I’m working with an architecture course for my FYLC in the fall, so I’m thinking of this specific course for this assignment, but it could be easily abstracted for a non-FYLC course.

Low-stakes writing activity:

Part 1: Think of a building you’re interested in–either a specific building, like the Flatiron, or a building type, like a brownstone. Find an image of it.

Part 2: Spend about 10 minutes writing about the building, in whatever format works well for you, such as a freewrite, a brainstorm, or a bulleted list.

Part 3: Now imagine you’re writing about that building for an AIA guide, for a Time Out NY article, or for a Twitter thread. Transform all or part of what you already wrote into about 150 words in one of these 3 styles.

Part 4: Read someone else’s response. Reply to that response addressing the following: Which genre did they choose for Part 3? How did you know? What features did it have that helped you understand that? What else could they have added to make their writing fit the genre even more?

(If I were going to assign a low-stakes assignment to get students thinking about genre, I would want them to consider a variety of genres, and we might brainstorm a list of different genres we could compose in. But it’s harder to sequence this in an asynchronous class, so I would have a couple to get them started.)

I might have students do a post like the one below.

For todays post, you are going to find and analyze an example of a genre, or  kind of text,  with which you frequently engage.  Make sure to think about texts broadly::

“In academic terms, a text is anything that conveys a set of meanings to the person who examines it. You might have thought that texts were limited to written materials, such as books, magazines, newspapers, and ‘zines (an informal term for magazine that refers especially to fanzines and webzines). Those items are indeed texts—but so are movies, paintings, television shows, songs, political cartoons, online materials, advertisements, maps, works of art, and even rooms full of people. If we can look at something, explore it, find layers of meaning in it, and draw information and conclusions from it, we’re looking at a text. (https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/wrd/chapter/what-is-a-text/)

For your homework, post an example of the kind of text you have chosen. Then below the example, answer the following questions about your text:

1. Why do you personally use these kinds of text?
2. What kind of people seek out these kinds of text?  Why? (Here you might think about age group, interests, profession or professional aspirations, etc.)
3. What do you see as the main elements of this kind of text, including the length, tone, format, organization, and other key features? Make a list.
4. Where is this kind of text found? How is it made available for consumption?