Tag: genre

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Discussion prompt for Week of 7/27

In this week’s discussion, you’ll focus on identifying one or more usable models for your own writing, recognizing that we can learn from and build on how others present their ideas. Much like we’ve been working with the templates in TSIS, such models can provide us with jumping-off points that will allow us to develop our own thinking.

I’ve given you a few pieces to get you started. You’ll find a folder of sample texts from different genres in the Unit 3 folder of Assigned Readings on Blackboard. Look through these to take in some of the many possibilities for what research-based writing can look like, and then browse around the web for some more examples. Locate a text that looks/works kind of like what you envision for your own project–something in that same genre (i.e. a magazine article, a memo from an HR department, a PowerPoint delivered to a professional audience, etc.). It doesn’t have to be on the same or even a related topic–you’re just looking for an example of a genre (or type of writing) that you’re going to be writing in.

For your post, once you’ve located an example, please share it with us by linking it to your post, and then talk about what you think of this text as an example of that genre–what are some of the unique or distinctive features of this type of writing? how well does this particular sample work? what do you like about it? are there ways in which you think it is less than successful? what lessons will you take from this to use in crafting your own project? (Bear in mind that we can learn both lessons in the positive–I really like how they did this, and I’m going to try to do something similar–and lessons in the negative–I don’t think they did a good job with X, so I want to make sure to do better).

Your post should be >150 words and must include an embedded link to or a picture of the sample you’re discussing. Please categorize your post as “Discussions/Homework,” and tag it with “week of 7/27,” “genre,” “unit 3,” and [your name]. Posts are due by Wednesday.

Then, for your response work this week, please read through 2 classmates’ drafts (which will be up by the end of the day on Friday). In order to ensure that everybody gets feedback, please go to the list of posts on the blog dashboard. Click “All Posts,” find the post with your draft, and then read the 2 immediately below that. In your comments (>100 words each), please highlight what you think is working well, what you’d like more explanation of, any questions that you have about the content, and any suggestions you have about how best to reach the audience this person is targeting. Your feedback is due by the end of the day Sunday, 8/2 (note this is an extension from the original due date).

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Discussion Posts Week of 7/20

  1. The article I chose to focus on is the article titled ““How to create a culture manifesto for your organization (and why its a good idea).” The author does a great job at conveying her message to the reader. With the use of subheadings, West is able to highlight key companies that had mission statements, but would not necessarily follow them. West begins by explaining how mission statements have been guiding non-profit organizations for a while now. However, instead of focusing on internal ways of working, they often focus on the. external goals. A manifesto is meant to create a a better working environment and create a place where everyone is equal and no one is discriminated against. This article is really informative and people who are in a position of power in the workplace, as well as people who work everyday, will benefit from reading this article. The questions she raises under the subheading “how to create a manifesto,” are questions everyone should ask themselves when going into work. This article is a great addition to the conversation on organizational culture. West does a great job at using certain strategies to appeal to certain audiences to convey her point of view.
  2. For my own research piece, I would like to continue my conversation on the screening process in schools by creating a news article. Websites and news articles, along with scholarly articles, have been at the forefront of my research. I found the most information there and I am going to continue to use those to show why diversity and inclusion is so important in education. I’m going to continue to look at scholarly articles done by professionals in the field as well as websites and news sources as a. format for my own research piece. I feel that there are many audiences that can benefit from this kind of writing. First and foremost students and parents who are going through this process and experiencing some kind of discrimination. In addition, faculty and staff at schools who are the ones admitting and declining students. The News article would be a good way to get this information across because it would be easy to read, yet still showing the importance and the problem with screening. I can incorporate quotes from some of the research I have done before and even add pictures that can be relevant to the topic.
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Thinking some more about genre

In our discussion work this week and next, I’m asking you to think about genre and what shape your final project will take. You’ve got a lot of latitude here to decide that shape, and it’s worth thinking some more about how genre connects to audience and purpose as you do so.

First off, while it’s useful to think of genres as different types or categories (such as we use for sorting movies or music into meaningful ‘buckets’ or groups), genres are not static. Rather, genres are adaptive and organic. The pop music of today does not sound like the pop music of the 1960s. The circumstances, expectations, and preferences have shifted, and what is popular now is different from what was popular then.

Secondly, while genres have conventions and expectations (people come to a particular genre of movies expecting them to follow certain ‘rules,’ for example), these genre conventions aren’t written in stone. Users challenge them all the time, bending these notions to come up with something new. Think about the film Get Out–it was a comedy right? or was it horror? or was it something else altogether?

