The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

word choice and the attitude that resonate within the writing. Since the writer’s writing
is done at an academic level imposed by the academicians at Sacramento State University,
the writer is expected to write on a formal persona rather than informal. In other words,
depending on the writer, he/she can be friendly, informative, experienced, or articulate in their
writing. Hence, bear in mind that a writer from English 109M/English 109W will end up taking
more courses unrelated to their academic discourse community that there is really no single
persona a writer assumes in all of their college writing; each rhetorical situation will demand a
different approach to voice, style, and audience.
Example: Mark Bauerlein presents to me as a person who is concerned about the
changes and development of the digital age. He is very analytical, intuitive, and has
an ability to foresee changes that will be taking place that can make some impact in
our society. He is very concise and specifically uses words that are simple and brief.
• Text
Text means different things to different people. Text can mean a research paper or a lab report,
Web site, a PowerPoint presentation, flyers, handbook, or a brochure; thus, most teachers
consider them as part of the academic discourse because they are used to
communicate with writers or students. What comes along with text is the use of graphs, diagrams,
photos, images, and etc.
Example: Mark Bauerlein’s article is two pages long, written in a simple MLA format
using Times New Roman font type and font size of probably nine. On the title page,
however, he uses a different font type like Arial Narrow that is bolded and a font size of
36, in order to make the subject matter more visible to the reader and catches the reader’s
eye.
Each academic discipline has its own texts. For example, the accounting students who come to
the Writing Center have their own texts to analyze. They come with graphs, and ledgers with
columns and rows. The accounting discourse community has specific texts that are used in
response to the purpose and audience of their own discourse community.
In turn, format that comes out of the text in response to the recurring rhetorical situation, is called
“genre.”
So, what is “genre?” Most of the English 109M/109W have struggled with this concept. I,
myself, have struggled with it too. Thus, there really is no clear definition of this particular
concept, but to make it easier, simple examples are movie genres such as spaghetti western,
suspense-thriller, or romantic comedy. In these examples, genre is used to classify a certain type
of movie. As for academic writing, genres are used as well. For instance, a case report or book
reviews are considered genres. In other words, typical kind of genres requires typical responses
that pertain to the purpose and audience in accordance to the academic discourse community.
• Context
Of all the features that have been discussed, the context take on the broader social, cultural, and
historical aspects that influence writing. For example, a writer comes to you and tells you that
he/she has to analyze a scholarly journal written by a certain author. Part of the assignment is to
analyze the context of the author’s journal. You as a tutor need to educate the writer that part of
the context involves a summary of the author’s background, and how the background impacts the
author’s discourse community. In addition, part of the context relates to the aspects of audience’s
economic class, their level of expertise with the subject matter, their background, and personal
beliefs.
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