Reading Response: Genre Pedagogy

Genre pedagogy is a very influential method of teaching that influences a lot of composition classrooms, and for good reason. When you consider genres the way Carolyn Miller does (Genre as Social Action, 1984), that is, writers in recurrent situations taking similar rhetorical actions and creating typified expectations, you begin to see genres in everything from "grocery lists to hypertexts" (Devitt, 146). However, there isn't just one approach to teaching a genre pedagogy. Devitt outlines three unique approaches:

• teaching particular genres
• give students access to and control of particular genres
• teaching genre awareness
• help students learn how to learn unfamiliar genres regardless of medium or context
• teaching genre critique
• help students see the cultural and ideological nature of genres to make their own choices and gain critical understanding

While Devitt describes each of these approaches as having "value and limitations for different students," she concludes that combining the three approaches will "help students act rhetorically and consciously within and beyond the situations they will encounter throughout their lives" (147).

That brings us to the pedagogy itself and the choice between teaching individual genres versus teaching genre awareness. The difference is one of distance, that is, interacting with tools versus just knowing about them. Both angles have pros and cons depending on who you ask. When it comes to teaching individual genres, one group may say that doing so provides students with explicit rules and tricks that will be useful during writing while another group may say that a genre is too complex to be learned outside of where it naturally occurs.

When it comes to teaching genre awareness, it is no longer about interacting with a genre but rather about gaining tools and strategies for appropriating a genre when the need arises. As with teaching individual genres, there are pros and cons to teaching genre awareness. While it does teach meta-cognitive reflection (thinking about your thinking) and discourages formulaic writing, there is a lack of control when it comes to source material since teachers will often give students control over their genre of choice. This means students are gathering their own samples and, in some cases, the samples aren't very good.