Course Description
This course introduces theories of language relevant to the writer’s craft. Students will focus on ways to identify different styles of writing, to understand the relation between style and content, and to predict readers’ responses to texts. They will learn to analyze writing tasks from these perspectives and to assess texts for their readability and their appropriateness to given situations.
Course Content
1. Genres and Their Social Contexts
Successful students will:
- become familiar with theories of genre that describe the relations between genre and context (i.e. between styles of writing and the distinct situations which these styles serve)
- analyze samples of genre to determine the conventions (i.e., the regular forms of expression, organization, and situation) that distinguish them from one another
- examine the role of innovation in different types of writing, and the opportunities for and constraints on individual writers’ innovations
2. Readers and Texts
Successful students will:
- become familiar with research on reading comprehension that explains the roles of word choice, grammar, coherence, and format in the reader’s experience of text
- become familiar with basic principles of classical rhetoric that help to explain the success or failure of texts in addressing their readers
- become familiar with current explanations of the role that conventions of style and organization play in the reader’s comprehension
- analyze text samples to (i) describe their genre features and rhetorical profile, and (ii) estimate the ease with which the intended reader could understand and use the text
- complete exercises on the functional linguistic approach to coherence (Vande Kopple)
3. Writer and Text
Successful students will:
- compose examples of specific genres, consulting the genre descriptions devised
- evaluate writing in light of conventions of style and organization, rhetorical profile, and models of the way readers understand – or fail to understand – what they are reading
4. Techniques and Analysis
Successful students will:
- learn and apply techniques for analyzing (i) a text’s patterns of abstract and concrete reference, and (ii) its levels of generality and their arrangement
- learn and apply techniques for analyzing grammatical features crucial to reading comprehension
- learn and apply techniques for analyzing a text’s patterns of coherence
- learn and apply techniques for analyzing the role of background knowledge in a text
- use these techniques to develop descriptions of different types of writing
- use these techniques to estimate appropriateness and readability of texts
- learn how to use interview techniques (e.g., think-aloud protocols) to elicit readers’ responses to texts, and to use the results of these interviews in the drafting or revision process
Learning Activities
In lectures, the instructor will introduce theory and demonstrate analytic techniques. In seminars, students will practise analysis of sample texts and of their own writing. In their research outside the classroom, students will
gather data on readers’ comprehension by conducting and recording think-aloud readings and text-based interviews with readers. In their written assignments, students will provide analyses using the theories and techniques introduced in lecture, and they will compose in the genres they have analyzed.
Means of Assessment
Students are expected to be self-motivated and to demonstrate professionalism, which includes active participation, good attendance, punctuality, effective collaboration, ability to meet deadlines, presentation skills, and accurate self-evaluation.
Evaluation will be based on this general format:
| Rhetorical analysis |
10% |
| Genre analyses (3) |
40% |
| Report of reader interview (think-alouds) |
20% |
| Genre sample and analysis |
20% |
| Professionalism (as defined) |
10% |
| |
100% |
Learning Outcomes
Students will become familiar with theories of genre, principles of classical rhetoric, and models of reading comprehension. They will develop techniques for analyzing texts in response to generic conventions, rhetorical profile, and readability. They will learn to apply theory and analytic techniques to writing tasks.
Textbook Materials
Textbooks and Materials to be Purchased by Students
- Brown, G. and Yule, G. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge, 1983.
- Vande Kopple, William. Clear and Coherent Prose. Scott, Foresman and Company, 1989.