What is Communicative Context

This chapter helps teachers use genre for effective language learning in the increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse 21st-century language classroom. The chapter provides an overview of the history of the term genre across various academic disciplines and explains why critical knowledge of genres is a key literacy in the 21st century. It discusses current trends of use of genre in the language classroom and gives tips on how to use genre responsibly with multicultural, multiliterate, multilingual students, focusing in particular on the usefulness of critical literacy in linguistically and culturally diverse language classrooms. The chapter also highlights ways in which teachers can use genres to empower minority students—including those belonging to a linguistic minority—and to counteract bias in their classrooms.