Burwell 1 Elizabeth Burwell English 1101 Susan Ingram 25 October 2013 Genre Study Assignment During the time

of High School, many students are asked to read a prompt and write an essay or paper from what is given. Most of the time they just rush and read it, digest what they need to answer and move onto writing the assignment. As a senior myself, I was given a free response question is my APUSH class and asked to answer it within 35 minutes. It read Describe and account for changes in the American presidency between 1960 and 1975, as symbolized by Kennedys Camelot, Johnsons Great Society and Nixons Watergate. In your answer, address the powers of the presidency and the role of the media. When given a time limit, you dont have time to analyze the question and really understand the purpose and genre of the prompt. One just reads it and starts thinking of how to answer the question. After the time was up and my paper was finished, I was given more time to really look at what had made me think about my essay. The author and the audience of the prompt can really change the way it is looked at and read. The official author being the College Board team of test makers and the audience being the AP students taking the test really effect the purpose of the writing. With those elements staying the same, the purpose of this prompt is to ask a question. It is meant to challenge the test taker to expand on the knowledge they untanned during their class. Specifically it is asking them to know about the how events between 1960-1975 effected the American Presidency. It also makes a concentration on the power of the presidency and the roles

Burwell 2 of the media. If these concentration were not given in the writing the answer to the question could become very different depending on the knowledge of the person. When reading the prompt there are some things that are implicitly implied that would help when answering the question. If the test taker has no knowledge of the presidencies asked to be talked about, they would have a hard time giving detail on them. In order to answer the question in the way that the writers intended, the test taker would also need to have knowledge on how the media played a role during these presidencies. The power of the presidencies changing during this time period is also a good bit of information needed to answer the question in the best way possible. In answering the question, the values of the author and the audience must be known in order to make the writing successful. The author values are that they choose to ask the question on the power of the president and the role of the media. Without this the question would be totally different and difficult the write the correct answer they are looking for. The value of the audience is also something to think about when reading this. The audience should value their knowledge of the subject being asked so they can write a decent answer to the question asked. They also value the test itself because it is what is proving they are on the college level of expertise in the subject. Plus they also paid a large amount of money for the test. With this writing being a part of a test is can be classified as a test free-response question. Since it is specific to the subject of History, it can really only exist on a History exam or used in a class room as examples. Being a question, it has a few limitation as a genre. It cannot give away the answer in the writing, it must have some sort of action command for the reader to knowledge that it is a question and it must have a narrow focus to make it easier to write about the correct answer. With it being such a narrow focus is gives the advantages of needing specific

Burwell 3 details of the events in order to receive credit for the question. This can also open the opportunity for some interesting responses to the prompt. The restriction for this writing is given by the author itself, College Board. With these limitations and advantages about the prompt, I believe that this writing was success in itself purpose. It challenges the audience to answer the question with the knowledge they learned from the class taken. It can also possibly prove them to be experts in the field of History. If this writing was given to a person not taking the College Board test for APUSH, it would not fulfill its purpose. This is because people not taking the test wont care about the subject or the question and will possibly not have an invested interest in the subject. With analyzing the prompt of an APUSH free response question, a person can now better understand the reasoning behind the question and how it fits into a genre. Since it is such a specific writing the genre it is in is also very specific. Being a free response question it has certain limitations and advantages that help classify it. The author and audience of the writing also help categorize the writing into this genre. The first few weeks of my first year writing class, my teacher asked the class to begin writing blogs responding to questions she asked. After getting feedback on a paper we wrote, the teacher asked the class to reflect on our paper by giving us several questions regarding it. She also asked us to talk about our weekend and what we did that was interesting. I wrote the blog just to get the assignment finished on time and get the grade for it. I later returned to it to analyze this certain type of genre. Since I was the one writing the blog, I would be considered the author. The audience for a blog would be anyone that looks on the website where it is posted or presented. When writing

