- Email: [email protected]
Genre Pedagogy in Higher Education: The SLATE Project
English for Specific Purposes 45 (2017) 52–53
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
English for Specific Purposes journal homepage: http://ees.elsevier.com/esp/default.asp
Review Genre Pedagogy in Higher Education: The SLATE Project, Shoshana J. Dreyfus, Sally Humphrey, Ahmar Mahboob, James R. Martin. Palgrave Macmillan, London (2016). 298 pp., US $ 95.00, Hardcover, ISBN: 978-1-137-30999-0 While they are not new as areas of inquiry, mapping undergraduate genres and researching the teaching and learning of English for Academic Purposes in undergraduate contexts are gaining prominence within our field. In inner circle countries such as Britain, Ireland, Australia, Canada and the United States, this trend is probably fueled by the rising numbers of undergraduates coming from Expanding and Outer circle countries. In this second group countries, a growing appetite for and availability of English-medium education in tertiary-level content area courses is gradually expanding the need for EAP research and practice. The recent publication of Genre Pedagogy in Higher Education: The SLATE Project is a testament to the increasing importance of undergraduate-level EAP work. It is also a valuable and praiseworthy addition to the field’s knowledge in this arena. This book offers a thorough overview of the SLATE (Scaffolding Literacy in Academic and Tertiary Environments) project, a large-scale, online intervention partnership between The University of Sydney and City University of Hong Kong (CityU). The SLATE project was based on the linguistic and pedagogical work of the Sydney School of Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL). The book is exceedingly valuable to English language educators in EFL contexts because, as claimed by the authors, it “provides an overview of this intervention and highlights the effectiveness of using an embedded literacy program for English-medium institutions in non-English speaking countries” (p. 5). Another strength of this commendable volume is its demonstration of the applicability of Sydney School genre pedagogy to undergraduate online education; with a few exceptions, the majority of previously published Sydney work had centered on K-12, face-to-face settings. The first chapter provides an overview of the context, the project setup, and the problem it sought to address: CityU undergraduates’ significant achievement gap in English academic literacy despite years of English-medium instruction. Both the problem and its specifics will resonate with EFL instructors around the world: avoidance of English by faculty, multiplechoice testing, plagiarism, inability to write a thesis, and a lack of competitiveness in the job market. To address these issues, the visible genre pedagogy of the Sydney School was repackaged as an online intervention focusing on two undergraduate programs: one in linguistics and one in biology. Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted to explaining the architecture of Systemic-Functional Linguistics, whereas chapters 4 and 5 focus on their pedagogical translation via the 3 3 framework and the Teaching–Learning Cycle (TLC). Together, these chapters provide an accessible, entry-level description of SFL and its pedagogical apparatus that can be used in introductory graduate-level courses and teacher training. Especially noteworthy is the thorough explanation of the 3 3 framework, perhaps the most recent and lesser known pedagogical product of the Sydney School. The framework is a recontextualization of the SFL architecture of metafunctions and strata. The strata are simplified intro three levels of text analysis that combine with the three metafunctions in a nine-square matrix. Thus, the 3 3 framework is a useful text analysis heuristic model for pedagogical purposes. It was specifically designed to train teachers without a background in SFL on the use of SFL’s basic principles and procedures for text analysis. Also noteworthy is chapter five, which reviews the history of the Sydney School’s engagement with language education and the specific challenges involved in the SLATE project. Chapters 6 through 12 deal with the thrust of the book by presenting a detailed explanation of the SLATE project itself. The first part of the project involved identifying and analyzing the genres that are present in the literacy tasks of the Linguistics and Biology undergraduate programs at CityU. Chapters 6 and 7 present the results of this analysis, which is an important contribution to our understanding of undergraduate genres and their epistemic functions in tertiary education. Taking the work of Humphrey and Dreyfus (2012) in an applied linguistics Master’s degree program as a point of departure, chapter 6 identifies and analyzes the genres that CityU Linguistics students are required to write in 4 courses: theoretical linguistics, semantics, language acquisition, and computational linguistics. They found that the most common genres across the three courses are factorial explanations, concept reports, and experiment reports. A commonality across genres and courses is that students are expected to make an interpretive point about some aspect of language. This point is performed with a combination of Finding, Nub and Example moves (Humphrey & Dreyfus, 2012), but the specific
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2016.09.004
