Professional Development

How Not to Perish: Using Genre

Analysis for Professional
Development: An Interview with Prof.
Judy Noguchi
Ryan W. Smithers
Kwansei Gakuin University
Regardless of whether you are looking for work as a part-time, full-time, or
tenured faculty member, you are likely familiar with the three- or five-publicationrequirement minimum that universities frequently request applicants to meet tobe considered for an opening. In fact, once CVs have been screened to see whomeets the requirements listed, a ranking of applicants based on publications andpresentations will follow—the higher your score, the greater your chance of being
asked for an interview. Notably though, it is publications where most of us seemto be coming up short. Punctuating this point, Miller (2013) declares that 82%
of university hiring committees in Japan have been dissatisfied with the numberof publications that applicants have, which suggests that a great many in our field
are either not submitting papers for publication or are failing to have their work
accepted for publication.
Irrespective of which camp you fall into, this interview with Prof. Judy
Noguchi, a pioneer in the field of genre analysis in Japan, might be the panacea
you have been looking for to help you get your next article published in a top-tierjournal. Conversely, if you are keen to learn how to improve the writing of yourEFL students, Judy’s expertise may guide you to a new way of teaching writingthat has both you and your students becoming strong advocates of genre analysis.
This interview begins by probing the origins of Prof. Noguchi’s passion for65

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genre analysis within the field of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Following
this, Judy answers some questions about her own research in an appeal to logos,
pointing teachers to genre analysis as a tool for improving their own writing
and pedagogical practice. Finally, this interview concludes with Judy’s advice on
getting published as one form of professional development.

Prof. Noguchi’s Background

Ryan Smithers (RS): After about 37 years in academia in Japan, you have leftyour mark on the field by revealing how researchers can improve their writing byanalyzing the genre of research articles from an ESP viewpoint. Could you tell us
how you first became interested in ESP within the field of TESOL?
Judy Noguchi (JN): The very first English class I ever taught was an English
for Science and Technology class; there was no such thing as ESP at that time.
A university had heard that I was a chemistry major and asked me to help teachEnglish to their chemistry majors—who they said were struggling—and I justcould not refuse.
RS: At what point did your interest in ESP lead to an interest in genre
analysis and corpus studies?
JN: Well, after struggling in a field that had no guiding theory, methods or
textbooks, I decided I needed to do something. I attended a week-long summer
seminar at the University of Michigan, where I heard John Swales pondering
about what was happening in the introduction section of research articles.
He said he thought that authors were following a set pattern of information
presentation. With my background in science, and the work that I was doing
editing English research papers at that time, I did not think he was saying
anything so remarkable. I was very surprised when everyone made such a fuss
about “moves” and “steps”. That is the process you use when you start a research
project. I am so happy that Swales came out and clearly stated his CARS (Createa-Research-Space) model (1990). That crystallized things for me.
Eventually, when I decided to do a Master’s degree in TESL, I wrote all mypapers from the ESP angle. This made me want to learn more about the languageof science. In my Ph.D., I was able to combine ESP and corpus work for my66

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dissertation on how science constructs knowledge using language.

