Journal of Business and Technical Communication Oct 2010

Awareness Versus Production: Probing Students’ Antecedent Genre Knowledge

Natasha Artemeva Carleton University ; Janna Fox Carleton University

Abstract

This article explores the role of students’ prior, or antecedent, genre knowledge in relation to their developing disciplinary genre competence by drawing on an illustrative example of an engineering genre-competence assessment. The initial outcomes of this diagnostic assessment suggest that students’ ability to successfully identify and characterize rhetorical and textual features of a genre does not guarantee their successful writing performance in the genre. Although previous active participation in genre production (writing) seems to have a defining influence on students’ ability to write in the genre, such participation appears to be a necessary but insufficient precondition for genre-competence development. The authors discuss the usefulness of probing student antecedent genre knowledge early in communication courses as a potential source for macrolevel curriculum decisions and microlevel pedagogical adjustments in course design, and they propose directions for future research.

Journal
Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Published
2010-10-01
DOI
10.1177/1050651910371302
Open Access
Closed
Topics
curriculum design multimodality

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (4)

  1. Tardy et al. (2020)
    Teaching and Researching Genre Knowledge: Toward an Enhanced Theoretical Framework
    Written Communication
  2. DePalma et al. (2015)
    A Bag Full of Snakes: Negotiating the Challenges of Multimodal Composition
    Computers and Composition
  3. Rounsaville (2014)
    Situating Transnational Genre Knowledge
    Written Communication
  4. Reiff et al. (2011)
    Tracing Discursive Resources: How Students Use Prior Genre Knowledge to Negotia…
    Written Communication

Cites in this index (16)

  1. Rehling (2010)
    Foregrounding Positive Problem-Solving Teamwork: Awareness and Assessment Exerc…
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
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    What Do Children Write in Science? A Study of the Genre Set in a Primary Scienc…
    Written Communication
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    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
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    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
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    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
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    Technical Communication Quarterly
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    Technical Communication Quarterly
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    Written Communication
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    Written Communication
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