Review / English for Specific Purposes 45 (2017) 52–53
53
combinatorial possibilities and their lexicogrammatical realization differ across genres. The authors offer a detailed explanation and exemplification of the articulation between these moves and various generic stages. Chapter 7 focuses on the analysis of Biology undergraduate genres. A difference with chapter 6 is the emphasis on the genres that students read; much less space is devoted to the genres that students write. This imbalance might be due to the greater emphasis that faculty in the project placed on the role of reading in Biology and to the less diverse nature of the student-produced genres in that program. However, one is left wondering whether there are differences in the disciplinary enculturation processes at the undergraduate level that involve a more central role for reading in biology and a lesser one in linguistics. The authors were able to identify six types of macro-genres in the reading material: macro-report, experimental procedure, descriptive review, explanatory review, critical review, and research report. The first two are pedagogic macrogenres, explicitly aimed at novices. A meaningful finding is the salience of Theme resources to scaffold reading of these genres. The last four macro-genres are types of research articles, and this four-part division as well as the exploration of the related registerial and lexicogrammatical features is an important contribution of the chapter. With regard to student-produced genres, the authors decided to focus in the introduction sections of laboratory and research reports (Honors theses) “because of the considerable linguistic challenges they present” (197). A key distinction between the introductions in these two macro-genres is the use of what the authors call a research warrant in the research reports versus a more general contextualization, or experimental warrant, in the lab reports. The research warrant appears to be the SFL equivalent of Moves 1 and 2 in Swales’ (1990) famous CaRS model. A potential research question for future studies relates to the extent to which the structure of undergraduate introductions can be characterized more fruitfully by one of these models or combinations thereof. A key finding is that these introductory sections require the students “to construct taxonomies across multiple fields and to evaluate those fields with a range of interpersonal resources” (203), which means that students “need to continue to expand their linguistic resources beyond those valued at secondary school level” (203). While this focus on introductions is indeed valuable, one hopes that future publications will focus on other, less researched sections of these macro-genres. Chapter 8 offers an explanation of the training program used to familiarize tutors with the TLC and the 3 3 framework. This was done through a series of four workshops, which are carefully described in the chapter. The descriptions of the procedures as well as the accompanying tables and figures are very helpful in understanding how the training proceeded. They also provide valuable resources to teacher trainers looking to implement Sydney pedagogy. An innovation presented in the chapter is the addition of an extended independent construction cycle with two rounds of tutor feedback prior to submission. Chapters 9 through 11 feature the actual work that was done with the students that participated in the SLATE project. As in chapter 8, the recounts, descriptions, explanations and visual aids are quite useful to help readers picture the teaching and learning that took place. The introduction of a new SFL-based feedback system in chapter 11 is particularly relevant. Both the typology of feedback and the stages of written feedback put forward by the authors provide fresh insights and techniques that will certainly advance research and practice in this much-discussed area of language pedagogy. Also noteworthy are discussions of the challenges faced when adapting Sydney pedagogy to an online environment. Chapter 12 closes the book with a summative presentation and evaluation of the project and the many innovations that emerged from it. As it is well-known, offering actionable, language-based theorizations of learning to language and literacy educators has been one of the main concerns of SFL since its inception. Genre Pedagogy in Higher Education: The SLATE Project is an outstanding contribution in this direction that brings Sydney pedagogy up to date with the realities of online education in the twenty-first century. It is packed with useful and detailed information on both time-honored and innovative practices. Applied linguists, literacy scholars and literacy teachers around the world stand to benefit greatly from reading the significant body of work compiled and presented in this volume. References Humphrey, S., & Dreyfus, S. (2012). Exploring the interpretive genre in applied linguistics. Indonesian Journal of Systemic Functional Linguistics, 1(2), 156-174. Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moisés D. Perales-Escudero is an Associate Professor of Language and Education at Universidad de Quintana Roo, Chetumal, México. He is a past guest editor and current member of the editorial board of the Journal of English for Academic Purposes. His research focuses on L1 and L2 academic literacies. He is a member of Mexico’s National Research System.
