Overall, this book provides readers with a plethora of different studies that examine a variety of factors withChinese learners. The book is quite successful at providing a thorough review of prior publications that underscoresthe dedication to researching Chinese learners. The end of the book includes a very helpful concluding chapter thatsummarizes what we are learning from research about Chinese researchers and includes specific directions for futureresearch, such as how Chinese learners use memorization as part of the creative learning process and how teachers canemphasize speaking in the classroom while attending to affective variables like confidence. The authors end the bookwith further insights about the relationship of Confucian heritage to learning.

As a researcher of applied linguistics who has conducted several studies with Chinese learners in China, myunderstanding of different topics has been deepened by this book, which has provided great insights for future in-quiries. The breadth and depth of issues discussed along with the diverse research methods and designs make this booka valuable contribution. Without reservation, this book is a must read for anyone interested in working with Chineselearners e as a researcher and/or a teacher.

References

Gairns, R., Redman, S., 1986. Working with Words: a Guide to Teaching and Learning Vocabulary. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Gu, Y., Johnson, R.K., 1996. Vocabulary learning strategies and language learning outcomes. Lang. Learn. 46 (4), 643e679.

Kim, Y.Y., 1988. Communication and Cross-cultural Adaptation: an Integrative Theory. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, UK.

Kim, Y.Y., 2001. Becoming Intercultural: an Integrative Theory of Communication and Cross-cultural Adaptation. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Cindy BrantmeierDepartment of Romance Languages and Literatures, Washington University in St. Louis, USA

E-mail address: cbrantme@wustl.edu

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2013.04.005

Genres across the Disciplines: Student Writing in Higher Education, Hilary Nesi, Sheena Gardner. CambridgeUniversity Press Cambridge, UK (2012). v þ 293 pp.

Recently, disciplinary variation in academic discourse has become a “dominant paradigm” in English for academicpurposes (EAP) research (Hyland, 2011), as scholars have come to realize that each subject domain represents “a wayof making sense of human experience that. is dependent on its own particular practices” (Wells, 1992, p. 290).Continuing in this line of inquiry, Nesi and Gardner report findings of a comprehensive study on university-levelstudent writing. Specifically, the authors draw on the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus, animpressive collection of nearly 3000 positively evaluated student papers, to investigate the range of genres and genrefamilies students are asked to engage in at different educational levels and across over 30 disciplines in UK highereducation. The authors’ aim is to systemically characterize genre families which have been “obscured by departmentalnaming practices” and “neglected in previous studies” (p. 17) in order to improve our understanding of the writingdemands placed on today’s university students.

Chapter 1 focuses on the BAWE corpus itself, other data sources (including interviews), and the multifacetedmethodologies employed. As Nesi and Gardner explain, they utilize the Sydney School’s approach to genre as well asfaculty and student interview data to classify the student papers into 13 genre families and Biber’s (1988) multidi-mensional analysis (MDA) to characterize the linguistic similarities and differences across these domains. In additionto MDA, they use other corpus tools, such as WordSmith Tools (Scott, 2010) and Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al.,2004), to analyze variation in keywords, lemmas, and clusters across genre families, disciplines, and studentlevels. Chapter 2 further details this classificatory system and presents each genre family in relation to its socialpurpose, stages, and networks. The five social purposes, as “reflected in [the UK] national education guidelines” (p.35), are (1) “demonstrating knowledge and understanding”; (2) “developing powers of independent reasoning”; (3)“building research skills”; (4) “preparing for professional practice”; and (5) “writing for oneself and others” (p. 36).

485Book reviews / System 41 (2013) 484e495

These functions are examined, along with their corresponding genre families, in Chapters 3e7. The authors alsopresent their MDA characterization and show genre distribution across disciplines and student levels.

Chapter 3 examines the Explanation and Exercise genres that demonstrate knowledge attainment (e.g., short an-swers, calculations). Though showing commonality of purposes among these genres, disciplinary variation isemphasized, as it is noted that these tasks differ greatly across disciplines.

In Chapter 4, the authors discuss the Critique and Essay genres, especially the latter, a fuzzy label used for a widevariety of writing tasks. Nesi and Gardner delineate the Critique and Essay families each into six types (e.g., expo-sition, commentary) and establish a common functionddeveloping independent reasoning. In terms of disciplinarydifferences, they examine, for example, disparities in reasoning techniques (e.g., logical deduction in philosophy vs.legal consequence in law) and the use of the first-person singular pronoun.

Shifting to research writing, Chapter 5 centers on Research Reports, Literature Surveys, Methodology Recounts,and their relationship to the social function of fostering research skills. The authors explain that such assignmentsoften connect with or lead to final projects or theses and thus, unlike other genre groups, tend to appear together.

Chapter 6 explores the genre familiesdProblem Question, Proposal, Design Specification, and Case Studydthatdirectly prepare students for professional careers. While noting variation across disciplines and levels, the authors usethis social function to connect these apparently unrelated genres that “seem to be positioned at the crossroads [ofacademic and professional writing]” (p. 172), and therefore develop students as both researchers and professionals.

In Chapter 7, the authors focus on the Empathy Writing (e.g., expert advice to layperson) and Narrative Recount(e.g., biography) genres. The authors successfully use the uniqueness and ubiquity of these genres to highlight thebreadth and range of assignments that students are asked to explore as writers to communicate with non-specialistreaders.

The final chapter (Chapter 8) places their research within the context of the field, discusses the complicated natureof the genre networks, offers pedagogical implications, and highlights potential areas for future research.

