Building Genre Knowledge

Building Genre Knowledge traces the writing of four multilingual graduate students in engineering and computer sciences over time, offering a window into the writers’ processes in developing increasingly sophisticated knowledge of academic and professional genres. The writers’ texts, interview discussions, professors’ feedback, and classroom experiences together construct a rich picture of the conflicts that they encounter and the learning resources available to them in different settings over time. Through close examination of the stories of these writers, Building Genre Knowledge articulates a theory of genre knowledge development that allows for complexity across individuals, communities, and tasks. Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, Building Genre Knowledge provides a unique look into the processes of building genre knowledge while offering a dynamic theory of those processes that is inclusive of both monolingual and multilingual writers. It will be of great interest to researchers and practitioners in both first and second language writing studies.