Engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond.
In my opinion, genre analysis is one of the most important concepts when writing. Genre analysis is understanding the conventions and expectations of a specific style of writing. For example, when if you’re planning on writing an informative review then you need to know the components of an informative review. Informative reviews are non-biased information about a topic that shows both sides of the argument. So one, you need a topic that has an argument in the first place. You can’t argue a square has 3 sides because there’s no argument there; it’s a fact that a square has 4 sides. And two, you can’t have an opinion or bias anywhere in the paper. You can’t be unbiased the entire paper and then decide to write, “so I think ___ is better because …” because an informative review is expected to only have facts and data which means no stance from the writer. Every genre has a set of rules and expectations and understanding them will help you 1) write according to the genre conventions and 2) choose which genre will be best for your topic.
Understanding genre analysis can also help which medium will be the best to share your information. For example, a class assignment we did was a multimodal project. We had to choose a topic and we delivered our information by writing a position paper and creating a flyer that had a voiceover. My topic was autism awareness and acceptance so in the position paper I discussed why autism awareness is important and I encouraged people to get diagnosed if they believe they’re exhibiting symptoms. I also discussed why a person may not want to get diagnosed even if it helps them in the long run. That’s because when writing a position paper, you need to add both your argument and a counterargument (which can actually strengthen your initial argument). Because a position paper is much longer and includes more information, it was targeted toward concerned parents who wanted more information and medical professionals who are interested in the topic.
*The image is the cover page of the position paper which was 5 pages long*
We also had to make a flyer which was a much more condensed version of the position paper. I added a brief definition of autism, a small list of symptoms, and websites you can visit for more information. That’s because it’s geared toward a different audience. It’s very unlikely that the general public would take their time to sit down and read a paper about a topic they may not even be super interested in. But, there’s a better chance that they’ll look at a small flyer where they can quickly read the information and decided if they want to learn more.
