essay

English 1001: Textual Analysis Comparison Assignment (Essay #2) worth 100 points

· Find and compare two or more texts written on the same subject in different genres.

Purpose: To allow you to gain a better understanding of the importance of genre and discourse community knowledge to writers

To allow you to better understand the ways writing differs among genres

To allow you to strengthen your skills in writing in the genre of a textual analysis (a form of academic essay)

Task:

· Locate and photocopy at least two texts on the same subject from different genres. For example, you could find an article within a scholarly journal (whose audience will be knowledgeable in the field) related to your major or field of interest and then find an article on the same topic that was written for a general audience. Alternatively, you could look at an editorial on a political issue, a government report on the issue, and several message board posts or letters to the editor in response to the editorial.

· After you have analyzed each text, do a comparison of the texts considering each of the four genre features we have been analyzing with sample genres. Once you have done the genre analysis, consider how you could generalize your findings about these genres in a five-to six-page academic essay. Include the two articles you are analyzing and bibliographic citations to these articles in your completed project.

Getting Started:

· Create a matrix that shows the similarities and differences of each of your texts considering the four areas of genre analysis we have discussed in class. Use the heuristic for analyzing a genre to aid you in developing your matrix.

Heuristic for Analyzing a Genre:

Rhetorical Issues: Audience and Purpose Questions

· Who is the intended audience?

· What discourse community or (communities) is this audience in?

· What are these readers likely to know? want to know? why?

· How much time will this audience want to spend reading this document?

· What is the writer’s purpose?

· What does the writer want the reader(s) to do after reading?

Content Questions

· How does the writer select content material to achieve his/her purpose with this particular audience?

· What types of information are considered appropriate in this genre?

· What types of information would be considered inappropriate in this genre?

· What types of evidence are acceptable to support claims?

Structure Questions

· How much information is considered appropriate?

· What is a typical sequence for information in this genre?

· How is the structure serving the audience’s needs and the writer’s purpose?

Style/language Questions

· How formal or informal is the language?

· What specialized vocabulary is used?

· How long/short are sentences and paragraphs?

· What other language features do you notice?