Discourse Rules of a Book Essay and a Case Study for the Writing Classes in a University Curriculum of Liberal Arts

Abstract

This thesis explored what the genre knowledge of the book essay is and its discourse rules in the writing classes in a University curriculum of a liberal arts program. Using an example of a class design for book essay writing, it presented the cases pertaining to how the learners internalized the discourse rules and reflected them into their book essays. It put forth an extensive approach, proposing that the discourse rules fall under the premise that the academic book essay belongs to an academic essay, which is located between book journals and academic theses. Also, it presented writing rules which can allow the writers to face their tasks using not only the approach of essays, but also an insight of criticism, using both formal and informal approaches. Learners were able to select their books in a self-directed manner, for the books were related to their own majors and thus were interesting to them. Moreover, they utilized the advantages of the free style forms of writing book essays by selecting their book genre without any restrictions. Also, the program respected the learners’ choices when it came to the components on book essays according to their reading materials by providing, as extensively and diversely as possible, each component in the ‘introduction’, ‘body’ and ‘conclusion’ respectively. Through connecting the writings to presentation classes, this strengthened the learners’ competency of understanding and criticism regarding the transference of their abilities as well as the reading materials and instructions in order for them to establish their authorships. Finally, the learners were able to internalize the discourse rules and they showed that they can reflect them into their writing on their own. This thesis furthermore suggested that the more genre-restricted discourse rules be researched in a more specific way.