Learning Genres

Abstract

Learning to use a second language includes learning how to comprehend and compose texts in order to participate in the community in which the language is used. While each text is a unique expression of its immediate social context, it would be "impossible to communicate … if each time we constructed a text we had to start from scratch" (Butt, Fahey, Feez, and Spinks, 2012: 251). For this reason, over time, in each discourse community, recognisable and expected ways of exchanging meanings, or genres, "have become conventionalized through repeated use" (Tardy, 2013: 2278). For second language learners, learning genres means building a repertoire of these text patterns to guide their language use in ways that are recognised as effective for achieving their goals in the target language. The ways genres are deployed in texts that respond to the demands of specific social contexts are complex and varied. This has led to the emergence of different approaches to conceptualising genre and teaching and learning about genres. These differing orientations reflect "the range of traditions and intellectual resources" informing the study of genre over several decades, and "the pedagogical goals and conditions from which it has emerged and to which it has responded" (Bawarshi and Reiff, 2010: 209).