The session centers around understanding discourse communities and genres in academic writing.
Personal anecdotes related to arriving to class, emphasizing the importance of preparation (e.g., forgetting a laptop).
Focus on exploring discourse communities and academic writing for the upcoming assignment.
Discourse Communities: Groups that share a common language, norms, and practices associated with a particular field.
Genres: Different types of writing/forms within discourse communities that adhere to specific conventions and styles.
Rhetorical Situation: Examining how context, purpose, and audience influence communication.
Exploratory Essay: Students will write an essay that:
Examines how disciplines share information and create new knowledge.
Involves selecting and analyzing one scholarly text from a journal.
Focus on integrating personal academic interests related to professional goals to make assignments more relevant.
Students are to select a peer-reviewed scholarly article that aligns with their academic interests or major.
Importance of identifying current topics in the field; rely on articles published in the last five years.
Students will learn how to search for scholarly articles effectively and differentiate between types of sources (academic vs. popular).
Students are required to find a second genre related to their topic aimed at a different audience (e.g., social media posts, magazine articles).
This includes comparing how the same topic is approached in academic versus popular contexts.
Drafting the Essay:
Introduction
Clear definitions of discourse communities and genres.
Explore how knowledge is constructed and shared within their discipline.
Incorporate questions that provoke thought about the field's construction and sharing of knowledge.
Identify how newcomers integrate into the discipline through academic avenues (e.g., attending classes, engaging in discussions).
Analyze the audience and rhetorical techniques used in the selected academic and popular texts.
Discuss differences in language, formality, and presentation between scholarly and non-scholarly work.
Utilize the library's resources (e.g., research guides, peer-reviewed article databases).
Importance of choosing appropriate databases and understanding how to filter search results effectively.
Peer-reviewed articles, professional blogs, trade magazines relevant to the field.
Criteria for selecting popular articles should align with the academic article's topic, even if not perfectly matched.
Follow citation styles appropriate to the discipline (e.g., APA, MLA).
Ensure the reference page is separate from the page count of the actual essay content.
Review and revise drafts before submission, ensuring to compare both genres adequately.
The essay should be about 5-7 pages in length, excluding the reference page, and adequately reflect all assigned elements.