Challenges of Genre for EFL Teachers

Rhetoric Review is an academic interdisciplinary journal of rhetoric. The journal issues in all areas of rhetoric and writing, and delivers a professional debate for its readers to reflect and discuss the topics and issues. The journal issues texts that investigate the extent and complexity of the discipline. We can conclude from the information that Porter’s main audience were college students mainly in writing classes. Porter’s motive could be helping college students by claiming that once the author knows how to write for a particular audience, they will be more likely to become a successful writer. Porter talks about how students should learn to write for a discourse community instead of writing to

Charles Bazerman in his work Speech Acts, Genres, and Activity System: How Text Organize and People, explains that genre systems are, “text is embedded within structured social activities and depends on previous texts that influence the social activity and organization” (Bazerman

In his essay, “Navigating Genres”, Kerry Dirk describes rhetorical genres in funny layman’s terms which made me want to read more. Dirk states the obvious – that through everyday life, we are familiar with different rhetorical genres because we encounter and use them every day. We may not be conscious of it, but whenever we listen to a particular kind of song, or see a TV advertisement for a product we use, or hear a political commentator on the radio, we are being exposed to various rhetorical genres. When we see a horror flick, we are being exposed to another type. When we “post” on Facebook or Instagram, we are using a relatively new kind of genre which came about in response to the digital age.

The article “The Writing Revolution” by Peg Tyre is a piece which aims to address the problems in school systems often associated with the way in which writing is taught to students. Tyre’s article conveys the different arguments presented in the course of teaching writing to students, which have been shown to be on opposite sides of the creative and analytical spectrum. These different perspectives of how to build the foundation of writing for the children of America as well as other countries are backed similarly on both sides, though the debate still continues. “The Writing Revolution” instead of focusing on all aspects of writing, highlights the effectiveness of analytical fundamentals over that of creative writing in helping to

“Genres are types of texts that are recognizable to the reader and writers, and meet the needs of the rhetorical situation in which they function.”(Swales 467) I asked Hilgenbrink, What texts or books do police officers use every day? He said “I think the text or book that we use every day is the laws that we enforce.” This is pretty simple because the laws are stated in the state’s constitution which the police officers inforce. Genre is crucial to the development of a discourse

Teachers can not only choose texts suited to the events that occur in the students’ lives, but they can also choose texts suited to the students’ interests. According

I think it’s fair to assume that over the course of their career, a writer toggles through a number of different genres until they find their niche. In my opinion, I feel that the only way to differentiate what form of writing works over the other is to write different drafts of each genre. Oddly enough, through my past academic experiences I have written more work based on rhetorical analysis than literacy narrative. In fact, in high school most of my English courses were heavily based on rhetorical analyses. After my elementary school days, I found myself sparsely writing any literacy narratives. Yet, writing this essay became a tedious task even though my experience would suggest otherwise. I feel the most difficult part of this assignment

The article The Writing Revolution by Peg Tyre is a piece which aims to address the problems in school systems often associated with the way in which writing is taught to students. Tyre’s article conveys the different arguments presented in the course of teaching writing to students, which have shown to be on opposite sides of the creative and analytical spectrum. These different perspectives of how to build the foundation of writing for the children of America as well as other countries are backed similarly by many sides, though the debate still continues. The Writing Revolution instead of focusing on all aspects of writing, highlights the effectiveness of analytical fundamentals over that of creative writing in helping to revolutionize schools and school systems.

In my Rhetoric and Genre essay on, Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn I honestly tried my best to explain how the use of genre was ideal to explain Dunn’s rhetoric in the book. I started of by bringing out what I believe were the main points that Dunn wanted to get to his readers. This points being the importance of critical thinking, communication and language and what would happen if we lacked on each of them. When it came to writing on why I believed these points were best told in an epistolary genre was without a doubt a challenge for me. Not because I did not believe that this points were best brought up through this genre but because it was became very difficult for me to explain myself.

The author gave examples of teaching students about authors and books as they code switch. The author said that teachers help students’ understanding of character by teaching them to examine a text for how the author code-switch. Questions such as “How does the character’s language change throughout the text?” and “How does the author’s narrative writing or the character’s language vary by time, place and purpose? (96).

Secondly genre is the French word meaning type. Genres may be approached by way of various critical avenues. In the Aristotelian strain we recognize genres as kinds within a system of classification. These categories beg further definition, so there is a history of, on the one hand, the refinement of divisions and subdivisions, and on the other a Platonic search for the 'essential' qualities of tragedy, comedy, epic poetry, and so forth. By the recognition of genres we begin to find our way in the universe of verbal artifacts with their feigned discourses, and to train our expectations upon the experience that lies in wait for us.

I chose this genre because it gives you thoughts of the main character. It gives the reader the perspective of a character. The purpose of a journal entry is to give you look into a character's head, it helps readers understand the problems better. This is good because back then the times were very different, it can help you understand the troubles they went through everyday, and how life was. It helped the story overall because it helped start to open about some troubles starting to emerge, and it helped tell what the character wanted in the story as well. So the

2. What is the genre of this selection? • The genre of this story is a short story 3. What is the exposition of the story? • The exposition of this story is the celebration of the end of the war and the victory of winning.

Ultimately, the students succumb to the temptation of consulting the writer. Just as Adam and Eve were cursed by the fruit, so too are the pupils with the knowledge of how to exploit the superficiality of English. The ability to mask poor content and analysis by exploiting intricate language such as “melodic magnum opus” and

Genre is known to change discourse by the format the information is presented to the audience (Varela, 2008). It is also a category of composition that is characterized by a particular style, form or content as dictate by Webster Third Dictionary. However Trosborg (n.d) stated that for the past decade, genre identification, classification and description have been scholarly concern. Certain scholars dictate that genre is defined primarily around its basic external criteria such as journals and newspaper discourse while other scholars stand on the opinion that genre can be classify by its communicative purpose, linguistic content and form of role its play in the discourse made (Trosborg, n.d).