Student Number : 0420532W - MA research report - School of Literature and Language Studies - Faculty of Humanities / In this Theoretical Introduction the reasons for the choice of the historical fiction genre for the creative component of this Research Report will become clear in relation to other notable examples of the genre, indeed the academic essay will revolve around primary concerns with regard to the narrative of historical fiction and the debates around the representation that the work engages. In the postscript to the academic essay the possible destination for publication will be considered, as well as a summation of the writing and revision process, and a rumination of the projected readership or audience. As the creative component will be submitted in partial form, the postscript to the theoretical introduction will extrapolate the rest of the project, so as to provide some sense of the intended eventual work. Finally a special thanks to Ashleigh Harris, whose untiring help and encouragement is deeply appreciated; and to my husband, Norman, whose concern and enormous patience has sustained this endeavour.

This study approaches ‘discovery writing’ in relation to genre, investigating whether different genres of writing might be associated with different kinds of writing processes. Discovery writing can be thought of as writing to find out what you think, and represents a reversal of the more usual sense that ideas precede writing, or that planning should precede writing. Discovery writing has previously been approached in terms of writers’ orientations, such as whether writers are Planners or Discoverers. This study engages with these previous theories, but places an emphasis on genres of writing, and on textual features, such as how writers write fictional characters, or how writers generate arguments when writing essays. The two main types of writing investigated are fiction writing and academic writing. Particular genres include short stories, crime novels, academic articles, and student essays. 11 writers were interviewed, ranging from professional fiction authors to undergraduate students. Interviews were based on a recent piece of a writer’s own writing. Most of the writers came from a literary background, being either fiction writers or Literature students. Interviews were based on set questions, but also allowed writers to describe their writing largely in their own terms and to describe aspects of their writing that interested them. A key aspect of this approach was that of engaging writers in their own interests, from where interview questions could provide a basis for discussion. Fiction writing seemed characterized by emergent processes, where writers experienced real life events and channelled their experiences and feelings into stories. The writing of characters was often associated with discovery. A key finding for fiction writing was that even writers who planned heavily and identified themselves somewhat as Planners, also tended to discover more about their characters when writing. Academic writing was characterized by difficulty, where discovery was often described in relation to struggling to summarize arguments or with finding key words. A key conclusion from this study is that writers may be Planners or Discoverers by orientation, as previous theory has recognised. However, the things that writers plan and discover, such as plots and characters, also play an important role in their writing processes.

Producing academic genres indicates the possibility to know how to act and interact actively in the academic and scientific community. However, how to ensure the participation in the social scientific sphere without the dominion from the instruments of their participation? By this issue as a serious concern of this paper, we propose to analyze two academic genres (essay and article) in order to understand them, as they are indiscriminately taken in general. In order to describe and analyze compared genrers article and academics, with the goal to show elements that can contribute to the individualization of each, we selected 20 essays and 20 articles from online national journals whose review by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) covers grades A and B (they were published from January 2011 until May 2013). Magazines where we collect the corpus predicted the production of both genres, sometimes provided specific instructions for the production and publication of each genre. To perform the research, we chose some important concepts to the genres studies as the precursor of Bakhtin, name we cannot forget to be mentioned, and we took as an input for the analysis some categories of textual aspects cited by Bronckart (2009) that has not developed a theory for genres analysis but of texts, deeply contributes to understand the text operation by textual functioning infrastructure, textualization mechanisms and enunciative mechanisms. Silveira s (2012) study on the textual structures of research and essay genres also provided information to understand and differentiate between the genres that constitute our corpus, as well as other studies and manuals that provide information about both genres. Thus, we elect the first and third level of textual rolling for the texts analysis because we consider, as well as the author, the deeper and most superficial level, respectively, of the text we believe that these phases are able to reveal the peculiarities we investigate now. We observed that the test demonstrated the possibility to be composed by the kind of theoretical-interactive mixed discourse, by the frequent use of affective modalizations and by a compositional structure that is generally the same of the article. By the way, this genre had a predominance of theoretical discourse and a high amount of logical modalizations. The analysis revealed that the differences found in deep level, where the type of discourse and textual sequences belong, as the most superficial level, in the enunciation mechanisms, corroborate to some essay characteristics already mentioned by Gomez-Martinez (1992), Arrigucci (1999) and Guerini (2008) concerning the greatest freedom of expression about the scientific thought, with higher subjective tenor than the article. / Produzir gêneros acadêmicos indica a possibilidade de saber agir e interagir ativamente na comunidade acadêmico-científica. No entanto, como assegurar essa participação na esfera social científica sem o domínio dos ―instrumentos‖ de sua participação? Tendo essa questão como a grande inquietude deste trabalho, propomos analisar dois gêneros acadêmicos (ensaio e artigo), a fim de melhor compreendê-los, tendo em vista que, geralmente, são tomados de maneira indiscriminada. Com o objetivo descrever e analisar comparativamente os gêneros ensaio e artigo, pertencentes da esfera acadêmica, com vistas a apresentar elementos que possam contribuir para a individualização de cada um, selecionamos 20 ensaios e 20 artigos de periódicos online nacionais cuja avaliação pela Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) abrange as notas A e B (eles foram publicados no período de janeiro de 2011 até maio de 2013). As revistas de onde coletamos o corpus previam a produção de ambos os gêneros e, algumas vezes, forneciam instruções específicas para a produção e publicação de cada gênero. Para a realização da pesquisa, elegemos alguns conceitos caros à área de estudos de gêneros como o do precursor Bakhtin (2006), nome que não podemos deixar de mencionar, e tomamos como aporte para a análise algumas categorias do folhado textual de Bronckart (2009) que, embora não tenha desenvolvido uma teoria para análise de gênero e sim de textos, contribuiu sobremaneira para o entendimento do funcionamento textual por meio da infraestrutura textual, dos mecanismos de textualização e dos mecanismos enunciativos. Os estudos de Silveira (2012) sobre as estruturas textuais de gêneros da pesquisa e do ensaio também forneceram subsídios para a compreensão e diferenciação entre os gêneros que constituem nosso corpus, assim como outros estudos e manuais que trazem informações sobre ambos os gêneros. Elegemos, porquanto, o primeiro e o terceiro nível do folhado textual para a análise dos textos por considerá-los, assim como o autor, o nível mais profundo e mais superficial, respectivamente, do texto acreditamos que essas fases são capazes de revelar as peculiaridades que ora investigamos. Pudemos constatar que o ensaio demonstrou a possibilidade de ser composto pelo tipo de discurso misto teórico-interativo, pela utilização mais frequente de modalizações afetivas e por uma estrutura composicional que, geralmente, é a mesma do artigo. Este gênero, por sua vez, teve como predominante o discurso teórico e elevada quantidade de modalizações lógicas. A análise revelou que as diferenças encontradas tanto no nível profundo, em que pertencem o tipo de discurso e as sequências textuais, quanto no nível mais superficial, nos mecanismos de enunciação, corroboram com algumas características do ensaio já mencionadas por Gomez-Martinez (1992), Arrigucci (1999) e Guerini (2008) a respeito da maior liberdade de expressão do pensamento científico, com teor subjetivo mais elevado que o do artigo. / Mestre em Estudos Linguísticos

