(1000-word minimum)

Due:  2/26/24  on our OpenLab site (specific instructions to follow)

Assignment

So far this semester, we have read texts that challenge us to consider what discourse communities are and how these authors and their audiences belong to and move between different discourse communities.

For this assignment, you will write a narrative, for an imagined audience of your choice, that illustrates how discourse communities in your life create a sense of belonging. To do so, you will use your personal experience. You will also draw from what you learned in our course readings.

Include the following in your narrative and use them to support a thesis about what discourse communities offer you in your life and about how discourse communities create a sense of belonging:

  • Think about a discourse community you identify with. Tell a story about a time when this discourse community offered you a feeling of belonging. 
  • Now think about yourself at City Tech or in your major and how that position makes you feel like an outsider. Tell a story about a time when you had a feeling of being excluded from a discourse community related to college or your major. Additionally, discuss why it is important to you to belong to this discourse community and steps you can take to help you develop that sense of belonging.
  • Finally, reflect on these two experiences to draw conclusions about what it means to be part of a discourse community.
  • Throughout, use specific examples, and include words, behaviors, or other signs of the discourse communities that help you tell your story.
  • Additionally, as you write about your experiences and draw conclusions, include one or two quotations from our readings and use those ideas either in support of what you’re saying or as a counterpoint.

As you write, think about who you want the audience to be for this project. Your imagined audience might be someone in the first discourse community you wrote about. Or members of your family. Or your classmates. Or some other audience you can identify. You would write about your experiences differently for each of these imagined audiences, so be sure you are using language, ideas, and organization that would be appropriate for that audience.

Here are the grading criteria for this project, which you can use as a checklist:

  • construction of a narrative that serves a purpose for a particular audience
  • development of an overall point/significance for your narrative
  • use of concrete, significant details rather than generalizations
  • focus on one event or a connected series of events for each of the two experiences you’re writing about
  • integration of one or two ideas from our course texts into your narrative
  • organization of ideas into paragraphs and paragraphs into a coherent order
  • use of tone, language, grammar, and sentence structure as appropriate for your genre, audience, and purpose
  • appropriate choice of language: you can write with whatever diction (style of language) you choose, but it must be the best language for the job– as you see it– for your audience and purpose
  • meet the scope of the project: aim for 1000 words, without padding or unnecessary repetition.
  • attention to finishing touches, in terms of proofreading, formatting, submitting, etc.

You will not be penalized for having negative things to say about college or your major, if that’s appropriate for your chosen purpose and audience.