Your Genre Piece

You are creating a second piece to supplement your research paper. We discussed a few genres in class and there are a long list of genres to choose from posted in Class Documents.

The goal of your piece is to reach your community and convince them of your problem. Along with a brief presentation of your piece you will be writing a brief paper answering the following questions:

1. Why did you choose this genre? How do you feel this genre will help you achieve your goals?
2. Why do you think this genre will appeal to your community?
3. Ideally, in what medium and contextwould you create your genre? In other words, when and where is the best time and place to present the genre to your community? What website or performance space or bulletin board, etc would help you reach the majority of your community?
4. Look at two or more examples of your genre. Based on the examples (which you need to mention in this piece), what things do you think are essential to the genre, what makes it what it is? For example if your genre is a comic, after looking at examples of comics, what do you think this is essential for comics? What must all comics have? What must they look they? What do they sound like? Are they formal or informal? Straightforward or poetic? Emotional or objective? Is it mostly text or pictures? Is there a particular format the examples follow? Questions like this. 
5. How did you attempt to make sure that you have included all the essential elements of the genre? In other words, explain why you feel the example you created is a passable example of the genre.

Things to Consider As Your Write Your Research Paper

1. Remember your community. Each of you are writing about a problem that is present in a group you are a part of. Make sure to address that in your paper. A lot of your research may be providing information that is not specific to your community. You need to be able explain why that info is relevant to your specific group. Do not forget we’re talking about a problem at your school, in your family, in your group, etc. Personal interviews are very helpful when attempting to personalize this essay.
2. You're allowed to use the word I in this paper but don't overuse it. Again stay away from phrases like I believe, I think, I feel. I'm going to assume that any information you don't attribute to a source are your own thoughts.
3. Try and find more than one solution for your problem and make sure at least one of your solutions is something people can actually act upon, something they can do. Provide something that can be seen or measured.
4. I've been using the term counter argument but another way to look at this section is to look at it as excuses. Not everyone has a group of people who directly oppose them. People may agree that your solution is good, but they still won't do it. Why? What excuse might they give for why they can't? Why is that a lame excuse? How can you make your solution more enticing to those people who don't necessarily think you’re wrong but are still unwilling to get on board?
5. I told you only needed one print source but that's no reason not to find more than one. Really think about where your source comes from. Who is backing this information? The thing about print sources (especially scholarly journals) is that they are usually more rigorously fact checked since they can't be posted immediately the way online sources can and they tend to be written by professionals.  In the final draft of your paper, if the majority of your sources that are personal blog posts and YouTube videos instead of reputable news sites and scholarly journals your research is weak.
6. Despite the importance of having source material, do not be afraid to propose problems or solutions that you can't back up with a source. Maybe you can't find any proof that your solution will work or you have a unique reason why you feel your issue should be addressed; that's fine. It means you're in innovator. As long as you clearly explain your thinking to the reader we should be right there with you. Source material makes a point stronger but lack of source material doesn't make a point invalid.