ORAL, WRITTEN AND MIXED

GENRES IN ENGLISH
LANGUAGE TEACHING
Cláudia Pungartnik
• Communicative vehicles for the achievement of goals (Swales 1990 p.46)
• Typified rhetorical action based in recurrent situations (Miller, 1984 p.159)
• Speech genres are typical forms of utterances (Bakhtin, 1986 p. 63)
• Ongoing use of certain material tools in certain ways that worked once, and
may work again (Russell, 1997a p.515)
• How we learn genres: expanding one’s involvement with an activity system
(Russell, 1997 p. 521)
The typical forms of the utterance associated with
a particular sphere of communication which have
therefore developed into ‘relatively stable types’ in
terms of thematic content, style and compositional
structure.
Bakhtin, 1986 p. 52
• “[…] culturally conventionalized discursive ways of achieving
communicative ends within a community.” (Zadunaisky Ehrlich &
Blum-Kulka, 2010)

• “In Bakhtin’s conception, voices merge linguistic form

with social intention”. (Woolard, 2008: 445)
DIALOGICAL PROPERTIES

The idea that any text is

explicitly or implicitly ‘in
dialogue with’ other texts
(existing or anticipated) which
constitutes its ‘intertexts’.

Kristeva, 1986
MIXED GENRES OR HYBRIDIZED GENRES
“One can deliberately
mix genres from
various spheres” to
mean that one can
produce a new type
that “embodies both
similarities in form and
social function” Al-Ali, 2005 p. 28
MIXED GENRES
The process of genre mixing especially for the expression
of private intentions within the socially recognized
communicative purposes does not seem to be an
exclusive property of academic texts alone. […] genres
may be creatively mixed in a variety of other forms of
professional discourse and such mixing will therefore
result in generic integrity.
Yan, 2008.
 MIXED GENRES
Norman Fairclough (1992) distinguishes
two types of metalinguistic processes:
“manifest intertextuality” and
“interdiscursivity” […] which has strong
links to Bakhtin’s dialogism, stresses the
hybrid nature of texts as mixtures of
genres and discourses.

Coupland & Jaworski (2004)

 Speech Genres
"Language is realized in the form of individualized
concrete utterances (oral and written) by participants in the
various areas of human activity. . . . each sphere in which
language is used develops its own relatively stable types of
these utterances. These we may call speech genres. . . .
Special emphasis should be placed on the
extreme heterogeneity of speech genres (oral and written)."

Bakhtin, 1986, p. 60
Utterance

An element of speech
that serves as "a link in
the chain of speech
communication"

Bakhtin, 1986, p. 91
Tradicional interfaces for tradicional genre
Cybergenres – new interfaces for Genre
New genres may be created in the new medium. Shepherd, 1988
New digital media environment
Bakhtin recognized two types of
genres – primary and secondary –
and he argued that primary
genres can “knit together” much
like bones and form new,
secondary genres.... We thus find
that groups of utterances, which
we might call sub-genres, come
together to form larger,
overarching genres.

Yotsukura, 2003
Primary genres
 Secondary speech genres
Bakhtin distinguishes between primary and
secondary speech genres. Secondary, or complex, speech
genres develop in highly organized cultural communication
and are usually mediated (written) and removed from the
context of "actual reality." Secondary genres, as "historical
formations," tend to "absorb and digest" primary speech
genres, "reaccentuating" the simpler genres.

Bakhtin, 1986, p. 62
Genre Analysis in ELT
• The English as Specific Purpose School (ESP)
John Swales, 1990 p.24

• The Systematic Functional Linguistics School (SFL)

Martin 1984 p.19

• The New Rhetoric School (NR)

Devitt, 2004 p.27
English as Specific Purpose School
(ESP)
Genre is as “a class of communicative events
with some shared set of communicative
purposes” and are conventions or rules
related to communicative purposes, as well
as to certain discourse communities.
John Swales (1990: 24)
The Systematic Functional Linguistics
School (SFL)
The SFL school considers genre as “a staged,
goal-oriented, purposeful activity in which
speakers (writers) engage as members of culture”
and emphasizes the purposeful, interactive, and
sequential character of different genres.
Martin 1984: 19
New Rhetoric School (NR)

Genre, according to NR researchers, is “a

nexus between an individual’s actions and a
socially defined context”

Devitt 2004: 27
ORAL GENRES
• situations of common social interaction
• classroom language
• informal situations
• rules such as knowing how to listen, respecting the
other person's words and expressing oneself in a
courteous manner
• more formal language use situations in which he must
develop the skills to
- debate, explain, present, state an opinion or narrate.
 WORLD
WORLD COOKING
COOKING
Aim:
- To learn and revise vocabulary relating to food, restaurants, tastes and textures;
- To develop speaking skills – preferences and atitudes towards food
Level: pre intermediate A1-A2
Ativity 1 – miming game – provide 2 or 3 students with a few basic pictures of food
so they can mime for the audience.
Ativity 2 – Present a MASTER CHEF video
The main focus of the lesson is a ‘master chef’ vídeo showing how tastes and textures are
changing as the food and chefs are becoming more experimental in their cooking and eating
habits due to the growing popularity of cooking programmes.
Students will be asked questions relating their opinions towards ideas presented on the vídeo
therefore the teacher can elicit vocabulary.