Applying Genre Analysis

RS: Recently, you have worked in applying a genre analysis-based approach toacademic writing. So that our readers understand more clearly, could you briefly
explain in simple terms what genre-based analysis is when applied to academic
writing?
JN: All writing that is done for a discourse community is likely to beclassifiable into genres, as defined from the ESP viewpoint, but this excludes
writing done to teach writing. That is, the shared or common rhetoricalorganization, lexicogrammar, and even formatting of texts are what comprise agenre. So, for example, the writing for a technical report on a product will be one
kind of genre, while an operation manual for the same product will be a different
one. A genre analysis-based approach to academic writing entails having students
carefully examine a genre so that they can learn how to create their own written
product that is appropriate to the genre that it is written for.
RS: In your own work (1997, 2003, 2006), you have developed two
frameworks to use during genre analysis: PAIL, a product-oriented framework,
and OCHA, a process-oriented framework. Can you explain these briefly?
JN: I developed the PAIL and OCHA concepts while trying to find ways
to explain and raise awareness of the linguistic and genre features of texts to mystudents. The PAIL framework was what I presented at a KATE conference in
Korea (Noguchi, 1997). The P stands for the purpose of a text, A is the audience
for which it is aimed, I is the information that it should contain, and L is thelanguage features that are employed to present this information in order to
respond to the purpose as expected by the target audience.
The OCHA framework came later, as I continued teaching students in thesciences. I kept telling them to look for PAIL. Of course, after you start looking
for something, you begin making observations. This is how I came up with
the OCHA approach to raise awareness of the structural features of a text of a
specific genre. The idea comes from the scientific approach in which you firstobserve a phenomenon, classify your observations, hypothesize about what you
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can do next, and then try to apply your hypotheses to see if they work.
RS: How can PAIL and OCHA help academic writers?
JN: I believe academic writers who want to get published can use the PAIL
and OCHA frameworks to learn more about what publishers are looking forin a paper. I recommend writers pick a paper on a topic similar to the one thatthey want to write about from the journal that they are aiming to be publishedin. First, use the frameworks to discover the rhetorical, grammatical, lexical, andtechnical features of every section of the paper, and then try to emulate the genrefeatures in your own paper—do not forget to look at the PAIL of the title!
RS: I understand that you are passionate about using a genre-based approachto academic writing, and even prioritize it in your teaching. Could you first tellme a little bit about the students that you teach genre analysis to, and second,
could you explain about the successes and problems you have experienced in
educating your students or others in this approach to academic writing?
JN: I have used the genre-based approach with high school, undergraduate,
and graduate students, as well as in translation training courses for adults(Noguchi, Misaki, Miyanaga & Terui, 2016). To begin, I introduce the idea of agenre analysis, and then have students analyze English texts. To do it successfully,
I believe you need to start by having students analyze simple texts because therules are the same regardless of text complexity. During the analysis, students areworking to identify the language features of the text, so that they use what theylearn to create a similar text of their own. For example, I once had my university
students do genre analysis on safety rules for elementary school kids to learn
how to successfully develop safety rules for biosafety level 4 labs (the highest
level for a research laboratory that deals with extremely infectious materials).
Alternatively, I have let students choose their own texts to analyze. Students lookat women’s fashion magazines, sports news, event posters, employee instruction
manuals, etc., to discover the genre of the medium so that they can replicate it.
The students may not always come up with a good creation, but that does notmatter very much. I think the genre-based approach is a way of teaching themto fish, as in, “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish,
and you feed him for a lifetime”. I am trying to teach the students how to view68How Not to Perish, OnCUE Journal, 10(1), pages 65-72

language and how to be able to deal with new genres as they encounter them.
RS: For researchers who are new to publishing or struggling to get published,based on a genre-based approach to writing research, what steps would you
recommend they take to get published?
JN: They should check out examples of writing in the target genre: research
articles, book reviews, or chapters for a book. If possible, build a corpus ofexamples. This does not have to be that complex. Your purpose is to figureout how the grammar and words are used. You could simply print out two or
three sample articles of the writing that you are hoping to emulate, and thenbegin systematically analyzing each of the sections in the articles, starting withthe abstract or introduction. Then, identify the move structures and the hint
expressions that guide the reader through the texts. For example, if you want tograb the reader’s attention at the beginning of an article, you use a hook move.
Different parts of the text have different purposes, which is what writers need to
be aware of. To study moves—the purpose of a portion of a text—I recommendthat you cross out all of the keywords, all of the words that are very important toyour field. In the case of the title of a research paper, for example, what you areleft with is a skeleton of sub-technical vocabulary that provides hints about what
is going to be explained in the paper, such as a method, a survey, a mechanism,etc. In the conclusion section of a research paper, you should find conclusion
moves signaled by phrases such as “in sum” or “in conclusion”. Finally, after you
have completed your genre analysis, do the writing and have a colleague read it
and comment on it.

