In the article, "Teaching Critical Genre Awareness," by Amy Devitt, explains the way genres work when writing and that most of the time, genres can constrict the writer to only use one style of writing unless the writing is part of a larger problem in society. Devitt argues that students should learn how to write genres through learning about "critical genre awareness" so that they can make generic choices. Critical genre awareness stems from rhetorical awareness, or being aware of things that hold meanings in people's lives. Rhetorical awareness allows for people to not be confined in writing typical five paragraph essays and allows for them to add more personal elements in their writing because writers would understand the context even more. Devitt uses many sources, who I assume are authors or researchers, to further explain genre awareness and how it should be taught to other students. Devitt also uses very advanced diction in order to show how knowledgeable she is about the subject and adding more credibility. She also includes a detailed chart, that contains three pedagogies as a guide to write different genres.

When I first read the title, I first though of movies because the word "genre" is usually associated with movie titles and what kind of movie it is. Most of the time it is more common to hear "genre" used in movies than it is with a style of writing.

Devitt uses the word "genre" as an umbrella term for every type of writing and only gives examples as a five paragraph essay or a three-part thesis. With these examples, she mentions that teachers can show students how to write those types of paper but they lack personality because students will only write about an argument and the not the ideologies about it.

For the most part, all I have ever learned was to write five paragraph essays, precis, and annotating the text in every essay I have written. Throughout all of this writing, I was never able to write with a personal input into the essays, unless it was just commentary to support the argument. This led to not doing a lot of creative writing, even though I have no creativity in writing whatsoever, growing up. If teachers explored different genres of writing, students would have been more well-rounded in their writing and be more knowledgeable about different types of genres in writing, rather than just the typical introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion type of essays.

Devitt does give insight about the existence of other types of writing because most of the time I do not realize there is a genre besides the "What is the argument?" essays. Also, being exposed to more genres would have allowed us to have more variety in our vocabulary because students, like myself, would be more open to other author's ideas and we would have gotten a taste of those type of diction. For example, I had no idea what a "pedagogy" was and simply it was just another word for "teachings" or the methods of a teachings but, now I know how to use that word thanks to this new type of article I have encountered.

Another argument that Devitt makes is that teachers choose their types of genres to teach students and it is not necessarily teaching, more like showing how it would look like. Teachers choose to assign five paragraph essays because it fits "California Standards," but, within those standards, they still could have chose more variety in their articles and possibly even try a different type of genre, instead of the typical five paragraph essay. As far as I remember from middle to high school, we were given packets of how to write the five paragraph essays, words for transitions and commentaries. When so many people receive those packets, it starts to feel that we are all writing the same type of paper because we were all using basically the same words.

I thought that Devitt's idea of genres fit so well with how students only writing the same types of essays  because she claims that "The spread of a genre creates shared aims and social structures" (pg 342). Since most students do not use too many different genres, unless it is like a poem, we do not really share too many aims or different social structures unless it is outside of school and on other forums, for example, social media.

Since starting college, I am kinda glad that I am being more exposed to different genres because I have not written a 5 paragraph essay in a while and usually it is more. (internally cries) Also in this RWS class, I am a bit conflicted on how I feel about writing these types of blogs, because it is so new to me, and also the different type of essays we will be writing in the future.