【FD Workshop】A Genre Approach to Professional Communication

A “professional” is someone who possesses and uses the skills with which to communicate with members of his or her target discourse community. Acquiring these skills often requires concerted effort, even for native speakers of the target language. In the case of nonnative speakers of that language, the task can sometimes be a very challenging one. What can be helpful is a genre-approach to mastering what is necessary for effective communication. “Genre” as it is used here refers to the type of target communication event, for example, a research article, a policy paper, an oral presentation of a research project. Genres for professional communication have evolved to promote efficient exchange of ideas among members of a discourse community and therefore need to be mastered in order to gain a voice in that community. This workshop will start with an introduction to the concepts of English for specific purposes, including its basis in systemic functional linguistics and the concept of “discourse community.” This will be followed by the OCHA process and PAIL product-oriented approach to the research article, using move analysis and identifying hint expressions that guide the reader through the text. Ideas on how to use corpus linguistics tools will also be introduced to support the writing process. Although writing will be the main focus, the concepts to be covered can aid efficient reading and even informed editing and reviewing of manuscripts.

Dr Judy Noguchi is Dean and Professor in the Faculty of Global Communication at Kobe Gakuin University.

This workshop is for University of Tokyo graduate students who are interested in science writing or teaching of science writing. To attend the workshop, please e-mail Akiko Katayama at <akatayama @ g.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp> by Oct. 26.