Overview of the topic and the literature review.

This Blog constitutes Assignment 1 in EML 509 for Holly Wright, student number 11358217.

Topic: The genre-based approach to literature, grammar and linguistics in an EAL/D and EFL setting.

The concept of genre has suffered from “variable and uncertain usage” (Swales, 1990, p. 1) since the very beginnings of literary theory. The term was first used by Aristotle to define three types of literary texts “poetry, novel, and drama (Kinneavy, 1971 in Deng, Chen and Zhang, 2014, p. 3)”; then by Derrida who, according to Frow (2004, p. 1627) both acknowledges the rigidity of genre boundaries and conversely decries the “madness of genre”. Todorov (1976 in Frow, 2004, p. 1627) defines genre in literary studies as “the codification of discursive properties”. Constant revision and re-imagination of what is meant by the term genre occurs across the fields of literature, linguistics and rhetoric, where it is regularly applied. The literature review will focus on a genre-based approach to teaching the English language. It will provide a theoretical framework and background for the concept of genre in the field of linguistics and outline the three main schools of thought for this approach. The rise of genre theory in Australia will be discussed, followed by instances of its application in Australia, Thailand and China. Its use in the classroom will be critically appraised and a personal statement will discuss how a genre-based approach would fit in with the author’s context in an Australian mainstream secondary English classroom.