Conversations in context: A genre-based pedagogy for academic writing

This dissertation examines writing and teaching genres of academic writing classes by examining the computer interchanges of a class of undergraduate composition students. It analyzes the thematic formations of topics and the activity structures of discussion. These two functions of language are the source of the genres of academic situations, and must be exposed and understood in and through the teaching genres of the composition class rather than in structural reproductive teaching genres. A synthesis of social, functional, and postmodern views of language in the Bakhtinian study of genres supports such arguments.;A preliminary pedagogical model is constructed from discussions of classroom genres, social semiotics, and ecosocial systemic theory. The model utilizes two metaphors, archeology and ecology, to inform and guide the reading and writing processes of both student and teacher. The model was applied to an academic writing class to find indications of its conditions, limits, and possibilities.;An analytical study examines the students' production of discursive activity structures and thematic formations in the academic writing course. In the study, the interchanges of the classroom are explored. Data consisted of the log of a Daedalus interchange and observations of the classroom activities. The data reveals that students use several genres that are common to the academy and that they form thematic formations as groups, defining words and relationships in an inventive environment.;Such findings extend the notions of ecosocial systemic theory presented in the early chapters. When the study is considered in relation to the synthesis of language studies found in social semiotics, it offers writing teachers insight into the ways students learn genres through dialogue and teaching genres and the ways teachers may reconceive the theory/practice relationship when adapting their pedagogy.