What are the main dishes in Bahia? And in Rio Grande do Sul?
In terms of writing, genre can be defined as “a
framework for language instruction” based on
examples of a particular genre.
Genre framework supports students’ writing with
generalized, systematic guiding principles about
how to produce meaningful passages within a
specific context.

Byram, 2004 p. 34
ACTIVITY 3
ACTIVITY 4 – IN SMALL GROUPS
 ALTERNATIVE TASK
To make the activity more dynamic, the teacher can hold a
class survey with each student going round the class and
interviewing other students.
Questions would be given by the teacher e.g. Do you prefer
sweet or savory food? What is your favorite food?
They could then report back their findings.
Students may need prompts on the board:
The majority of the class like…
Some people like… Almost nobody likes…
Half/ a quarter/ two-thirds of the class prefer…
Written Genres
• Genre analysis in writing instruction focuses on writing
as “a social, interactive process” (Callaghan, Knapp &
Noble, 1993 p. 168)
• it is also based on the notion of scaffolding (Bruner
1975, Wood, Bruner & Ross 1976; Cazden 1988),
• which draws on Vygotsky’s (1978) view that higher
thinking processes, including language, arise as a
consequence of human interaction.
SCAFFOLDING
The more clearly defined each language activity,
the more specific the learning outcomes for the
activity can be, so specifying writing stages
supported by genre approach is helpful for both the
teacher and the students to fulfill their ultimate goal
in L2 writing class.
 Teaching-learning Cycle
Writing Lesson Model

the social purpose

text structure
language features:

typical vocabulary
grammatical choices

Hammond, 1987 p. 167, 2001 p.35

 Teaching-learning Cycle
Writing Lesson Model

collet and organize the

information
group activities
discussion and sharing
information
individual reearch

explicit instruction about the

target genre
collaborative writing

Hammond, 1987 p. 167, 2001 p.35

 Teaching-learning Cycle
Writing Lesson Model

explicit guidance in understanding

purpose,
schematic structure
language features of the
target genre

Hammond, 1987 p. 167, 2001 p.35

 Teaching-learning Cycle
Writing Lesson Model

same structure
personal content

Hammond, 1987 p. 167, 2001 p.35

MIXED GENRES increase creativity
• The more liquid form of
social life (BAUMAN,
2001) in the
Information Age, we
see a new telematics
culture or cyberculture
emerging (LÉVY, 2000)
in a Network Society
based on information
technology (CASTELLS,
1999) where anything is
possible for teaching
(BELL, 2008).
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• British Council. 2014. cooking-britain-worksheets. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/cooking-britain-today. [Accessed 15 February
2018].

• Cholewa-Purgał, A. Aglance AT GENRE AND CONTEMPORARY GENRE THEORY. STUDIA NEOFILOLOGICZNE VII, p.57, 2011.

• Geertz, Clifford 2018. Hyper-Text: Blurred Genres. [ONLINE] Available at: http://hypergeertz.jku.at/GeertzTexts/Blurred_Genres.htm. [Accessed 15 February 2018].

• Hammond, Jennifer. (1987). An overview of the genre-based approach to the teaching of English writing in Australia. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 10.2,
163-181.

• Hammond, Jennifer (2001). Scaffolding and language. In J. Hammond, ed., Scaffolding: teaching and learning in language and literacy education, 31-48. Newtown,
Australia: Primary English Teaching Association

• Lee, Noh-Kyung. The Genre-based Writing Instruction in EFL. Language Research 49.2, 311-332. Seoul National University of Education, 2013.

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• Pérez-Sabater, C., Peña-Martínez, G., Turney, E. and Montero-Fleta, B., 2008. A spoken genre gets written: Online football commentaries in English, French, and
Spanish. Written Communication, 25(2), pp.235-261.

• Shepherd, M. & Watters, C. (1998). The Evolution of Cybergenres. In Proceedings of the 31st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. IEEE Computer
Society Press

• TROSBORG, A. Text typology: register, genre and text type. In: TROSBORG, A. (Ed.) Text Typology and Translation. 1997. Available on:
http://www.academia.edu/5337735/Text_Typology_Register_Genre_and_Text_Type

• Volek, M.E., 2014. Speaking of Bakhtin: A study of the sociolinguistic discourse on Bakhtin and Language (Doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia).