Liu 1

Yuanxu Liu(Abby)

Professor C.Pierson

ENC 1101

03 December 2017

Genre Analysis & Application

For the last paper of this class. I will use an assignment description from my high

school English class and analyzing how it is applying in-class concepts.

I will introduce this assignment. This assignment is use a worksheet to write an

interior monologue from a fictional or historical character. In my opinion, sometimes the

worksheet is similar as an outline. They both can better clear the way of thinking and

organize the details of a composition through them. I think there is no better way to write

than by making an outline, like this worksheet of this assignment is help us to create a

character web for a fictional character or a historical character. The worksheet tells us place

the character's name in the center and write a word or a phrase describing the character's

likes, dislikes, and character qualities. And then mark the chief trait the fictional character

will possess or the trait that best represents the historical character.

This assignment is for the whole English class, actually there are only 9 people in our

class, so this is a small community that we were in. The kind of this community would be

Discourse community. Simply community is a social group which can share common things.

And a Discourse is a sort of identity kit which comes complete with the appropriate

costume and institutions on how to act, talk, and often write, so as to take on a particular role

that others will recognize. (p. 278) In Johnss article we can clearly know discourse

communities. Discourse communities focus on text and language, which are the genres that
 Liu 2

allow members maintain their goals, membership, and communicate effectively. (p. 319) She

lists several criteria for a Discourse community. (p. 321)

The first characteristic is a Discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common

public goals. The public goal of this community is to get a good grade at this class and

complete this assignment. Actually, the most important goal is the teacher wants through this

writing assignment to let us learn how to write someones inner thinking and feeling.

The second is that there is communication among us. We discuss the topic and find a

suitable character. Of course, my classmates and the teacher are the literacy sponsors for this

community. Like this assignment, I through the discussion I decide to write Sherlock

Holmess inner thinking and feeling. I think the author of the detective story is also a literacy

sponsor and the story is a discourse for me. They help me find a fictional or historical

character and analyze character himself.

Third, the community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the

communicative furtherance of its aims. We through make list of some characters and find the

best one to accomplish writing. Those also are the literacy activities of the assignment. Those

literate activities more like a preparation process before I write and this preparation process

gives more time to think about what kind of person of real Sherlock is. However those

individual activities have different functions, they all improve the goals.

Fourth, it is uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and

feedback. For example, after I finish the assignment, my classmate will do the peer review for

me and she will provide more source material to make my essay more clearly.

The fifth is similar to the last one. The community has acquired some specific lexis

and also has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and

discourse expertise. In this community, there are some professional knowledge, like I
 Liu 3

describe Sherlock Holmes this character so there are some words about detective. In my

opinion, I think the members of this community we are all like sharing. The value of this

community is we can through this community to share opinion, discuss and work together to

get good grade.

The audience for this assignment would be two people, one is the teacher of this class

another one is my peer review partner. They both are the intended audience and the actual

audience for me. So when I write the rough draft, I can have some mistakes and I can write

assignment as much as possible that means I do not need finish the whole paper. But for the

teacher, I need turn in my final draft and complete paper.

The motives or the exigence of this assignment is to improve our writing skill and

how to analyze a characters inner thoughts and feeling. Like Sherlock Holmes, absolutely he

is the hero with brilliant in this novel but in the depth of his heart he is a aloof person and

lacking in social graces. The inner thoughts and feelings are hard to find, because we need

through the characters body movements and gestures to analyze characters inner thoughts

and feeling. I through choose a conversation between Sherlock Holmes and his friend to find.

Before this assignment due, we have a whole class period to discuss which character you

choose and why you choose this character. There are two options for us, the first one is a

historical character another one is a fictional character. First, we list three characters of each

option on paper. That means we have six characters can choose. After we made list, we all

think those characters are suitable for this assignment but we only need one of them to write

the essay, and peoples opinions about choose character vary from person to person. Some

people say that we need choose a historical character. To them, they think a historical

character is easy to write and choose some famous historical characters can help the audience

easy to read and understand. However, this is a great option if we choose a famous historical
 Liu 4

character who we all know. But in evaluating historical characters we should not lose sight of

specific historical conditions and also not add our own opinion for this character. So, we

through a meaningful discussion and get a better solution in shorter time. Finally, we choose

Sherlock Holmes as the main character of this essay. Our English teacher would be the leader

of this discussion part, she contributed many good ideas to the discussion and help us. We all

discuss together and talk to each other but she talked more than ours.

The rhetorical moves or strategies of this assignment would be use quoting, examples,

and narrative etc. The rhetorical moves are constructions of words that help achieve a smaller

impact, contributing to the texts larger goal. For example, I use an famous part of this story

which is directly shows the character of Sherlock Holmes. So this part is a gateway to

analysis his inner thoughts and feeling from within his heart. And this part also is a perfect

complement to character.

In general, this assignment is a part of writing study. Go back our writing class, there

are some concepts we can learned from class and also can refer to our writing. Like rhetoric,

before I took this class, I do not have a clear definition of this words. Through this class, I

learned some words about rhetoric and knew how to use rhetoric. Rhetoric is a set of

principles for human interaction that organize and explain much of human interaction,

communication, and experience. So rhetoric is an important tool in writing. Many kinds of

rhetorical devices are used to enhance the quality and influence of an article. Personally, I

think this class influences my own writing habits and provides some new methods to think

about writing. Consequently, writing is a learning process which is improve our skills in

some ways.

For what has been discussed above, writing is an ability that we all have. Different

people have different writing skills. However, we need according to our own writing habits to
 Liu 5

choose which concept can help you increase your skill and which concept is not useful. We

dont really understand the true importance of writing, sometimes we just consider writing as

a work of exam or homework. In America, writing is a foundation class for all major.

Learning how to write is a part of life, we use writing at anytime. And writing makes great

contribution to our thinking and analysis ability. In a way, writing has deeper importance in

some ways. Like English writing skill and logical thinking. We need to do more practice to

improve and to find the joy of writing.

 Liu 6

Works Cited

Brandt, Deborah . (1998). Sponsors of literacy. In E. Wardle & D. Downs(Eds.). Writing

about Writing: A college reader (pp.68-98). Boston: Bedford/St. Martins.

Perl, Sondra . (1979). The composing processes of unskilled college writers. In E. Wardle &

D. Downs(Eds.). Writing about Writing: A college reader (pp.738-772). Boston:

Bedford/St. Martins.

Gee, James Paul . (1989). Literacy, discourse, and linguistics. In E. Wardle & D.

Downs(Eds.). Writing about Writing: A college reader (pp.274-295). Boston:

Bedford/St. Martins.

Grant-Davie, Keith . (1997). Rhetorical situations and their constituents. In E. Wardle & D.

Downs(Eds.). Writing about Writing: A college reader (pp.711-732). Boston:

Bedford/St. Martins.

Johns, Ann M . (1997). Discourse communities and communities of practice. In E. Wardle &

D. Downs(Eds.). Writing about Writing: A college reader (pp.319-338). Boston:

Bedford/St. Martins.