Cinnabar and Alabaster

passages
224. "what role, if any, can or should the explicit teaching of genre features play in learning to write new genres? to be more precise, the question can be subdivided as follows:
is explicit teaching necessary?
is explicit teaching possible?
if so, can it be useful?
if so, when, at what stage in the evolution of a writer?
...and, at what stage in the evolution of the writing?
...and, by whom; that is, what knowledge is necessary for the would-be intervener?
and as a counterpoint throughout, we need to remember the implicit negative questions:
can explicit teaching be harmful?
if so, when, and by whom?"
229. a studied group of law students learned to write field-appropriate generic texts: "the students consulted no models," "students were given no explicit instruction," and "the students themselves made no attempt to formulate the rules underlying the genre as they struggled with their writing tasks"--thus explicit teaching is not necessary; students can & do learn without it.
231. (thus/also) "genre knowledge is tacit"--but "the words 'subconscious' and 'unaware' have unfortunate connotations, suggesting as they do either mysterious freudian powers or simple lack of attention. neither meaning is intended"
232. "explicit teaching and conscious learning are not possible except for a limited number of features" for 3 main reasons: "the rules of our language have not yet been described adequately even by the most sophisticated linguists" so how could we teach them w/o knowing them? "the rules that are known are simply too complex and too numerous to be explicitly taught in the context of writing or language instruction (as opposed to courses devoted to linguistics or discourse theory)" & "the number of rules that can be applied in language production by the learner is very limited"--while working to enunciate context, we can only hold a few overt structural rules in mind anyway, so learning a lot of them wouldn't do us any good.
237. so what's left for teachers to teach? "transparent features of form" & "composing strategies," plus "teachers have a central role to play in setting up facilitative environments."
238. of course, exposure alone won't do it either: "there is a probably a threshhold level of exposure: after that point, more reading is not going to make for better writing" and anyway "exposure to written discourse is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. reading alone is not enough, just as exposure to comprehensible input in a second language is not enough by itself to ensure acquision."
241. so, in general, based on specific case-studies, "explicit guidance is not necessary. however, we cannot exclude the possibility that explicit guidance of some kind might have enhanced or accelerated the learning." then again:
245. "at the same time, explicit teaching may be dangerous: if the instructor is an outsider, or alternatively is an insider, with inaccurate representations of the genre; or for those students who are likely to overgeneralize; or place focal, rather than subsidiary, attention...on formal features rather than on meaning.