First Draft Due: by class Monday, October 19th in your individual folder
Final Draft Due: by class Monday, October 26th in your individual folder
In case it’s helpful, you can download a PDF version of this prompt here: Genre Analysis Prompt PDF
Overview
This quarter in Writing 2, we will be exploring the concept of genre. We will spend time considering how genre influences not only what the authors of a text include in their writing, but also how genre both shapes and is shaped by the context, audience, and purpose of that text. In other words, we will be exploring the dynamic relationship between genre and writing—in relation to both our lives in academia and in contexts outside of that space.
This assignment, in particular, is meant to help us think about how we can become better writers and communicators by becoming more aware of the genres we write in and how they interact with specific audiences, purposes, and contexts. In other words, we will develop a broader awareness of what we already know about genres, how they work, and what they do. Genres are not just textual categories; they are embedded in our speech, daily encounters, and even social structures. So, genre awareness can help us develop better understandings of the wide variety of discourse communities in which we participate daily – how they construct, maintain, and spread information and social functions.
The Project
For this first writing project, you will choose a genre that you have first-hand experience with (i.e., one that you write in or read regularly, one that is used frequently by a specific community with which you identify, one that is used frequently in your academic and/or professional field, etc.) and write a 1200 word (at least) explanation of how to write in that genre.
Things to keep in mind:
- Your “how to” explanation should be geared toward a specific audience. (Feel free to write it as a letter, if you find that this approach helps.)
- You should pick a genre that you know well and draw examples from at least 3-4 texts from that genre that you have already read/are familiar with. These examples should be used to help ground your explanation/ discussion and prove your points about how specific conventions work in your chosen genre and why.
- As explained in class, in this context, we’ll be thinking about “text” in a broad understanding of the word. So, while you can choose to write about a genre in a medium other than solely written, alphabetic texts (i.e., movies, television shows, video games, etc.), you’ll want to be sure that all of your examples stem from the same media type.
- To clarify, these texts should be used as examples of the genre to demonstrate the conventions. They should not be outside research about the genre.
- You can format your writing in typical paragraph style, or you can choose to write an introduction and use bullet points, subheadings, or numbers to organize your points, followed by a conclusion (as so many “How to …” documents do).