Thlog 4

This week’s class was all about preparing for PB2. The class was introduced to academic genres and how they differ based on something common like major. A humanities academic genre will have different content than that of a hard science. The different major activity we did in class was also helpful to get an idea on how I could tell the difference between each academic genre.  For example, if the academic genre was a hard science I would look for context involving chemistry, engineering, graphs, or biology. As oppose to if the academic genre was a social science, then I would look for content that discusses current research that it is mostly factual.

The murder activity was a boost of hands on experience. We all had to represent a certain genre for the murder assignment, and as much as I thought it was going to be easy it was not. All I thought we had to do was follow the conventions that we had the assignment on. After reading my fellow classmates responses however, I realized that academic genres can have similar conventions. For example, a local newspaper vs. a national one has similar conventions and are very hard to tell apart. For this reason, it is very important to focus on the voice of the writer and the syntax of the writing piece. Focusing on the voice of the writer helps the reader decide what type of tone they are trying to use, and therefore decide what the purpose is. A writing piece with a calm apologetic voice will not be the same as a writing piece with a factual, emotionless tone of voice. With pieces that have similar voice, syntax comes in handy. For example with the local newspaper and national newspaper, syntax is the one thing that set them apart. You could not tell the difference between them unless the reader focused on their word choice and who it was directed to. While one would mention community another would mention nation that little difference would be the key to figuring out what type of newspaper it is.