When it comes to writing, I think it’s helpful to think of genres as usable responses to recurring writing situations. Need to apply for a job? A cover letter gets the job done. It’s not fancy or exciting, but it contains the elements that a hiring manager would want to know, and in a pretty usable way that lets the reader go about their work efficiently. That didn’t just happen–the genre evolved as this situation (people applying for jobs) kept happening, and people kept responding in pretty consistent ways. Over time, this type of text took on a pretty predictable form. Now, people know what to expect from it (the writers and the readers), and that makes it pretty functional for the readers.

It’s important for writers to consider their readers’ needs as they write. This is all the more true outside of a classroom setting. A teacher reader has to read students’ texts–that’s literally their job–but outside of the classroom, readers seldom have that same requirement. Instead, we make choices about what, whether, and how well we read. When we bump into texts that don’t seem to meet our needs and interests, we often just don’t read them. Or we only skim them.

In your project proposal (due Sunday), your task is to settle upon an objective that you think matters–you’ve learned information that you really want to share with people whom you think need it, and if you’re going to accomplish that goal of information delivery, then you need to think carefully about what your reader will expect, value, and want in a text. That’s why you’ve got so much latitude to determine the genre you use, and it’s why you’ll need to think carefully about it.

As you’re settling on a genre, it’s really valuable to look for examples of that type of text that you think work really well, and then to read them closely, paying attention to things like

  • what kind of tone does this author use
  • how long is this text
  • how does the writer talk about/point to evidence
  • what role do graphics play here
  • what kinds of style and syntax does the writer employ
  • how formal is the voice
  • what level of detail does the text provide
  • what sorts of word choices does the writer make

So start poking around to look at some of your options. For next week’s readings, you’ll be looking at sample texts in a variety of different genres, but I’d like you to keep looking for models, as well, so that you can see the above considerations in action and be able to draw lessons for yourself. Next week’s discussion work will ask you to share something you’ve found, so start looking now.

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Week of 7/20 Discussion

  1. In the article, “How to create a culture manifesto for your organization” the author speaks to the audience and provides knowledge on how to grow an organization and simple methods that can allow its mission to be effectively spread. She speaks to those with their own company or who have an idea that they wish to produce on a grand scale and catch the attention of others. She tries to persuade them into using some of the valued manifesto methods  to share ideas and influence in an effective and friendly manner. In order to show the audience how beneficial this practice would be to each company she models some highly successful business that have used the technique and have reached the utmost success. She calls on companies such as etsy, warby parker and b corps which created a manifesto and were able to not only draw in numerous consumers but create a safe and compassionate environment for each employee. The author is very effective in showing the audience that any idea can be mass produced as long as it has the right environment and it’s marketed the correct way. By using this technique any company will be able to expand its ideas and establish a positive work culture.
  2. For my unit 2 assignment I did my research on the discrimination faced by school kids and workers in each environment and how bias and stereotypes can keep them from establishing successful lives. I presented some ideas on how to make environments more exclusive places and how many lives are truly disproportionally affected by discrimination. So many young kids are put through terrible education systems and are exempt from gifted programs because their teachers fail to see their potential and never push them forward. It is important to me that opportunities are created for minority students and that teachers are held accountable for racially profiling their students. So many schools and workplaces fail to set each individual apart and fail to see them for what they can bring to each environment. In my project I hope to spread awareness on the discrimination faced by each student and make it that no child is ever kept from receiving a proper education. I think that when trying to engage with the readers they would mostly connect to first hand accounts of kids dropping out of school due to discrimination or racially charged events. This type of request or statement would most likely be distributed on the pages or sites of companies and organizations that strive to make change for each minority. In order to truly attain the respect and sincerity of the readers it would have to be a well calculated and authoritative speech that would effectively attain the readers sympathy but also convey the message.

 

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Week of 7/20 Discussion, Aaron

  1. In Mollie West’s article “How To Create a Culture Manifesto for Your Organization (And Why It’s a Good Idea)” she uses her introduction to talk about mission statements and what can be used to build a manifesto for your organization very clearly. From here she uses testimonials from a few different organizations (that we can identify because of their success and popularity). This makes it easy to have a concrete image in our head about these wildly successful companies building their manifestos around the values and views that their employees as a whole care about and strive for. The bullet points that West writes down, capturing the list of what the employees wrote down for what they wanted to outline their workplace culture is sufficient enough to make me feel like I was right there in the meeting room with all of those people while they took part in this exercise. The audience is anybody who is part of a company that is looking to develop their own cultural manifesto, as outlined in her last paragraph that gives us a road map to create this. I think this can be a very productive, healthy activity for businesses to work through.
  2. In my own research piece, I will be writing about implicit bias in the field of education. The types of sources I am relying on are book chapters from larger volumes dealing with diversity and inclusion, and studies that have been conducted by professors and psychologists.  In the broader sense of my subject matter and what i think fellow readers of this topic would look to read, I would have to say they would key in on magazine articles (maybe educational journals and other teaching professional writings), newspaper articles dealing with teachers and their bias against minority students, and other studies that have been documented. Most (but not all) of the people who would be interested in reading this sort of thing are already involved in the fields of education and diversity studies, or are in the process of going into these fields. The studies tend to be a little longer than a normal article,  but I think a good length for these readings would be between 5-20 pages in range.
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Discussion – Week of 7/20

