Om8zjducL8gzjaAA5Ci0UEDpGfVnrk4Kuk1gdYUH0eaQZnegXPEEoqyT4kULOdb4. Accessed Feb. 16, 2020.

Northern Arizona University. (2020). Program in Intensive English. https://nau.edu/pie/

https://www.ets.org/toefl. Accessed Feb. 16, 2020.

Stoller, F. & Robinson, M. (2018). Innovative ESP Teaching Practices and Materials Development. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-70214-8_3. Accessed Feb. 16, 2020.