Although writing occurs in every discipline, what this writing looks like will vary across disciplines. For example, writing a lab report in a Biology class is different from writing a literature review in an Economics class or an expert witness testimony in a Courts and Forensics course. Put another way, writing is discipline-specific, which means every discipline has specific genres that are commonly used within that discipline. The purpose of this assignment is to help you become more familiar with what effective writing and communication looks like in your discipline so that you can continue to build your professional ethos.
Identify specific conventions, audiences, and purposes relevant to one’s particular discipline; identify the rhetorical elements of a genre (analysis); and analyze a discipline-specific genre for its genre conventions (analysis).
Instructions
Your major assignment in this module is to do a genre analysis. So, your task is to complete the genre analysis chart. This assignment’s primary discipline-specific genre is Science Writing for a Popular Audience (see #38.4
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). Two other genre types are also relevant: literature reviews (see #23
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) and policy memos (see #31
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).
On the left side of the chart, you will notice different categories for analysis. There are specific guiding questions for you to consider as you analyze your genre. Although you should analyze each category, you do not need to respond to all the questions in each category; instead, you should choose to respond to the questions most applicable to the genre you are analyzing. You put this in the first column: “Analysis of the genre.” Then, you will identify at least one specific example from the genre that offers evidence to support the analysis you put in the first column. You put this in the second column: “Specific evidence from the genre.”
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