Advice on Writing up Research and Publishing

RS: To conclude our interview, I would like to ask you for some general advice
about the publishing process and writing for publishing. Firstly, there are a lot of
people who have conducted and written up small-scale research projects as partof a Masters or Doctoral degree, and who would like to publish their work. Whatadvice do you have for those wishing to convert their essays or assignments into
publications?
JN: Find a journal with a scope that suits your work. Do not give up! If you
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get rejected by one journal, try submitting to another. Remember that a research
paper is simply stating your claims based on the research that you have done. It is
important to get feedback from others about your work. That is the real reason
you want to publish.
RS: What are some of the problems commonly experienced by authors
trying to write up their research, and how can writers avoid or overcome them?
JN: From my experience, I find that writers have problems focusing properly
and trying to include too much in one paper. After finishing writing a paper, it
is a good idea to take a break from it. Do not look at it for a couple of days,
and then reread it with a fresh set of eyes, paying special attention to the thesis
statement and the content of the paper; be judicious. Remove anything that does
not reflect back to the thesis statement. It is always painful to have to cut what
you have spent a great amount of effort and time on, but in the end, it is about
quality, not quantity. Also, when re-examining your paper, make sure that thestructure and logic are sound. Make sure that every sentence supports what you
are trying to say in that specific move, and that each paragraph is connected tothe others within their respective sections.
RS: In your experience as an established author of textbooks and research
articles, what sort of advice do writers typically receive from editors? Should
writers heed all of the advice or is there room to negotiate with editors?
JN: You will get a wide range of advice from minor to major. The minor
comments can sometimes be troublesome, but, in the end, you need to rememberthat the editor is viewing your work from a bird’s eye view, and it is probably rightin most cases. To get a book chapter published before, I needed to extensively
rewrite the chapter about three times for one contribution!
RS: In closing, is there anything further that you would like to add to theinterview or words of wisdom that you could pass along to the readers of the
OnCUE Journal?
JN: Writing is a way to gain a voice in your discourse community. As a
responsible member of that community, you should be willing to share yourideas and also be open to criticism, with the ability to defend your ideas or tochange them if necessary. You need to keep developing.
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Conclusion

Professional development is especially important in higher education because it
is not only crucial to student improvement, but also, as Judy mentioned above,it is our duty as responsible members of the college and university educators’community. Although it is very easy to become complacent about professional
development when you already have a job, neglect could become the Achilles
heel to your success in this field. So why not avail yourself of the opportunity toutilize some of the tips that Judy spoke of in this interview to move your writing
and pedagogy in a direction that produces outstanding results for you and yourstudents. Apply any one or all three of the genre analysis models discussed in thisinterview: Swales (1990) CARS model, Noguchi’s (1997) PAIL model, and/or Noguchi’s (OCHA) model. By creating your own corpus and analyzing thewriting of a target genre, you may find that your writing improves and the process
becomes a lot less of a struggle, not to mention that your publications might startfinding their way into more and more top tier journals. Besides, as Judy herself
said during the interview,“writing, from a professional viewpoint, is probably one of the most important
points in professional communication because it crosses time and space; itis very important because you never know who is going to be reading yourwriting and who is going to be affected by it and how it is going to contributeto whatever it is that you want it to contribute to.”References

Miller, R. (2013). Publishing options to enhance your CV. The Language
Teacher, 37(3), 72-73.
Noguchi, J. (1997). Materials development for English for specific purposes:
Applying genre analysis to EFL pedagogy. English Teaching, 52(3), 303-318.
Noguchi, J. (2003). Teaching ESP writing: OCHA in a CALL class.
Cybermedia Forum, 4. (September, 2003) Retrieved from http://www.cmc.
osaka-u.ac.jp/j/publication/for-2003/index.html
Noguchi, J. (2006). The science review article: An opportune genre in theconstruction of science. Bern, Germany: Peter Lang.
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Noguchi, J., Misaki, A., Miyanaga, S., & Terui, M. (2016). Towards a robust,
genre-based translation model and its application. In M. Minami (Ed.),
Handbook of Japanese applied linguistics (pp. 385-414). Berlin, Germany:
De Gruyter Mouton.
Swales, J. M. (1990). English in academic and research settings. Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press.

Author bio

Ryan W. Smithers is a full-time lecturer at Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan. He
is also currently a Ph.D. student at Kyoto University and Chief Editor for the Osaka
JALT Journal. His 18 years of TEFL experience have inspired his research interests
in pedagogical grammar, reflective practice, and lifelong learning. ryanwsmithers@
gmail.com
Received: September 13, 2016
Accepted: April 5, 201772