LyCE Estudios - Facultad de Filosofía y Letras - Universidad ...

LyCE Estudios 15 (2012)
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newspaper?), and therefore, students might not know how
informal or technical the review should be. This has a direct
impact on the way students then write the review, since their
linguistic choices might not be very appropriate, affecting the
desired effect they want to cause.
The sample texts included in textbooks (differently from most
authentic reviews) unfold very neatly toward the Final evaluation
and Recommendation. In other words, the generic structure is
more uniform and regular than what we have observed in
authentic texts. Therefore, boundaries between one stage and
the next appear to be more easily identifiable. This possible
simplification makes them very adaptable, even to the more
elementary levels of instruction.
Most movie reviews included in EFL textbooks seem to have the
same overall function as authentic texts. However, the way in
which this general function is fulfilled in the texts seems to be
different. Authentic texts have a more flexible, less linear way of
unfolding towards the achievement of their purpose. They fulfill
the functions of the text less neatly, in stages with boundaries
that are fuzzier and in a more variable order. In contrast, sample
texts found in EFL textbooks tend to fulfill the same functions
(they include film data, a summary, general and specific
evaluations of different aspects of the movie), yet they seem to
be more carefully put together and to unfold more smoothly
towards the recommendation that the reviewer wishes to make.
Movie reviews found in textbooks typically end with a clear, quite
explicit Recommendation, whereas in authentic texts this stage
tends to be more implicitly expressed. It may, actually, be
considered an unnecessary step since the language used
throughout the review already helps the reader decide whether to
watch the movie or not. In textbooks, however, this final step
appears explicitly as a separate stage. This could be related to
an interest in having students practice resources that express
exhortation, or to the need to make sure that the function of
recommending is clearly expressed, rather than relying only on
implicit meanings expressed in the rest of the text.
Since the purpose of this genre is to give our opinion about a
movie in support of a recommendation that we make so that