Moisés Damián Perales-Escudero Universidad de Quintana Roo, Unidad Chetumal, Mexico E-mail address: [email protected]
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
English for Specific Purposes journal homepage: http://ees.elsevier.com/esp/default.asp
Review Genre Pedagogy in Higher Education: The SLATE Project, Shoshana J. Dreyfus, Sally Humphrey, Ahmar Mahboob, James R. Martin. Palgrave Macmillan, London (2016). 298 pp., US $ 95.00, Hardcover, ISBN: 978-1-137-30999-0 While they are not new as areas of inquiry, mapping undergraduate genres and researching the teaching and learning of English for Academic Purposes in undergraduate contexts are gaining prominence within our field. In inner circle countries such as Britain, Ireland, Australia, Canada and the United States, this trend is probably fueled by the rising numbers of undergraduates coming from Expanding and Outer circle countries. In this second group countries, a growing appetite for and availability of English-medium education in tertiary-level content area courses is gradually expanding the need for EAP research and practice. The recent publication of Genre Pedagogy in Higher Education: The SLATE Project is a testament to the increasing importance of undergraduate-level EAP work. It is also a valuable and praiseworthy addition to the field’s knowledge in this arena. This book offers a thorough overview of the SLATE (Scaffolding Literacy in Academic and Tertiary Environments) project, a large-scale, online intervention partnership between The University of Sydney and City University of Hong Kong (CityU). The SLATE project was based on the linguistic and pedagogical work of the Sydney School of Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL). The book is exceedingly valuable to English language educators in EFL contexts because, as claimed by the authors, it “provides an overview of this intervention and highlights the effectiveness of using an embedded literacy program for English-medium institutions in non-English speaking countries” (p. 5). Another strength of this commendable volume is its demonstration of the applicability of Sydney School genre pedagogy to undergraduate online education; with a few exceptions, the majority of previously published Sydney work had centered on K-12, face-to-face settings. The first chapter provides an overview of the context, the project setup, and the problem it sought to address: CityU undergraduates’ significant achievement gap in English academic literacy despite years of English-medium instruction. Both the problem and its specifics will resonate with EFL instructors around the world: avoidance of English by faculty, multiplechoice testing, plagiarism, inability to write a thesis, and a lack of competitiveness in the job market. To address these issues, the visible genre pedagogy of the Sydney School was repackaged as an online intervention focusing on two undergraduate programs: one in linguistics and one in biology. Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted to explaining the architecture of Systemic-Functional Linguistics, whereas chapters 4 and 5 focus on their pedagogical translation via the 3 3 framework and the Teaching–Learning Cycle (TLC). Together, these chapters provide an accessible, entry-level description of SFL and its pedagogical apparatus that can be used in introductory graduate-level courses and teacher training. Especially noteworthy is the thorough explanation of the 3 3 framework, perhaps the most recent and lesser known pedagogical product of the Sydney School. The framework is a recontextualization of the SFL architecture of metafunctions and strata. The strata are simplified intro three levels of text analysis that combine with the three metafunctions in a nine-square matrix. Thus, the 3 3 framework is a useful text analysis heuristic model for pedagogical purposes. It was specifically designed to train teachers without a background in SFL on the use of SFL’s basic principles and procedures for text analysis. Also noteworthy is chapter five, which reviews the history of the Sydney School’s engagement with language education and the specific challenges involved in the SLATE project. Chapters 6 through 12 deal with the thrust of the book by presenting a detailed explanation of the SLATE project itself. The first part of the project involved identifying and analyzing the genres that are present in the literacy tasks of the Linguistics and Biology undergraduate programs at CityU. Chapters 6 and 7 present the results of this analysis, which is an important contribution to our understanding of undergraduate genres and their epistemic functions in tertiary education. Taking the work of Humphrey and Dreyfus (2012) in an applied linguistics Master’s degree program as a point of departure, chapter 6 identifies and analyzes the genres that CityU Linguistics students are required to write in 4 courses: theoretical linguistics, semantics, language acquisition, and computational linguistics. They found that the most common genres across the three courses are factorial explanations, concept reports, and experiment reports. A commonality across genres and courses is that students are expected to make an interpretive point about some aspect of language. This point is performed with a combination of Finding, Nub and Example moves (Humphrey & Dreyfus, 2012), but the specific
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2016.09.004
Review / English for Specific Purposes 45 (2017) 52–53
