Genres in academic writing

Introduction
Students are asked to write many different kinds of texts. Depending on your
subject, these could be essays, laboratory reports, case-studies, book
reviews, reflective diaries, posters, research proposals, and so on and are
normally referred to as genres. These different genres, though, can be
constructed from a small range of different text types.
If, for example, you are asked to write an essay to answer the following
question:
Discuss possible solutions to the problem of international credit control.
You could answer it in the following way:
1. Define credit control, say what it is and give an example;
2. Explain why international credit control is a problem in business today,
and support your explanation by evidence from your reading;
3. Describe some possible solutions to the problem of credit control in an
international context. Again support your suggestions with evidence
from your reading;
4. Describe the advantages and disadvantages of each of the possible
solutions;
5. Decide which solution you would prefer and give reasons.
So in order to answer the question you need to be able to write texts to do the
following:
Define
Give an example
Explain why
Support your explanation with evidence
Describe a solution
Describe advantages and disadvantages
Choose
Explain why
Bruce (2008) calls these various texts cognitive genres, but I have called them
Rhetorical Functions: see Functions.
Here, we will pull together these different functional text types to show how
the larger genres (or part genres) you are expected to write can be
constructed from these shorter functional texts.
But, first you need to decide which genre you are expected to write. Which
genre am I expected to write?
1. Essays
2. Reports
3. Case Studies
4. Research proposals
5. Book reviews
6. Brief research reports
7. Literature reviews
8. Reflective writing
9. Introductions
10. Research methods
11. Research results
12. Research discussions
13. Writing conclusions
14. Research abstracts
15. Research Dissertations & Theses