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

by Chloe Stiggelbout | Xchanges 8.2

Implications and Final Thoughts

Implications

This research has implications for students and teachers learning to write in a new genre. Most directly it can be applied to students learning to write a medical school cover letter. After surveying 16 people in the medical field and interviewing a first-year medical student, it was found that getting different types of people to review their letter and looking at examples of successful cover letters was the most useful way to learn to write in this genre.

Although this research seems most relevant to medical school applicants, it can be applied in a broader sense as well. Genre is flexible, in every field. Once the student can learn to recognize the audience and situation, genre can be tweaked to fit the style of the writer.

Because genre is flexible, this research can also be useful to teachers of first-year composition courses. The professors of such courses have the responsibility to help the students gain knowledge that will transfer to different genres. Amy Devitt believes that genre awareness is crucial to the teaching and learning of new genres. When students can learn to recognize the differences between genres and mark new genres as unfamiliar, then they are better able to write in the correct construct of the assignment.

Further Research

This study is merely a stepping-stone in the endeavor to discover how genre is learned and taught. Other researchers could further the research by interviewing multiple other medical students then comparing and contrasting their methods. Shadowing a student during his or her entire writing process would also offer some important findings. Another extension to this would be to conduct the study at other schools and with other student populations. Looking at the broader context of genre, there are thousands of other specific genres and studying how students learn to write in those genres is valuable.

Final Thoughts

Genre is a very complex term. Multiple studies have been conducted that attempt to figure out the best ways to teach students how to transfer and apply their writing skills between different genres. Through a quantitative and qualitative study I was able to define the genre of medical school cover letters and establish a few major methods of how to write it. Audience recognition was emphasized as a major factor when writing the letter. If the audience doesn’t care about the writing, the writer hasn’t captured the basis of the genre.

Although genre has many structural features, it is much more flexible than may be assumed. So many students are taught to write the “five paragraph essay” and transfer that to all different writing situations and genres. However, writers must be able to adapt to their audience and escape the mindset that genre is a rigid idea. Acknowledging flexibility in genre creates writers that constantly think about writing as a process rather than a fixed set of rules.