53
combinatorial possibilities and their lexicogrammatical realization differ across genres. The authors offer a detailed explanation and exemplification of the articulation between these moves and various generic stages. Chapter 7 focuses on the analysis of Biology undergraduate genres. A difference with chapter 6 is the emphasis on the genres that students read; much less space is devoted to the genres that students write. This imbalance might be due to the greater emphasis that faculty in the project placed on the role of reading in Biology and to the less diverse nature of the student-produced genres in that program. However, one is left wondering whether there are differences in the disciplinary enculturation processes at the undergraduate level that involve a more central role for reading in biology and a lesser one in linguistics. The authors were able to identify six types of macro-genres in the reading material: macro-report, experimental procedure, descriptive review, explanatory review, critical review, and research report. The first two are pedagogic macrogenres, explicitly aimed at novices. A meaningful finding is the salience of Theme resources to scaffold reading of these genres. The last four macro-genres are types of research articles, and this four-part division as well as the exploration of the related registerial and lexicogrammatical features is an important contribution of the chapter. With regard to student-produced genres, the authors decided to focus in the introduction sections of laboratory and research reports (Honors theses) “because of the considerable linguistic challenges they present” (197). A key distinction between the introductions in these two macro-genres is the use of what the authors call a research warrant in the research reports versus a more general contextualization, or experimental warrant, in the lab reports. The research warrant appears to be the SFL equivalent of Moves 1 and 2 in Swales’ (1990) famous CaRS model. A potential research question for future studies relates to the extent to which the structure of undergraduate introductions can be characterized more fruitfully by one of these models or combinations thereof. A key finding is that these introductory sections require the students “to construct taxonomies across multiple fields and to evaluate those fields with a range of interpersonal resources” (203), which means that students “need to continue to expand their linguistic resources beyond those valued at secondary school level” (203). While this focus on introductions is indeed valuable, one hopes that future publications will focus on other, less researched sections of these macro-genres. Chapter 8 offers an explanation of the training program used to familiarize tutors with the TLC and the 3 3 framework. This was done through a series of four workshops, which are carefully described in the chapter. The descriptions of the procedures as well as the accompanying tables and figures are very helpful in understanding how the training proceeded. They also provide valuable resources to teacher trainers looking to implement Sydney pedagogy. An innovation presented in the chapter is the addition of an extended independent construction cycle with two rounds of tutor feedback prior to submission. Chapters 9 through 11 feature the actual work that was done with the students that participated in the SLATE project. As in chapter 8, the recounts, descriptions, explanations and visual aids are quite useful to help readers picture the teaching and learning that took place. The introduction of a new SFL-based feedback system in chapter 11 is particularly relevant. Both the typology of feedback and the stages of written feedback put forward by the authors provide fresh insights and techniques that will certainly advance research and practice in this much-discussed area of language pedagogy. Also noteworthy are discussions of the challenges faced when adapting Sydney pedagogy to an online environment. Chapter 12 closes the book with a summative presentation and evaluation of the project and the many innovations that emerged from it. As it is well-known, offering actionable, language-based theorizations of learning to language and literacy educators has been one of the main concerns of SFL since its inception. Genre Pedagogy in Higher Education: The SLATE Project is an outstanding contribution in this direction that brings Sydney pedagogy up to date with the realities of online education in the twenty-first century. It is packed with useful and detailed information on both time-honored and innovative practices. Applied linguists, literacy scholars and literacy teachers around the world stand to benefit greatly from reading the significant body of work compiled and presented in this volume. References Humphrey, S., & Dreyfus, S. (2012). Exploring the interpretive genre in applied linguistics. Indonesian Journal of Systemic Functional Linguistics, 1(2), 156-174. Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moisés D. Perales-Escudero is an Associate Professor of Language and Education at Universidad de Quintana Roo, Chetumal, México. He is a past guest editor and current member of the editorial board of the Journal of English for Academic Purposes. His research focuses on L1 and L2 academic literacies. He is a member of Mexico’s National Research System.
Moisés Damián Perales-Escudero Universidad de Quintana Roo, Unidad Chetumal, Mexico E-mail address: [email protected]