Vivian Zamel and Ruth Spack have collected papers spanning 19 years of discussion on
teaching academic literacy, offering an illuminating journey through the issues. In a postmodern
spirit, the editors emphasize the multiplicity of literacies and the value of students' own
ways of knowing. The question arises, though, why this should be specifically taught by applying
a particular pedagogical model, because it appears to be a normal part of any intellectual process
to fall back on previous knowledge and experience when faced with a new task. Indeed, weeding
it out would seem a bigger problem, should anyone want to accomplish that. The recognition and
appreciation of students' previous experiences and earlier knowledge is nevertheless
welcome, and there are a few well-chosen papers narrating personal experiences of struggle
between different cultural identities and logics. Yet many of the papers in this volume,
particularly in its first half, tacitly seem to assume that English is the language of the world and
that the North American context equals universal. Much of the discussion is dominated by a
controversy between discipline-specific (genre-based or disciplinary community-based) and
expressive writing, or, perhaps, rather a crusade against genre-based teaching, given that
proponents of this orientation have not been given voice. From a North European perspective,
this bifurcation into two opposing camps seems hard to comprehend—many of us have
happily combined genre analysis, analysis of cultural differences in rhetoric, and critical
discourse analysis with a view of writing as process and discovery.
