Unit 3 Assignment | Writing in a New Genre

The Assignment

At the end of Unit 2, we asked ourselves what is the most important thing you learned and what audience do you think needs to know about it. For Unit 3, we now are going to think about what is the best genre to tell that audience the information you learned in Unit 2.

Questions you will want to consider for this assignment include: How are you going to get your target audience to listen to your message? Will they listen to a podcast? Watch a TED Talk-like video? Read an op-ed column from a newspaper or magazine? Read the words to a poem or song? Read a political cartoon? Scroll through an Instagram carousel? When selecting your genre to work in, you just need to make sure that it is new to you and appropriate for the audience you choose. No middle school kid is going to sit still for a 30-minute political speech even if it’s about how to keep from being bullied. Wrong genre, poor analysis of your audience.

Transforming your writing in this way will help you think about how the conventions of genre not only relate to the audience you are trying to reach, but also ultimately shape the writing and the presentation of information.

 

This Is a Two-Part Assignment

The first consists of the document your produce in a new genre. The second part consists of an artist’s statement that explains your process of creating this document and the rhetorical choices you made.

Part I: WRITING IN A NEW GENRE

Choose one of the following genres (pick a genre that would appeal to your audience):

  • script for a TED Talk
  • X (Twitter) thread (at least 10 posts for the thread)
  • podcast script and (optional) recording of the podcast
  • an infographic
  • an op-ed column
  • an Instagram carousel
  • an informational video intended for TikTok or Instagram
  • a short video for YouTube
  • a brochure
  • an editorial comic
  • a listicle
  • a poem or song
  • a children’s book

Use your research to draft a document for your specific audience using the format and conventions of the genre you have chosen. Be sure to pay attention to the unique qualities of your genre, including appropriate length and formatting. Also, be sure to give credit to your sources in order to avoid plagiarism. Note: If there is another genre you would prefer to write in, reach out so we can discuss your choice.

Part II: ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Explaining the rationale behind our actions and decisions is an important kind of reflective writing because it makes visible what is otherwise invisible. Composers of all sorts often write an Artist’s Statement for their audience that explains their inspirations, intentions, and choices in their creative and critical processes. It helps the reader understand the process that led to the final product by providing insight into what the author set out to do, how they did it, and what they might do to further improve the piece.

In other words, in an Artist’s Statement, you step back and consider what you did and what you might have done differently and might do differently in the future. This is exactly what you’ll do in this reflection about the genre project you’ve just completed: you will write about the choices you made, why you made them, what happened, and how you feel about it now. So for this document of at least 600 words, you’re going to create your own reflection about your project, and do it in a way that tells us what happened and when — the chronology of thought and actions that took you from your first ideas about it all the way to the completed project.

There are three sections in your Artist’s Statement:

  1. Before I began:Think back through everything you did – every choice you made and why – before you actually got to work on the genre project. Here are the things you need to talk about:
    1. Context: Give us the background for this project. Remind us how you became interested in the topic.
    2. Rhetorical Situation and Related Choices: Tell us the “why” of your project. What was your purpose for making this project? What audience did you want to direct this information to? Why that audience specifically? Where did you see your piece being shown or distributed to your audience? What strategies—whether written or visual did you use to reach your intended audience and achieve your purpose? How did you try to communicate the credibility of your piece?
    3. Genre Considerations: Why did you chose the genre you did? What made you think that genre would be the best one for your audience? For example, if you did a listicle, what made a listicle the best way to get the information to your chosen audience?
  1. Doing the project:Walk us chronologically through the process you went through to get it done: this then this then this… What went well? What didn’t go so well? What did you have to change and when? Did you throw out your original idea altogether, and if so, why? Who/where did you turn to for help? When did you panic (if you did) and what did you do about it?
  2. Now that it’s “done”: How do you think it turned out? What, given all the time and money and expertise in the world, would you have done differently? What works great, what are you happiest about? How easy or hard was it? How do you feel about having done something like this as a college project — can you see using any of this in the future (tools, analysis, etc.)?

 

Here are the grading criteria for the Writing in a New Genre project:

Part I: Your original piece…

  • uses one of the genres from the list provided or one we agreed on.
  • follows the conventions and formatting of your chosen genre that you explored and listed in your Artist’s Statement (Part II).
  • Incorporates information from the research done for your reflective annotated bibliography and gives appropriate credit in order to avoid plagiarism.

Part II: Your artist’s statement…

  • is thoughtfully written and follows the assignment guidelines.
  • clearly and convincingly explains why the genre you plan to compose in makes sense for the audience you have chosen to address.
  • describes the before, during, and after of your process in adequate detail

 

So, to recap, in Unit 3, you will: 

  • Write about the research you did in Unit 2
  • Address the audience you think needs to know what you learned in Unit 2 (just the most important parts)
  • Write in the genre that you think will best reach that audience
  • Write a one-page Artist’s Statement that explains your process

Resources for the Unit 3 New Genre Assignment

For Inspiration:

Student Examples

Helpful Guides:

More Resources for Creating Multi-Modal Texts

Sound: 

Graphics: