"Writing to Acceptance: How Students Learn to Write The Medical School Cover Letter"

About the Author

Chloe Stiggelbout is a junior biology major and marine biology minor at the University of Washington. She plans on applying to medical school in 2014 with the ultimate goal of becoming a pediatrician. Along with her studies, Chloe competes as a long jump and triple jump athlete for the University of Washington track and field team.

Contents

Abstract and Introduction

Methodology

Data

Discussion

Implications and Final Thoughts

Works Cited

Abstract

Because recognizing genre is such a useful tool in the writing process, scholars are becoming increasingly interested in the topic of genre and how different genres can best be taught. For example, Amy Devitt (1993) argues that genre is a social construct, rather than a classification, and that genre awareness is the best way to teach students knowledge about writing that will transfer from situation to situation and genre to genre. There are ongoing studies on how well genre awareness works, and case studies that focus on how students learn to write or teachers teach in specific genres. This paper will focus on a particular genre, the genre of the medical school cover letter. Through a quantitative and qualitative study, I will research how medical school applicants learn to write a successful cover letter. This entails a survey of multiple medical students asking what kinds of methods they used to achieve success in the genre, an interview of one medical student detailing the process she used to write her letter, and a text analysis of a few cover letters so that I can define the genre and the important elements that it entails.

Introduction

Composition scholars have become increasingly interested in how students learn to write in particular genres, and how students recognize the unique features of a genre and then apply them effectively to their writing. Multiple methods have been researched and assessed to see which is most effective. However a general study is not always a useful approach to learning a specific genre. In-depth studies of different genres are necessary to gain the knowledge and perfect the learning of every genre.

My research delves into writing the genre of the medical school cover letter and how students learn to write in this context. In this article I will argue that genre is flexible. In order to make this argument I will draw on past research, and correlate it to the findings of my study. Through a qualitative and quantitative study including a survey of multiple people in the medical field and an interview of a first-year medical student, I will examine the styles and features necessary to write a successful medical school cover letter. I will end with a discussion of the elements and techniques used to write a medical school cover letter, and then talk about the importance of situation in genre.

How Genres are Learned

In composition studies, the question “How do people learn to write in different genres?” has been a prominent one. Previous studies (e.g., Bawarshi & Reiff, 2010; Ford, 2004; Freedman, 1987; Haas, 1994; Rounsaville, Goldberg, & Bawarshi, 2008; Wardle, 2007) have been conducted that try to answer questions that deal with what past experiences and what learned traits will transfer from genre to genre. For example, Amy Devitt (2004) argued in Writing Genres that ‘‘the historical evidence suggests that people use familiar genres to act within new situations . . . and existing genres serve as powerful antecedents in shaping newly emerging genres’’ (p. 204). In other words, people rely on what they believe are the rules of existing genres to deal with new situations.

People repeatedly encounter these new situations, which call for particular writing styles, and this leads to the surfacing of new genres. Devitt (1993) argues in “Generalizing About Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept” that “Genre and situation are so linked as to be inseparable, but it is genre that determines situation as well as situation that determines genre” (p. 578). According to Devitt, genre is a social construct rather than a classification. The understanding of genre is shifting away from just layout, format, and other visual cues that mark a type of writing. And now, the writer must account for style, content, and most importantly audience because genre is embedded in the social constructs of writing.Some scholars have disagreed with Devitt’s approach to learning about genre by claiming that genres are better learned through explicit teaching rather than situational experience in the field. For example, Michael Carter (2004) did a case study on the genre of the laboratory report. He was trying to determine whether genre writing is something that can be taught or whether it simply comes with practice in a certain field.  He found that the students who participated in LabWrite, a genre teaching program, scored significantly higher in the scientific concept, scientific reading, and had a more positive attitude towards lab reports overall. This implies that genre can be successfully taught with explicit teaching rather than considering the ability to learn from experience.

However, most scholars agree that explicit teaching of genres is not the most effective way to learn genre. Freedman (1993) argues in her article “Show and Tell? The role of Explicit Teaching in the Learning of New Genres” that “explicit teaching may even be harmful since students may misapply what they learn and misdirect their own intuitions and inclinations for effective writing” (p. 193). Teaching students explicitly can open the door to negative transfer, similar to how the five-paragraph essay is being transferred. Many elementary-level writers are taught the five-paragraph essay as a building block for writing all essays. However, that format is incorrect for many genres of writing. When this format is transferred over to an irrelevant genre, the term used is "negative transfer." Freedman reports in her study that school children represent narrative structure without ever being taught explicitly. Agreeing with Devitt, Freedman believes that people will learn genre on their own through being in the situation rather than explicit teaching.

Although composition scholars have done studies on how genre is taught and learned, more research is needed on how students learn to write specific genres. Scholars, like Devitt, show the necessity for delving into particular genres and how they are formed. In this paper, I will explore the genre of the medical school cover letter in order to be able to add to the conversation about how genres are learned.