Teaching Genre: Acquisition or Awareness?

Conference: The Southeast Asian Conference on Education (SEACE2023)
Title: Teaching Genre: Acquisition or Awareness?
Stream: Teaching Experiences, Pedagogy, Practice & Praxis
Presentation Type: Poster Presentation
Authors:
James Emmet Owens, Kanda University of International Studies, Japan

Abstract:

A plethora of language teaching research and practice advise basing language courses on genre (e.g. Miller, 1984), with a view to how it can empower learners (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000) to function in society and especially the modern world. However, Johns (2008) makes a distinction between 'genre acquisition' (where the emphasis can be said to be on 'training') and 'genre awareness' (where the aim is instead more on genuine 'education'). The latter is seen as preferable as it helps to develop "the rhetorical flexibility necessary for ever-evolving contexts" rather than just the ability to “reproduce a text type, often from a template, that is organized or ‘staged’ in a predictable way." However, teaching students to actually become genre-aware is challenging. In this poster, I will describe one such attempt, describing the course, its goals, and an example activity. Some representative work and subsequent reflections from the students are shown to demonstrate the relative success this course/activity had in achieving 'genre awareness'. Hopefully, this presentation will provoke thought and discussion, and encouragement.

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