Nigel Caplan

Genre Explained!

Do you have questions about genre-based writing instruction? We have answers! 40 of them!

Genre Explained is a new book of frequently-asked questions (and answers!) about genre-based teaching. Together with my amazing co-authors, Chris Tardy (University of Arizona) and Ann Johns (San Diego State University), we provide a guide for teachers who are new to genre, those who are genre curious, and experienced genre teachers who want to share the pedagogy with colleagues and administrators.

Available now from the University of Michigan Press. Use code UMS23 for a 30% discount just for reading my blog!

Introduction to “Essential Actions for Academic Writing”

Here’s a short video that Ann and I made to introduce teachers to the method and structure of Essential Actions for Academic Writing:

Genre-based writing, “preparation culture,” and the marshmallow test

Trying something new here. I’m sharing my pre-recorded presentation from the 2022 TESOL conference, where I spoke as part of the Second Language Writing Interest Section panel on genre-based writing across ESL contexts.

My bit was supposed to be about teaching genre in intensive English programs (IEP), but I took the opportunity to reflect on the mindset of “preparation,” which I think is an impediment to good writing instruction. Along the way, I take swipes at the five-paragraph essay (of course), traditional points-and-average grading, and the obsession with assessment.

At the end, I introduced the approach that Ann Johns and I take in our new textbook, Essential Actions for Academic Writing, available now from University of Michigan Press.

New book! Essential Actions for Academic Writing

I am excited to announce the release of Essential Actions for Academic Writing, co-authored with Ann Johns and published by the University of Michigan Press.

Essential Actions is a textbook for novice writers: students who are just starting their journey in (English) academic writing. Through a genre-based, research-informed, language-focused, rhetorical approach, we guide writers through the essential actions of academic writing: explaining, summarizing, synthesizing, reporting and interpreting data, arguing, analyzing, and responding. Each action is embedded in meaningful genres and contexts, both academic and beyond the classroom. Finally, teachers can choose from four extended, scaffolded projects that show how academic writers navigate among multiple actions and genres.

Essential Actions is suitable for ESL/EAP classes as well as monolingual and multilingual writing classes and can be used in intensive English programs, community colleges, developmental writing programs, first-year composition classes, and graduate preparation courses.

A teacher’s guide and other resources (including an entire extra chapter on source-based writing that we couldn’t fit in the book!) are available on the companion website.

For more information, please take a look at my post on the Michigan blog or visit the publisher’s page to purchase (print or ebook) or request an exam copy. Essential Actions is also sold by Amazon (print and Kindle format) and VitalSource (textbook rentals).

If you have any questions about teaching the book in your course, or to arrange a workshop for your colleagues, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

Ungrading online discussions

The fact that we are not graded each week lessens the fear that we might miss a task/quiz/reading and in fact, I think it encourages us to do/read more widely because there is not so much pressure to do perfectly on one assignment. It’s kind of like a buffet (where we have to try everything, but will like some things more than others and can get add’l servings!)
I also tend to like to participate in discussions a lot; sometimes this makes me feel self-conscious because I don’t want people to think I’m contributing so much just for a good grade. But your course isn’t set up that way, so I don’t have to worry about that perception.
participant in an MA TESL course (used with permission)

Two weeks into my ungrading experiment, and things are going quite well. One of the interesting side-effects has been a shift in the way I ask students to engage in online discussions. The go-to method in online teaching is to require a certain number of posts and replies, perhaps with a rubric that differentiates between substantial and superficial responses. But that leads to a checklist attitude, increases stress, and results in very dull discussions. In addition to encouraging minimum effort (what’s the least I have to do to accumulate points?), it also discourages students who actually do want to engage, as seen in the feedback I quoted above. I hadn’t thought about it from that perspective, but it makes complete sense.

Don’t panic! Emergency and/or planned hybrid teaching

In the classic BBC comedy Dad’s Army about the Home Guard during WWII, one character-Lance Corporal Jones-would respond to every week’s presumed crisis by losing his cool and frantically shouting, “Don’t panic! Don’t panic!” It’s a peculiarly British comedy: the series depicts one of the darkest times in recent history by both valorizing and lightly mocking the veterans and others who, too old or unwell to serve abroad (hence dad’s army), volunteered to protect the homeland from the constant yet distant threat of invasion.

In the past 2 years (2 years!), I sometimes wonder if I sound like Corporal Jones urging my colleagues-and myself-not to panic while we lurch (sorry, pivot) from in-person to online to hybrid to everything at once. Covid is both lapping at our shores and a faint dark cloud on the horizon. And it’s nothing to laugh about. I watched re-runs of Dad’s Army as a child in a (mostly) stable, (somewhat) powerful country, (largely) at peace and free of the dangers that justified Jones’s comedic panic. I live through these times without those assurances and without the benefit of hindsight. So, yeah, sometimes I panic a little.

Ungrading the Grads

I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about ungrading in the past year. Gmail always tries to autocorrect the word to upgrading, which as my colleague pointed out, is actually quite apt. I happen to have an unusual schedule of 3 very different graduate courses this spring, so I’m going to dive in and ungrade/upgrade the whole lot of them. And blog about it, of course.

What Jonathan Larson teaches us about writing

I’ve been haunted by Tick, Tick … Boom, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s movie adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s autobiographical musical, since I saw it (twice) the weekend it was released on Netflix. It helps that my eldest son immediately decided to learn the stunning opening number, 30/90, on the piano. But beyond the background soundtrack to my afternoons, I can’t stop thinking about the lessons the film offers for academic writing. (Err, spoilers follow, but seriously, watch the film!)

It’s not passive voice you hate: it’s intransitive verbs

Was there ever a grammatical form more maligned than the poor passive voice? Read that sentence again — see what I did? Look, I get it. Strunk and White told you not to use it (while writing several verbs in the passive on the very same page); Word’s grammar checker assaulted you with wiggly green lines; even Orwell warned you against it (and I’m a fan of everything else he wrote).

The problem is that the passive voice is only one way of disguising agency, and I don’t think it’s always the most insidious. When I see rants on Twitter about the alleged use of passive voice in news articles, the examples that are highlighted are almost never actually in the passive voice.* That’s not to excuse disingenuous writing, but it’s important to name the culprit.

How remote learning changed online learning

I really don’t want to write one of those “One year ago today was the last time I …” posts I’m seeing on social media. Mourning what and who we have lost is important. But instead, I want to think about ways in which teaching and learning in higher education have changed in those 12 months, and what these developments mean for us now.