Teaching press release as a hybrid genre in the Academic Writing course (English language, science majors)

Abstract

Science media discourse is dynamically developing in the 21st century, and the genre of a press release is gaining its popularity in the modern context of mediatization of science. Despite that, a press release remains to be underestimated both in media linguistics and in applied linguistics, English for specific purposes (ESP), and academic writing. The purpose of the article is to describe the process of teaching a press release within the framework of genre pedagogy. The first objective is to explore the hybrid nature of a press release by addressing the headlinesecondary headline-lead structure in English and Russian in the deconstruction stage. In the independent construction stage, the English-language press releases of Russian students are analyzed with a special emphasis on framing elements structure. The results showed the following trends. Students ignored secondary headlines, avoided hedges, and chose the favorite expressive means of the Russian tradition — alliteration and personification, thus demonstrating the influence of the Russian language and culture. In the process of writing leads, students used two major strategies. The first strategy was in telling a story of a research event and “forgetting” the scientific component. Another strategy was a different one — foregrounding the scientific component of the text. Students overexplained the topic and problem, making a lead similar to the Introduction of the research article. In both cases, hybridization of a press release seemed to be lost. The research has proven the fact of the significant role of a press release for the Academic Writing course. Undoubtedly, it is a good way to introduce the modern sociocultural context of mediatization of science as well as the variety of genres and their interdiscursive nature. In practice, however, the student writing demonstrates an influence of the Russian tradition in headlines and neglecting the hybrid nature of the genre in leads.