Burwell 4 this blog my purpose was to reflect on a writing done in class and the feedback I had been given about it. The prompt also asked to reflect on the certain experience written about in my past. This would be from my high school APSUH class, I learned that History was my thing and that learning and reading about it was more fun. I know that through that experience I changed what I wanted to do with not only my college life but also my career. This quote from the text shows how much this experience really impacted my life. I feel that purpose of reflecting on this helped me really understand the purpose of the writing to begin with. One more purpose of this writing was to discuss how the past weekend had been and what fun things I had done. Some messages that this writing may prevail is both implicit and explicit. The experience of my history class and how it changed my career path for college is an implicit message related in the text. The statement, I found a home in Delta Zeta and I couldn't be happier. I am now sisters with some of the most amazing women I know and I love every single one of them. explicitly shows that the joining of my sorority the previous weekend changed my life in so many ways. When reading over this blog post you can really understand what my values are in college. I have my mind set on History, my new sorority, and writing the blog itself. I also value the paper I had written beforehand. The genre of this writing can either be considered Blog posting or a Journal. Since it exist only over the internet, it can be considered more as a Blog Post. The informality of the writing and the format of it shows this along with being able to write about anything you want. This gives the writer very few to no limitations on it. Other than following the appropriate rules on the internet, the only other thing this certain blog posting is limited to is what the teacher has asked of you. Even after answering those questions, you still have a lot of freedom to write about anything you wished. These could be advantages to the writing. Adding media such as pictures

Burwell 5 or video also adds advantages to the writer and the reader. It gives the writing a more personal feel. With it being posted on the internet or a blog site, the option to have comments is possible. This gives the advantage to have feedback on your writing. The only person that can make the rules for the blog post is the author or the prompt the author is writing from. For intense the rules for this writing would be made by the teacher. I feel that since I answered the questions given to me in the prompt, my blog post was successful in its intended purpose. The blog tells how I am feeling about my writing and my past weekend. I reflected on the feedback and talked about the language of being a history major. I think that if the writing was given to someone else other than the intended audience it would still fulfill its purpose. Since it is a blog post and is viewable on the internet, any person could read the post and understand the context of it. It would be successful with any audience that views it. After analyzing this writing from a previous assignment, I can now understand the genre of a blog posting. If given to any audience the blog posting would still exceed its purpose in answering the questions. Since I feel that I will be doing a lot of different writings throughout my college career, I believe that blogging about them could help me better my writing. Reflection would help anyone understand the purpose behind their writing. Blogging would be the best way for a college student to reflect on them. After looking over these two genres, many connections can made from them. The main connection is between High School v. College. I also think that they are both used as educational tools in not only writing but school in general. I feel that they could both be put into a broader genre of Educational Text.

Burwell 6 The main themes in both of these text is High School writing and College writing. When looking over the prompt for the AP exam, it is only used in a High School setting since that is only where the AP exams exist. The text is meant to help students reflect on what they learned in there AP class. That is what makes it a part of the Question genre. The blog posting can exist anywhere in the world. Since it is a reflective writing about a narrative in college that is where this specific genre exist. Since both of these genres are used as a reflection tool that can help them fit into the same general genre. Both of these genres are used to help educate students in some ways. The Question genre, shown in the High School prompt, is used to challenge the student to think about all the things they learned about in their class. They accept this challenge because they want to pass the exam to prove they are knowledgeable in the subject. The Blogging genre, shown in the blog posting, is used to help the students reflect on what they had written in the class to better their writing and understand what helps them write. I think that these two tie together because they both are reflecting on something they have already learned to better themselves. These similarities are what put these two writings in the same genre. While these two text and genres are very different in many ways, I also believe they can be very similar. They are both educational tools to help better students and reflect on their work. I believe they would both fit under the Educational Text genre. They could also be classified as Reflective thinking since they challenge the students to reflect on their learning in a class or writing. After analyzing both of these texts and their genres, I can now better understand the complicity of choosing just one genre for one text. I feel that all text can be placed in many genres, sub-genres, etc. I now know that two completely different types of texts, like a prompt

Burwell 7 questions and a blog post can be placed in the same genre to describe them. Since they are both used in the same way in schooling, this is what makes them so similar in education