Tom Romano teaches writing and language arts methods in the Department of Teacher Education at Miami University
in Oxford, Ohio. He is the author of Clearing the Way: Working with Teenage Writers (Heinemann, 1987) and Writing
with Passion: Life Stories, Multiple Genres (Boynton/Cook, 1995).
Review
"I find Romano�s multigenre approach to research inspiring."
--The Quarterly
Heinemann Publishing Web Site, March, 2002
Summary
For Tom Romano, the multigenre paper is much more than a writing assignment. It is a multilayered, multivoiced
literary experience. Genres of narrative thinking require writers to make an imaginative leap, melding the factual
with the imaginative. Writers can't just tell. They must show. They must make their topics palpable. They must
penetrate experience. Multigenre papers enable their authors to do that.
Blending Genre, Altering Style is the first book to address the practicalities of helping students compose multigenre
papers. Romano discusses genres, subgenres, writing strategies, and stylistic maneuvers that students can use in
their own multigenre papers. Each idea is supported with actual student writing, including five full-length multigenre
papers that demonstrate the possibilities of a multigenre approach to writing. There are also discussions of writing
poetry, fiction, and dialogue, in which readers will discover how students can create genres out of indelible moments,
crucial processes, and important matters in the lives of the subject under inquiry. One chapter alone is devoted
to helping writers create unity and coherence in their papers.
Imbued with Romano's passion for teaching, Blending Genre, Altering Style is an invaluable reference for any inservice
or preservice English language arts teacher. The only prerequisite is a desire to help students write.
Table of Contents
1. Multigenre Stirrings
2. A Place to Start
3. Teacher Expertise: Timing
4. The Damp of the Night
5. Starting Out, Multigenre Models, Workshop Routine
6. Teacher Expertise: Requirements and Structures
7. Openers
8. Teacher Expertise: Genre Possibilities
9. Obsession, Fact, and Fantasy
10. Teacher Expertise: Future Engineers and the Tie-Dyed Set
11. Talking Dialogue
12. Prose Fiction
13. Learning What We Need
14. What of Traditional Research Papers?
15. The Many Ways of Poems
16. Teacher Expertise: Branching Off
17. Risk and Exodus
18. Indelible Moments, Central Acts, Crucial Things, Meaningful Places
19. Teacher Expertise: Emotional Weight/Informational Grounding
20. Genres Answered
21. Expressive Writing
22. Identity, Race, Classical Literature
23. Unity and Fulfillment
24. Evaluation and Grading
Epilogue: Taking the Plunge
Appendix: Multigenre Teachers' Addresses
