This task gives students practice is working with the features of genre to understand examples of a kind of writing (the Mission Statement). It also puts this understanding in a framework; that framework is provided by summarizing Puschmanns article Lies at Wal-Mart.
This is a 2 part task: you need to do a brief summary of Puschmann and you need to do a linked analysis of the items in the Mission Statement genre set.
What the whole paper will look like when complete:
Title (yours to develop)
Section 1: (about 350 or so words) Paragraphs 1 to 3 (4 if absolutely necessary) that do a typical summary of Puschmanns work. Start letting the reader know you are summarizing [In X, author A [then a reporting verb, present tense, like reports, describes, provides an analysis etc. then key abstraction, then details to support.. small amount, just enough so reader see the point. Then more detail showing the range and findings of the discussion a sentence or two or three. Then a road map especially true if the summary or other piece of writing is more than 2 paragraphs long. The road map is what we used to call a thesis statement and now call main claim (or road map as a handy metaphor for what this last sentence in an introductory paragraph does). This says in some form EG Overall, [author A] looks at B through the lens of C and finds X, Y, and Z [x, y, and z are key terms/names for the big issues] and then the next paragraphs have these in their topic sentences
EG For paragraph 2, Author A shows his concern about X by doing W and this works like this.
For paragraph 3 Further, Author A claims Y, because ..C and proves this by D.
For paragraph 4 Overall, Author As view shows Z at it impacts X and Y and helps readers better understand. [something]
NEXT Section:
In the 1st brief summary of Puschmann section, you will have introduced the idea of genre and its activity, using Puschmanns key terms and key ideas. look at a key idea in one author to shed light on what was going on in another authors piece of writing.
This will work like that.
After your Puschmann summary, you will start the next part something like this:
Puschmanns ideas about genre use in the corporate world of Wal-Mart is applicable to understanding Mission Statements as a genre. The set of Mission Statements that will be described below
See the first hand out for detailed discussion (using Reiff and Bawashis ideas) re setting, subject, participants, readers, purposes. Each of these five things will occupy its own paragraph of about 150 words. And each paragraph examining the five areas of focus (setting, subject, participants, readers, and purposes) will bring all of the Mission Statement examples in to the discussion.
EG subject:
The subject of each Mission Statements in the sample is similar: it is ABC. TD and Overwaitea for example have X as their subject, meaning, while TD, UFV, and Wal-Mart have subjects that similarly [do X and Y}
How to start:
Make notes on Puschmanns article in prep for summary. Use what we have talked about re summary and what Giltrow et al. in Academic Writing say about noting for gist. Look for the abstractions and key terms! While flog is interesting, it means something bigger, for example, to do with the genres goal of persuasion by humanization.
We will exchange these summaries with peers to be sure we are getting out of Puschmanns article what is really in there!
Make notes on the setting, subject, participants, readers, purposes for each of the genre samples. We will exchange these brief notes on the discussion board.
Finally! Putting it all together!
