Assignment: Students will select artifacts representing two different discursive genres related to their discourse communities. Students will compose a comparative analysis of these two artifacts, focusing on the parameters and discursive practices of the selected genres. Analysis will be presented in the genre of an academic essay, 800-1000 words, in the format proscribed in the syllabus.

In other words....

In this assignment, you will be analyzing the genres, NOT the arguments presented by the authors, nor your opinions on said arguments. Your focus will be exclusively on the genres themselves. Don't worry, we'll get to interpretations and applications later on.

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The turn-in window for submitting the Final Draft of your Genre Analysis will be open from 11:30 PM on Thursday, April 5, and will end at 11:30 PM on Sunday, April 8. This means you are required to submit the final draft of your essay as an attachment to a short email memo, to your instructor, rmonty@epcc.edu, within that time frame.

04.04: Revising the Genre Analysis Draft

At this point, you should have a later draft of your Genre Analysis essay that is ready for peer review and revision. For today's review workshop, we're going to look primarily at organization and formatting. In other words, we're going to make sure that our peers have all of the components of the essay that were required for this assignment. In order to complete this task, you will first need to pair up with another student in this class.

• Exchange papers, and read your peer's draft all the way through at least once. Do not make any comments, or ask any questions just yet. Of course, do not attempt to offer any GPM suggestions at this time.
• Reread their essay, and use the five bullet points listed below as a sort of checklist. If there is an introduction that meets the requirements listed below, put a check mark next to their introduction. If the introduction is missing, or is missing some of the component, indicate what is needed in marginalia (comments made in the margins).
• Continue this step for the other proscribed sections of the essay. 
• During this process, your instructor will float from group to group to conduct mini-consultations with each pair.
• Once you've completely responded to your peer's essay and have met with your instructor, you may be dismissed from class.
• DO NOT FORGET TO SUBMIT YOUR FINAL DRAFT! 

04.02: Outlining the Genre Analysis

We are going to continue developing our pre-writing into a more workable Genre Analysis draft. For this assignment, use the following outline. Sure, it's a bit formulaic, but at this stage, it will give us starting points as we continue to further develop our individual writing process. Today, let's turn out attention to evaluating the genres and composing an introduction and conclusion. (And if you need more time to work on the "defining" and "recognizing" sections, we can get to that, too.)

• Introduction: In this section, you'll familiarize your readers with your discourse community, explain the purpose of your essay, and outline what your essay will contain. But save this section for last.
• Define the genres: See below.
• Recognize the discursive practices of each genre: See below.
• Evaluate the genres: In your opinion, and based on your analysis, which genre is more effective at reaching audiences within and outside your discourse community? Why did you come to these conclusions?
• Conclusion: We'll use this section to summarize our findings. In addition, you'll propose some possible research questions for later researchers. In other words, what else could your analysis be useful for? What other questions do you still have about these genres?

03.28-30: Analyzing for Genre

1. Before doing any writing, introduce and briefly explain your artifacts and genres to the peers in your small writing group. 
2. Define the genres: What are your artifacts' respective genres? What are the parameters of these genres? Consider similar or related genres, and indicated how your selected artifacts can be differentiated from other genres.
3. Recognize the discursive practices of each genre: How do your two genres function rhetorically? Who are there specific, intended audiences, and how are they used to persuade these audiences?  

03.26:

Before our next class, you will need to locate at least two artifacts suitable for analysis. These artifacts must come from your discourse community, and while they do not need to be on the same topic, they should absolutely represent different discursive genres. Bring your artifacts with you.

Selecting your genres:

You will need to chose two different discursive artifacts that relate to your topic.

Examples:

• Newspaper article
• Academic journal article
• Poster
• TV commercial
• Interview
• Blogs
• Pamphlets
• Movies
• Music
• Diaries
• Radio Ads
• Food
• Clothing/Apparel
• Equipment
• Commentary
• Rules
• Pictures
• Symbols
• Texts
• Websites
• A ton more...

Things to keep in mind:

• Your two texts should be on the same topic, but you will not be analyzing the content of the texts.
• Instead, you will be analyzing the similarities and differences of the two genres.
• YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE YOUR GENRES SELECTED BY OUR NEXT CLASS, AND IDEALLY, HAVE THEM WITH YOU!