Engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond

Genre analysis was married to each newly introduced document. Before, writing our own memo, lab report, or technical description, we had to analyze examples of each document based on what we learned in class and read in Merkel. Each sample had different things that were in-line with the general requirements, as well as things that were lacking. It was our job to pick out the good from the bad and apply it in our writing. I felt it was really useful, because it was writing that came from students, just like us, and it demonstrated how a person might approach this kind of paper.

Ideally each semester the writing will only get better in the class, since the students learn from the mistakes of the students before them, and those students did the same. As time passes, the students, with the help of the teacher, will hone the writing to the point where it is impeccable. However, we don’t live in an ideal world, and no one is fully capable of perfectly gathering information and executing the assignment to the tee. Here is a screenshot of my analysis of a sample technical description.

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