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last.updated 9.14.08

Generic Expectations

Purpose

Now that you are familiar with the concepts of genre, today's class will give you the opportunity to practice identifying generic elements.

Discussion I–Social Networking Genre Project

• What questions do you have about the Social Networking Genre Project?

Activity I–Collaboration

In your assigned groups, you will work together to analyze two business emails.

• ODU Acting President
• ODU Webmail

Read through the two email, work together to use the genre charts to talk about the features of these emails, and answer the following questions:

• What patterns do you see emerging from these two texts? How does this compare to Munter et al.'s description of business emails?
• Do you think the authors of both of these texts made effective decisions about the choice of genre and how s/he used the features of that genre?
• Do you think the authors of both of these texts made effective decisions about the rhetorical features (appeals and canon) and how s/he used the features of that genre?
• Considering that the email from ODU Webmail is spam, what generic features make it appear real? What features reveal that it is not genuine?

We will discuss the results as a class after twenty-five minutes.

Discussion II–The Technology is Your Friend

The instructor will cover strategies you can use to facilitate your group project.

• OSX-Microsoft Suite
  • Compare and Merge
• Blackboard
• Google