Genre analysis of the argumentative letter: The case of ESL novice writers.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study described the genre of the argumentative letter and it analyzed 30 argumentative letter samples generated by 30 undergraduate ESL college students, considered to be novices to the discourse community of undergraduate writing without having previous instruction in the genre of the argumentative letter.
The rationale for the study stemmed from the following: (a) the need to research shorter argumentative genres in addition to longer professionally written genres, (b) the paucity of research on discourse features of student writing, and (c) the under-researched role of discourse community in the teaching of writing to novice writers. The concepts of genre, discourse community and the expert-novice continuum were central to this research. The goal of the study was to contribute to better teaching and testing practices of the argumentative genres favored on college entrance exams in the U.S., thus being powerful gate-keeping tools.
The research methodology employed was genre analysis of steps and moves based on Swales' (1990) CATS Model. Following the analysis of six exemplars of the argumentative letter published by CUNY, a "model" called Create-an-Argumentative-Space (CATS) was built. The CATS was used as a coding framework.
The analysis revealed that novice argumentative letters contained CATS and non CATS type of steps. The non CATS steps---insertions---were classified as generic (not belonging to a specific genre) and other genre insertions (belonging to genres other than argumentative letter). The steps were in CATS-like or non CATS-like order, the latter being divided into (a) idiosyncratic and (b) repeated step order.
The move order was CATS-like or non CATS-like, the latter being divided into (a) repeated CATS moves, (b) repeated CATS moves within insertion frames, and (c) CATS moves within insertion frames.
Insertions were considered to have implications for (a) future research into teaching small argumentative genres and (b) the issue of genre transfer. The description and classification of the argumentative letter was considered a work in progress that might encourage future genre studies and improve the teaching of argumentative genres.