It is apparent throughout this work that the authors have directed considerable efforts toward developing a complexand comprehensive methodology. Genre families and social purposes are established and mapped to each otherthrough a delicate balance of text-internal and text-external data analyses. The result is a robust, empirical classifi-cation of genre families and functions that feels fluid enough to reflect the range of writing practices engaged withinand across divergent disciplinary communities. The inclusion of Biber’s MDA analysis to plot tendencies and the useof various corpus tools, such as Wordsmith and Sketch Engine, to examine specific linguistic features help charac-terize the genre family network effectively. Such a multifaceted analytical approach not only provides us with acomprehensive understanding of “genres across the disciplines” but also deepens our appreciation of complex issuesinvolved in academic writing.

Though this book provides an impressively detailed account of the diversity of writing assignments in UKuniversities and develops a convincing, logically grouped genre system based on social functions, it is not withouta few minor limitations. Firstly, due to the project’s immense scale, perhaps, depth of the analysis presented is attimes limited. Within genre families, some individual genres are explored briefly, as is the case with the sevenLiterature Survey genres discussed over less than seven pages (pp. 146e153). Secondly, the authors explain thatthe BAWE corpus consists of both first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) writers, but the textual datapresented appear to only include L1 writers and no explanation is provided concerning this exclusion. However,we believe examples from such L2 writers would have been instructive, particularly since those involved in EAPscholarship and pedagogy, including the authors, work with such students. Finally, Essays in Chapter 4 could havebeen more thoroughly delineated in order to clarify the problematic Essay label. Though six essay sub-genres areoutlined and a common social function is suggested, that of “developing powers of independent reasoning” (p. 36),a deeper analysis would have been appreciated as perhaps no genre family has been so “obscured” (p. 17) in theuniversity.

Nevertheless, the book constitutes a substantial and significant contribution to the field, and we anticipate andwelcome more analysis from the authors. It illustrates the diversity of genres that contemporary university studentswrite at different educational stages and across disciplines, thus highlighting, as Bhatia (2002) suggests, the need tobetter assist students, both L1 and L2, in developing the skills necessary to manage the “range of literacies” expectedin academia. We believe that this book will be valuable to EAP researchers, curriculum developers, and teachers,though all concerned with designing or assessing university-level student writing may benefit greatly from Nesi andGardner’s detailed analysis.

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References

Bhatia, V., 2002. A generic view of academic discourse. In: Flowerdew, J. (Ed.), Academic Discourse. Longman, UK, pp. 21e39.

Biber, D., 1988. Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Hyland, K., 2011. Disciplinary specificity: Discourse, context, and ESP. In: Belcher, D., Johns, A.M., Paltridge, B. (Eds.), New Directions in

English for Specific Purposes Research. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI, pp. 6e24.Kilgarriff, A., Rychly, P., Smrz, P., Tugwell, T., 2004. The Sketch Engine. In: Williams, G., Vessier, S. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Eleventh

EURALEX International Congress. Universite de Bretagne-Sud, Lorient, France.

Scott, M., 2010. WordSmith Tools Version 5. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

Wells, G., 1992. The centrality of talk in education. In: Norman, K. (Ed.), Thinking Voices: the Work of the National Oracy Project. Hodder and

Stoughton, London, UK, pp. 282e310.

J. Elliott CasalDepartment of Linguistics, Ohio University, 383 Gordy Hall, Athens, OH 45701, USA

E-mail address: jc102404@ohio.edu

Joseph J. LeeEnglish Language Improvement Program, Department of Linguistics, Ohio University,

383 Gordy Hall, Athens, OH 45701, USA

*Corresponding reviewer.E-mail address: leej3@ohio.edu

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2013.04.006

Language Teaching in Blended Contexts, Margaret Nicolson, Linda Murphy, Margaret Southgate (Eds.). DunedinAcademic Press, Edinburgh (2011). xx þ 279 pp.

Teaching languages via different online tools is a ‘hot’ topic nowadays. The rapid development of information andcommunication technologies and the increasing normalization of computer-mediated communication are quicklytransforming teaching and learning practices in tertiary and other educational sectors. Language teachers today areexpected to incorporate different types of CMC (computer-mediated communication) in their teaching, be it blogs,forums, wikis or synchronous tools. Some teachers have enthusiastically embraced this change and are constantlylooking for ideas and suggestions about effective use of different tools, while others remain anxious and uncom-fortable. That is why a book on teaching in blended environments is most timely and welcome. Written by lecturersand tutors from the Open University (UK), one of the best-known institutions in distance language teaching, this bookis based on authors’ practical experience in blended tertiary and adult-education contexts.

One of the main themes of the book is that teaching in blended contexts has both similarities and differences withteaching in a traditional face-to-face classroom and that some ‘good teaching practices’ can apply to both contexts.The authors of the book, therefore, must have faced a dilemma: whether to focus only on context-specific elements ofblended delivery and write a concise book or whether to discuss general teaching practices and produce a longer, morecomprehensive work. This book takes the second approach and combines (a) general insights from language-teachingmethodology, (b) research on blended teaching and (c) practical ideas accumulated by Open University languageteachers. It will, therefore, be of interest to a wide range of readers. Teachers-in-training and curriculum designers atinstitutions thinking about introducing blended language teaching may find this book particularly valuable.

The book is a collection of 17 chapters written by different authors. Most of the chapters (except for Chapters 5, 6,13, 14, 15, 16) seem self-contained and could function as stand-alone pieces, which, depending on readers’ preference,can be considered an advantage or a drawback. Personally, I view such organization as a strength as it allows readers toconsult relevant chapters quickly and efficiently.

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