Ann Johns, San Diego State University

Title:  Defining, Researching, and Teaching Genre: Conflicts and Convergences

Abstract: The term genre has become increasingly important to theory, research, and pedagogical practice, particularly among those concerned with how texts are socially constructed in the worlds in which we live, study, and work.   Yet the ways in which practitioners define, analyze, and teach genres differ, depending upon the particular “school” to which they subscribe.  These schools, characterized by Hyon (1996), as the Sydney School, English for Specific Purposes, and The New Rhetoric, represent different geographical regions,  theoretical frameworks, academic disciplines, pedagogical approaches, and  methods for analyzing texts and contexts.   I will begin this talk by discussing what experts from the various schools seem to agree upon: what genre is---and what it is not.  Then, drawing from a list of references that will be distributed, I will suggest some of the areas upon which there is disagreement.   My talk will conclude with comments about how, as a practicing ESL/EFL teacher, I attempt to draw from each of the schools to produce academic literacy curricula.  

  
Bio-statement:  Ann M. Johns is Professor Emerita of Linguistics and Writing Studies at San Diego State University (CA), where she has taught classes in, and about, academic literacies for the past thirty years.  Recently, she has been writing literacy curricula for secondary schools, particularly for linguistically and culturally-diverse students who plan to enroll in universities.  During her long career, she has published six books, the most recent of which are Text, role, and context: Developing academic literacies (Cambridge, 1997) and two edited volumes: Genre in the classroom: Multiple perspectives (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002), and, with Maureen Kelley Sipp, Diversity in college classrooms: Practices for today’s campuses (University of Michigan, 2004). She has written more than fifty articles and book chapters, principally on diverse students’ academic literacy development. In addition to studying in Egypt for two years (1970-72) and spending a Fulbright year in China (1981-82), she has presented plenaries and workshops and twenty-one countries.

Email: ajohns@cox.net
Website: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~annjohns/

Please direct questions to aaal2007@indiana.edu  *  Costa Mesa, California  *  April 21-24, 2007