The main purpose of the research was to investigate the effectiveness of genre-based approaches in teaching academic writing. The study was motivated by the researcher's perceptions about university students' difficulty in acquiring the essayist literacy of the academy, and the fact that very little empirical research had been conducted on the effect of genre-based writing interventions. The following questions guided the research: (1) Can genre-based approaches be justified theoretically? (2) How effective are genre-based academic writing interventions? (3) Which is more effective: a narrow-angled or a wide-angled approach? The theoretical framework combines foundational principles of Systemic Functional Grammar, Constructivism and Critical Literacies. A mixed methods design was used, including a survey of writing tasks, genre analysis, discourse analysis, and a quasi-experimental comparison of pre- and posttest essay ratings. The survey of writing tasks indicated that the academic essay was the written genre most frequently required by humanities departments, and that argumentation, discussion, explanation, description and analysis were the text types featuring most prominently in writing prompts. Since the materials of the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies contained the largest number of essay-length tasks, the subject-specific intervention was focused on students of history. The cross-disciplinary group included students with Economics, English, History, Philosophy, Political Sciences, Psychology and Sociology as majors. A genre-based presyllabus, comprising exploration, explicit instruction, joint construction, independent construction and critical reflection, was customized for the subject-specific and cross-disciplinary groups. The syllabus gave prominence to the use of rhetorical modes, logical development of an argument, and engagement with other authors. The statistical analyses of the essay scores show that the narrow-angled and the wide-angled genre-based interventions were effective. Although the size of the improvement on the four dimensions of the scoring instrument was not equal, the overall improvement of the students in each of the groups is statistically significant. Despite the more modest overall improvement of the students in the cross-disciplinary group, their mastery of stance and engagement exceeded that of their subject-specific counterparts. Even though both interventions were effective the subject-specific group performed significantly better than the cross-disciplinary group overall (p = 0.043). Their performance was also more consistent across the four dimensions of the scoring instrument. The results of the opinion survey indicate that students from both groups were generally positive about the effect of the respective interventions on their academic writing abilities. The only significant difference is the subject-specific group's more positive evaluation of the transferability of the skills they acquired. The more pronounced skills transfer was probably facilitated by the subject-specific group's deeper level of engagement with source materials and more opportunities for practising content-based writing. Main limitations of the study include the small sample size and non-parallel presentation of the two interventions. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Unit for Academic Literacy / Unrestricted

This study discusses the evolutionist approach to African history as an action plan for challenging the hegemony of English in university education and in the teaching and writing of literature in post-independence Africa. The researcher selected Zimbabwe’s university education and literary practice as the microcosm case studies whilst Africa’s university education and literary practice in general, were used as macrocosmic case studies for the study. Some two universities: the Midlands State University and the Great Zimbabwe State University and some six academic departments from the two universities were on target. The researcher used questionnaires to access data from university students and lecturers and he used interviews to gather data from university departmental Chairpersons, scholars, fiction writers and stakeholders in organizations that deal with language growth and development in Zimbabwe. Data from questionnaires was analysed on the basis of numerical scores and percentage of responses. By virtue of its not being easily quantified, data from interviews was presented through capturing what each of the thirteen key informants said and was then analysed on the basis of the hegemonic theory that is proposed in this study. The research findings were discussed using: the evolutionist approach to the history of Africa; data from document analysis; information gathered through the use of the participant and observer technique and using examples from what happened and/or is still happening in the different African countries. The study established that the approaches which have so far been used to challenge the hegemony of English in post-independence Africa are not effective. The approaches are six in total. They are the essentialist, the assimilationist, the developmentalist, the code-switch, the multilingualist and the syncretic. They are ineffective since they are used in a wrong era: That era, is the era of Neocolonialism (Americanization of the world). Therefore, the researcher has recommended the use of the evolutionist approach to African history as a strategy for challenging the hegemony in question. The approach lobbies that, for Africa to successfully challenge that hegemony, she should first of all move her history from the era of Neocolonialism as she enters the era of Nationalism. / African Languages / D. Lit. et Phil. (African Languages)