With “Shaping an Ethical Workplace Culture”, Steven Olson has written much more than an article. He has put together a handbook. Written for an audience of Human Resources professionals, “Shaping…”  provides these professionals with a clear set of instructions for creating, maintaining and sustaining an ethical workplace culture.

I immediately noticed Olson’s frequent use of graphs, charts and other graphics. One of the things I was taught early in my career was that the higher up in the organization your audience is, the fewer words you should use to make. your point. PowerPoint decks which include graphs, charts, etc. which are well designed, requiring little explanation, are consistently proven to be most effective in driving the conversation, while still prompting the questions you’d expect to hear.

In this case, Olson isn’t going to be receiving real time feedback from his readers, but he is thinking of his audience when he includes those images. In so doing, he’s mitigating the risk of the reader only skimming the text, by re-phrasing it as a graph, chart or table.

I really enjoyed reading “Shaping…”. Olson inspires his readers by breaking what is admittedly a huge undertaking into manageable chunks. With the focus areas and steps clearly defined, HR professionals can take action armed with a proven method, and examples of other successful organizations to emulate.

I can’t believe I’m about to type this, but I think I’m going to create a PowerPoint presentation about the power of consumer activism. I tend to get a bit anxious when creating slides when I know they will be shared with executives, who are the audience I think I’d most like to address in this exercise. Given my topic, I want to use the data and learnings I’ve gathered in an attempt to influence corporate behavior.

Knowing my audience will be made up of executives, it’s best to keep the deck short. I’ll be lucky to get thirty minutes of their time. I’m thinking that ten slides should do the trick. The text and graphics on each slide should reinforce one another. Citing the resources via quote boxes, etc. should be particularly effective. The text can feature links to sources where appropriate, but I think adding an Appendix featuring a full list of citations would be best.

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Discussion week of 7/20 – Samantha Danylchuk

  1. The article I chose to focus on for this week’s prompt is “How To Create a Culture Manifesto for Your Organization (And Why It’s a Good Idea).” The article starts off with the mention of mission statements, and until this read, I always thought mission statements were beneficial for a company. But I agree with the second sentence in that these mission statements focus on external goals and aim to draw the customers in, while not really considering the employees / internal ways of working. One statement that stood out to me in which Mollie West explained Creative Director Sally Clarke said was, “Clarke sums up the company’s culture as “the freedom to ‘keep it weird.’ I think that a company must be authentic and unique for it to be successful, so this saying is definitely an example of turning what they learned at Method’s team and making it actionable for the reader. The article goes on to explain Etsy’s values and principles, and I believe the format of bullet points additionally makes it interactive for the reader to follow the list. By using this writing strategy, the author makes it easy and clear for the reader to understand, especially because at times simplicity is more valuable than being too specific. I believe the target audience here is anyone involved in nonprofits, a social enterprise, or B Corps. This article contains so many great tips and helpful advice that any core team of a company may find useful in attracting its consumers with. Having examples such as in the second to last paragraph with including a list of questions and then having every person come up with a “headline phrase” is extremely effective for this particular audience because it showcases what companies can implement into a daily / weekly routine at work.
  2. For my project proposal, the sort of texts I am basing my work on are those of scholarly sources, websites, and data tables. I am discussing the diversity of the generational gap in the workplace for the purpose that I think this topic will be so beneficial to me in a few years. My readers will have the type of level of detail that explains the characteristics of the generations in the workplace now, but my work will not be too specific where the reader may easily find themselves lost in the material. I plan to take the research I’ve done to focus on topics besides the broader picture, such as professional women and their take on what work-life balance means based off what generation they’re in, the focus on the generational gap in the HR and talent management field, the hospitality industry, etc. I would describe the writing style of my readings to be informative, knowledge-based, and interactive. APA is my citation method, and the types of evidence/sources of my project proposal contains scholarly sources, online articles, and one Ted Talk.
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Thinking about summary and genre

Why summary is important

Summary is a task that you’ll encounter often in research-based writing–as an author, you’ll need to explain the essence of a text that you have worked with in developing your own ideas. Writing an effective summary means offering your reader a genuine understanding of the text, not just a list of its greatest hits. Your reader needs a little context–

  • what is this text?
  • what is the author doing in it?
  • what are the key ideas we should take from it?
  • and then what are you going to do with it?

