This text explores fundamental issues relating to student literacies and instructor roles and practices within academic contexts. It offers a brief history of literacy theories and argues for "socioliterate" approaches to teaching and learning in which texts are viewed as primarily socially constructed. Central to socioliteracy, the concepts "genre" and "discourse community," are presented in detail. The author argues for roles for literacy practitioners in which they and their students conduct research and are involved in joint pedagogical endeavors. The final chapters are devoted to outlining how the views presented can be applied to a variety of classroom texts. Core curricular design principles are outlined, and three types of portfolio-based academic literacy classrooms are described.

This text aims to examine the nature of text and context, using theoretical models based in the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL).

Language and Context breaks new ground in our understanding of the relationship between register, genre and context. Leckie-Tarry argues convincingly and engagingly for a functional theory of language which specifies register in terms of contextual and linguistic features, and which suggests a discursive relationship between the two. Moving beyond the limits of much of today's theory, this accessible volume develops a theoretical understanding of the relationship between text, context, langage function and linguistic form. Helen Leckie-Tarry, a specialist in the area of 'register and applied linguistics', died in 1991, aged 49. Although she had finished a large part of this work, her notes and draft chapters have been extensively edited by Professor David Birch. David Birch is currently Professor of Communication and media Studies at Central Queensland University, Australia, and previously taught at Murdoch University, Western Australia, and the National University of Singapore.

Genre studies and genre approaches to literacy instruction continue to develop in many regions and from a widening variety of approaches. Genre has provided a key to understanding the varying literacy cultures of regions, disciplines, professions, and educational settings. GENRE IN A CHANGING WORLD provides a wide-ranging sampler of the remarkable variety of current work. The twenty-four chapters in this volume, reflecting the work of scholars in Europe, Australasia, and North and South America, were selected from the over 400 presentations at SIGET IV (the Fourth International Symposium on Genre Studies) held on the campus of UNISUL in Tubarão, Santa Catarina, Brazil in August 2007—the largest gathering on genre to that date. The chapters also represent a wide variety of approaches, including rhetoric, Systemic Functional Linguistics, media and critical cultural studies, sociology, phenomenology, enunciation theory, the Geneva school of educational sequences, cognitive psychology, relevance theory, sociocultural psychology, activity theory, Gestalt psychology, and schema theory. Sections are devoted to theoretical issues, studies of genres in the professions, studies of genre and media, teaching and learning genre, and writing across the curriculum. The broad selection of material in this volume displays the full range of contemporary genre studies and sets the ground for a next generation of work.

Text, ConText, and HyperText presents recent developments in three related and important areas of technical communication: the design of effective documentation; the impact of new technology and research on technical writing; and the training and management of technical writers.The contributors are all authorities drawn from universities and industry who are active in defining and analyzing the role of computing in technical documentation and the role of documentation in the development of computing technology. This first synthesis of their diverse but related research provides a unique conceptualization of the field of computers and writing and documentation.The book first examines techniques for writing online documentation and the value of usability testing. It presents new research into the impact of human factors in screen design and designing online help, and looks at the impact of desktop publishing on documentation, and at visual literacy and graphic design.Artificial intelligence and documentation processing are then addressed with discussion of data acquisition, automated formatting in expert systems, and document databases; the uses of HyperText in documentation; and the future of technical writing in this new environment.Text, ConText, and HyperText concludes by examining the training and management of documentation groups: how they "learn to write" in industry, management of large-scale documentation projects and their effect on product development; and the "two cultures" of engineering and documentation.Edward Barrett is a Lecturer in the Writing Program at MIT. Text, ConText, and HyperText is included in the Information Systems series, edited by Michael Lesk.