Building Genre Knowledge. Christine Tardy

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      Second Language Writing

      Series Editor, Paul Kei Matsuda

      Second language writing emerged in the late twentieth century as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry, and an increasing number of researchers from various related fields—including applied linguistics, communication, composition studies, and education—have come to identify themselves as second language writing specialists. The Second Language Writing series aims to facilitate the advancement of knowledge in the field of second language writing by publishing scholarly and research-based monographs and edited collections that provide significant new insights into central topics and issues in the field.

      Books in the Series

      The Politics of Second Language Writing: In Search of the Promised Land, edited by Paul Kei Matsuda, Christina Ortmeier-Hooper, and Xiaoye You (2006)

      Building Genre Knowledge, Christine M. Tardy (2009)

      Practicing Theory in Second Language Writing, edited by Tony Silva and Paul Kei Matsuda (2009)

      For my parents, Vicki and Dwight Tardy

      Building Genre Knowledge

      Christine M. Tardy

      Parlor Press

      West Lafayette, Indiana

      www.parlorpress.com

      Parlor Press LLC, West Lafayette, Indiana 47906

      © 2009 by Parlor Press

      All rights reserved.

      Printed in the United States of America

      S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Tardy, Christine M.

      Building genre knowledge / Christine M. Tardy.

      p. cm. -- (Second language writing.)

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-1-60235-112-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-113-4 (alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-114-1 (adobe ebook)

      1. English language--Study and teaching--Foreign speakers. 2. Interdisciplinary approach in education. 3. Academic writing--Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title.

      PE1128.A2T279 2009

      808’.0420711--dc22

      2009022501

      Cover design by Paul Kei Matsuda

      Printed on acid-free paper.

      Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. This book is available in paper, hardcover, and Adobe eBook formats from Parlor Press on the World Wide Web at http://www.parlorpress.com or through online and brick-and mortar bookstores. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications, write to Parlor Press, 816 Robinson St., West Lafayette, Indiana, 47906, or e-mail [email protected].

      Contents

       Acknowledgments

       1 Genre and Genre Knowledge

       2 The Researcher and the Writers

       3 Learning through Other People’s Words

       4 Genre Analysis in the Writing Classroom

       5 Accumulated Exposure and the Learning of a Multimodal Genre

       6 Repeated Practice: Lab Reports in the Graduate Classroom

       7 The Culmination of Graduate Research: Learning to Write a Master’s Thesis

       8 Writing for/in a Discipline: First Forays into the Larger Research World

       9 Building Genre Knowledge

       Appendix A

       Appendix B

       Appendix C

       Appendix D

       Appendix E

       Notes

       References

       Index

       About the Author

      Acknowledgments

      As with any work of this length, I owe a great debt of gratitude to many. First and foremost, I thank the four writers who allowed me to intrude into their graduate studies and put their words under a microscope. I also thank the writing instructor for allowing me to sit in her class and talk with her students about that class. Their willingness to allow me to observe them, audio-record them, and analyze their writing and their words is a remarkable display of trust. Without these individuals, this project simply could not have come to fruition. I sincerely hope that I have not represented any of them or their experiences in a way that they would find misleading.

      I owe thanks as well to the many people who have influenced my understanding of genre and writing through their work. Their voices run throughout this book and continue to challenge and motivate me. On a more personal level, I am grateful to Margie Berns, Graham Smart, and Irwin Weiser for their comments and help on the research that led to this monograph. Many thanks also to John Swales, whose work first sparked my interest in genre many years ago and who has been remarkably supportive of me from my days as an undergraduate to the present. And I owe special thanks to Tony Silva, who has taught me much more about research and second language writing than he knows. His careful and cutting-edge work has inspired me as a researcher, and his encouraging words and calm demeanor helped me keep my sanity while swimming in binders and files of data.

      I am also very thankful for the support I’ve received at DePaul University, especially from my department chairs Bill Fahrenbach and Peter Vandenberg, and my past and present colleagues in rhetoric and composition (Pete, Darsie, David, Roger, Heather, Julie, Melinda, Matthew, Shaun, René, and Tony), who have indulged my attempts to bridge disciplinary divides. DePaul’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences also provided helpful support through a summer research grant. At Parlor Press, I am grateful to David Blakesley, who provided very helpful guidance and support along the way, and to Paul Kei Matsuda for his belief in this work from its earlier stages and his always helpful conversations in moving forward to this stage. I am also indebted to Anis Bawarshi for his thorough read and insightful suggestions on an earlier version of the manuscript.