Using student evaluations of the prototypicality of genre instances to elicit reflections about the nature of genres

Brantley, Kate

Document type :

Autre communication scientifique (congrès sans actes - poster - séminaire...): Communication dans un congrès avec actes

Title :

Using student evaluations of the prototypicality of genre instances to elicit reflections about the nature of genres

Author(s) :

Brantley, Kate [Auteur]
Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163 [STL]
Université de Lille

Conference title :

Journée d'Études- Les genres en anglais de spécialité : définitions, méthodologies d’analyse et retombées pédagogique

Conference organizers(s) :

Université de Paris 8

City :

Paris

Country :

France

Start date of the conference :

2020-07-02

English keyword(s) :

Prototypicality
Textual genre
LANSOD
Corpus & language didactics
English for specific purpose

English abstract : [en]

The concept of textual genre is a valuable yet complex tool for helping students prepare to work in specialized contexts. One particularly challenging issue for those dealing with genre theory lies in determining which ...
Show more >The concept of textual genre is a valuable yet complex tool for helping students prepare to work in specialized contexts. One particularly challenging issue for those dealing with genre theory lies in determining which texts may be considered members of a given genre. Swales suggests that there are two ways of viewing this question: the definitional approach and the family resemblance approach (1990: 49). In this presentation, we will explore the advantages of adopting the family resemblance approach, by which texts are evaluated in terms of prototypicality. This perspective allows us to take into consideration the fact that individual genre instances may not contain all of the linguistic, organizational and rhetorical patterns which may be visible across a corpus of texts of a given genre. Because this perspective is based on “how the world sees particular instances of a genre” (Paltridge, 1997: 55), understanding students’ own perceptions of genre prototypicality may help support effective genre pedagogy. For this study second-year undergraduate students in culture and media at the University of Lille were asked whether or not they thought each text studied in class represented a prototypical example of a given genre and why. During this talk, we will present the answers provided by these students, showing that the students’ classifications of text prototypicality, along with the criteria that they relied on to make these determinations, provided valuable insight into our students’ own views of genre membership. We will suggest, then, that inviting students to make determinations about genre prototypicality is one way of both taking into account variability within instances of genre and prompting reflections among students about the nature of different genres. Paltridge, B. (1997). Genre, frames and writing in research settings. Amsterdam: Johns Benjamins. Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings.Show less >

Language :

Anglais

Peer reviewed article :

Oui

Audience :

Internationale

Popular science :

Non

Collections :

Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163

Source :

Harvested from HAL

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