Part I
What is my assignment?
This assignment is your opportunity to reach a public audience through one of the following public genres:
- Presentation (page 202)
- News Article (page 215)
- Editorial or Op-Ed (page 225)
- Advertisement (page 232)
- Wikipedia Entry (page 239)
- Photo Essay (page 245)
- Graphic Memoir (page 251)
- Fairy Tale (page 266)
You can choose the genre, and you will need to student the rhetorical situation and genre expectations for your chosen genre in Chapter 9, where you will find helpful analysis of the genre and a roadmap for creating a composition of your own in that genre.
It is important that you track your writing process (in a notebook, journal, or digital doc)—from brainstorming to drafting to revising to editing—and that you know/study your Public Genre Major Composition inside and out, including its rhetorical situation and all the choices you made regarding rhetorical appeals and genre conventions and why these choices are effective ones, because you will submit an Author’s Statement (which has a separate assignment sheet) along with your final draft.
What is my topic?
That is up to you. Your topic should be relevant to a public audience, considering we are working in public genres. The genre should be appropriate to the topic (as well as to the audience and purpose) you choose. If you don’t have anything to write about, post a question in the Class Café, and we can help.
I want to write an Op-Ed about whether mask are helpful during coronavirus pandemic. This is a current debate in the US so there is plenty of material online about it.
What are the requirements?
Since there are eight different genres to choose from, there are eight different sets of requirements. In addition to the rhetorical situation and genre expectations and conventions for your genre of choice that are explained in Chapter 9, you must meet the following requirements:
- Presentation: Compose a 5- to 7-minute TEDTalk-style presentation with three or more visuals to a public audience. Submit the script and visuals as your final draft. EXTRA CREDIT: Record and submit a video of your speech with your visuals behind or beside you in the screen—you must be on the screen the whole time. Watch and study a few TEDTalks to see how this genre works.
- News Article: Compose a 700- to 800-word news article on a local topic. Write for your community or your campus. News articles are purely objective informative stories of facts and events. Read your local newspapers or community newsletters for ideas.
- Editorial or Op-Ed: Compose a 750- to 1000-word argument about a current debate going in your community. The purpose here is to persuade, not to inform or to complain. Read editorials and op-eds for ideas. Pick a topic that is personal to you.
- Advertisement: Compose a series of three print advertisements for a product of your choice—these three ads must share the same slogan and general theme (like the classic “Got Milk?” ads.) Each ad must effectively target its audience and persuade them to purchase the product. A TWIST: Instead of selling something, you can create a series of Public Service Announcements, which seek to inform the public about a problem or persuade the public to stop or change a behavior or adopt a new one. In short, a public service ad does not sell anything: it aims to serve the public.
- Wikipedia Entry: Compose a 1200- to 1500-word Wikipedia entry for a topic that doesn’t currently have an entry on Wikipedia or for a current entry that is sorely lacking in content. You should pick a topic that you know well, and you should link the facts to reputable web sources your readers can search for themselves. Study other Wikipedia entries to see how they are organized and developed.
- Photo Essay: Compose a photo essay with no less than 15 photos, each with helpful captions, that work to tell a story that evokes sympathy from and/or persuades the target audience.
- Graphic Memoir: Compose a graphic memoir with no less than 12 detailed frames (with text and hand-drawn or computer-generated images). A graphic memoir will tell ONE story from your life, not your entire life story. Think of this as a short but significant chapter in your life, not your whole life. The story should have a plot—a storyline with meaningful conflict that reaches some resolution in the end.
- Fairy Tale: Compose a 1000- to 1200-word fairy tale in which a generic character defined by one trait (old man, poor woman, silly boy, vain girl, etc) experiences something that teaches a lesson. Consider all the genre elements discussed in Chapter 9.
When is it due?
What do I need to study in order to do this well?
- Your genre of choice in Chapter 9 in The Bedford Book of Genres, 2nd Edition
- Real-world examples of your genre of choice
Part II
Author’s Statement Assignment Sheet
What is my assignment? What is an Author’s Statement?
Imagine your Public Genre Composition is awesome, that you are proud of it, and that I have asked you if I can display it in my classroom like a painting for future students to admire and use a model. Imagine I then asked you to explain to future students why you chose the topic and the genre and to explain all the choices you made in response to the rhetorical situation and the genre conventions and how those choices made your public genre composition effective. That explanation is an Author’s Statement, and here is your Author’s Statement assignment:
Compose a 600- to 800-word author’s statement to accompany your Public Genre Major Composition. An author’s statement “explains the process of creating something from the author’s point of view, so that [the author] can shed light on the intended purpose of a piece and the decisions that were made during its creation” (Foreman 47). In layman’s terms, your Author’s Statement is an explanation of another composition you’ve already completed, in this case, a Public Genre Composition; the Author’s Statement requires you to document and evaluate the choices you made as you moved through the writing process of composing your Public Genre Composition (Foreman 47).
It is worth noting that an author’s statement is not an easy task; it requires “sophisticated rhetorical thinking,” and I expect that sophisticated rhetorical thinking when I read and assess your author’s statement.
Study pages 94-97 to understand the rhetorical situation, rhetorical appeals, and genre conventions that are necessary for an Author’s Statement. Pay attention to all eight elements listed there, and pay special attention to all the elements of genre you are expected to adhere to in your Author’s Statement.
What is required in my Author’s Statement?
- Typed, double-spaced with multiple paragraphs
- 600-800 words (you may go over 800 words if you need to)
- An introduction, body, and conclusion
- Explore the following questions and refer to pages 94-97 for a list of guidelines for author’s statements:
- Why did you choose this topic? Why this genre?
- What is your purpose? Who is your intended audience?
- How does your composition appeal to ethos, logos, and pathos? And how do these appeals help you achieve your purpose?
- What is the mode and medium? And why are these the best for achieving your purpose with your intended audience?
- How does your composition adhere to or depart from the elements of the genre you selected?
- How does your composition adhere to or depart from the design and style conventions for this genre?
- Did you use any sources? How did they inform your ideas and your rhetorical choices?
- What are you proud of in your public genre composition?
