9. GENRES
People learning English as a second language will need to use it in many forms. The term genre was not used in the English Block but the activities were designed to give the students practice in and experience of many different forms of English usage which is the essence of the idea of genre.

Some students of Discourse Analysis sometimes seem to suggest that the genres can not only be easily identified but defined by reference to internal structure. John Swales - in LSU Reference Collection document ESP1 D/20 Genres-based approaches across curriculum criticises Davie and Green who (in Reading for Learning in the Sciences (Edinburgh) Oliver & Boyd 1984) propose, according to Swales, that distinction between genres is based on distinctions of structures. He argues that the essence of genres is that they represent distinct communicative event-types - it is the purpose of the communication which should define them, not their internal structure. However, Swales still makes the surprising statement that there is a limited number of distinct text-types in scientific writing.

The danger here is of thinking of a genre as a fixed entity. In fact it is an appropriate response to certain needs and conditions. Because conditions are never exactly the same in all cases, every actual journal article, even in the same issue of a journal, for example, is different, although there are of course family resemblances among texts responding to similar conditions - which the ESP teacher can exploit in teaching. For the same reason all the different genres of written English show changes over time - as the conditions change.
In this sense, the English Block activities should have given the students an experience of the need for the form of writing to be appropriate to the conditions. That is, it is not so much that they gained experience of all the different genres - that would be impossible as the number of genres is infinite - but that they learned that there are genres and it is necessary to be ready for them.

An example of this is students' perception of the required length of a piece of writing. In many schools, the length of required Compositions tends to be specified as four sides of an exercise book. The condition this length exists to fulfil is the teacher's desire to limit the amount he has to read and mark. This - the four-page composition - is a genre not generally useful in the world outside school, quite apart from the fact that its purpose is not usually focussed (what is an essay? who is intended to read it?). Students who have done many exercises of this sort become convinced that this is "the length" of a piece of writing. Their problem is that they are not aware that different lengths are possible nor the conditions which govern appropriate length; it is the concept of genre that is missing in their experience. In the English Block, the most numerous type of writing was for the Group Newspaper where short pieces of only one or two paragraphs were required. After some practice of this kind, students became aware that a piece of writing should be as long or short as is necessary. Other activities included the writing of lengthy pieces which might take a whole term to do.

Many people feel the same way about the proper length of a letter. It is difficult to persuade students that a very short letter can be appropriate in some circumstances.

Another example is the rather Platonic belief of students in Africa (I have found it in Nigeria as well as in Kenya) that somewhere there exists a book of How To Write Letters containing all the necessary letters which they will need and that in it there is The Application Letter - the magic letter which will get the writer a job. The students usually believe the teacher knows this letter and can be induced to teach it. This is an extreme version of the belief in fixed types. The environment of the English Block required a large number of letters to be written, so that students probably ceased to believe that there is a single letter which will fit every situation.

The essence of genre is to find what are the necessary conditions and then to satisfy them. In the specific case of scientific journals the best way to find what is necessary is to study other writers, ask the editor and then write what seems to fit. Students who have followed a course similar to the English Block should be able to learn what are the necessary conditions without direct instruction.

E G Matthews - How to study Literature for African Students

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