Because you’ll need this skill regularly, we’re going to practice and use it regularly–we develop writing skills just like any other kind of competency, through examining models, trying it out, and repeating the drill.

You’ll find a handout on Blackboard that offers some more explanation of writing effective summaries. It’s also linked here: Handout on summary

Let’s think about this in terms of the Herring article you just read for last week. If you were going to explain this article to someone else, it wouldn’t be enough to say that Gundemir and her colleagues talk about some of the pros and cons of workplace diversity. We wouldn’t know anything about who Gundemir is and why we should take her word for it. We wouldn’t know whether this article was grounded in good research. We wouldn’t know whether the idea that there are more fruitful and less fruitful ways to frame diversity is central to her argument, or a kind of tertiary point that she mentions. We wouldn’t understand what the article is.

A summary like this, however, would offer us a lot more value: In his article…. from the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, Seval Gundemir, an organizational psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, examines how companies’ diversity policies affect the way that minority employees view their own leadership potential within their companies. She reports data from 2 different studies that she and her colleagues conducted.  She finds that…..

Notice what that summary does–it offers a quick biographical blurb about the author (which tells us that she’s an academic), lets us know that this is a scholarly article (written by a scholar for other scholars in the field), gives us a window into her data set and methods, and then lets us know what she’s arguing. If we know all that, then anything else that you share with us from the article will be a lot more meaningful. We’ll get why it matters and what evidence there is to back it up.

Because effective summary is so essential to writing about research, we’ll be practicing this skill quite a bit in the weeks to come.

Why it’s important to think about genre

This is a term we’ll use quite a bit throughout the course, so it’s worth taking some time to discuss what it means. We often think about genre in relation to music or movies, where we’re accustomed to using it to refer to different ‘types’ of media. These genre labels communicate something to consumers, shape expectations for what that media will be like, and serve as handing sorting mechanisms for us (what we like, what we don’t, what we’re in the mood for, how we would describe something to another person, etc.)

When it comes to genres of writing, that same sort of understanding applies, but it’s worth pushing beyond this simplistic idea of ‘categories’ (as though they’re just sorting buckets) to understand how and why genres take shape.

image of small buckets for sorting crayons by color

For starters, genres tend to responses to recurring writing situations–in other words, the same kind of need keeps popping up and we can use the same sort of text to meet that need. Let’s think about applying for a job. That’s a recurring situation, right? Lots of people find themselves having to do that. And there are ways that writing can help to make that situation work. Now, job application materials–resumes and cover letters–didn’t just emerge spontaneously. They took shape because readers and writers found them to be useful ways of meeting that situational need–front-loaded documents that quickly communicate a job seeker’s qualifications, skills, and experiences. AND they’ve taken the fairly standard form that they do (consistent across many decades) because that pretty standard approach to organizing and formatting makes it possible for the reader to plow through a whole bunch of these documents pretty quickly, while still finding what they need.

Thus, we can think about genres as responsive and organic–developed to meet the needs of writers and readers and changeable depending upon circumstances. They’re not fixed, not static, and not simply interchangeable. We need to match genre to situation–thinking about our readers, about our purposes, about our publication/delivery venues.

Everything you do as a writer is a choice. And our choices are shaped by the situations in/for which we write. This rhetorical situation consists of a few key components, illustrated in the diagram below:

illustration of the components of rhetorical situation--author, audience, purpose, and context

Understanding the rhetorical situation of texts helps us as readers understand what to expect from them and how to read them. And for us as writers, understanding our audience and purpose will help us to craft texts that work for our readers, meeting their needs and expectations and providing them a clear path to understanding.

The texts that you’re reading this week come from 2 rather different genres–Gundemir’s article is a fairly typical scholarly text, written by academics for an audience of other academics in their field and providing the sort of intensive research and analysis those readers demand. The other text by Austin & Pisano is from the Harvard Business Review, a publication with a much broader audience of professionals. They turn to HBR for quick insights into topics they might be interested in and are generally not looking for the same kind of deep-dive. When you know what you’re looking at, it’s much easier to navigate through it.

Now, because most of us are not organizational psychologists (I presume), Gundemir’s text isn’t really designed for us. We have to make our own path through it. There’s a handout on Blackboard (also linked here: Handout on Reading Scholarly Articles ) on how to wade through sometimes dense scholarly articles like this one.