Aladwani 1

Mohammad Aladwani

Professor Samantha Edmiston

English 107

23 April 2017

Genre Analysis

Syllabi produced by the university of Arizona math department are in every class in the

university of Arizona to manage classes and uphold honesty between instructors and students.

The university of Arizona math department recognized the need of an organized class room and

therefore gave the task of organizing it to instructors with some degree of freedom. Syllabi now

organizes class rooms but it has special features included to better reflect on the students. To

better understand syllabi and its effect on students in math classes at the university of Arizona it

will be broken into components and then analyzed from a perspective of language and schematic

structure.

The Holy Contract

The schematic structure of the Genre is organized in a way that emphasized the most

important pieces of information at the beginning and the least important at the end. For example,

in MATH 111 syllabus written by Reyes, the syllabus starts with the the name of the course and

section number then transitions into a segment that includes the instructors information and so

on. This is done for the purpose of not losing the students attention and to emphasize on the fact

that it is essential for students to know the Name of the course, section number and instructors

name since this information stand out in every example of this genre. After the course and

instructors information, the examples of this genre vary in the order of segments. According to

Gunton, a math instructor, this is due to the degree of freedom given by the department to the
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instructors which the instructors use to organize the segments according to what or how they

consider important. For example, in MATH 120R syllabus written by Foster, the instructor chose

what I call the Funnel approach where he started with a broader look of the course and then

transitioned into a thinner one. To illustrate, in the genre example the author started with the

course description, structure, prerequisites and objectives and then emphasized on students

conduct for a total of 5 segments. After that he proceeded to Homeworks, exams and grading

and concluded with the class schedule. This shows that the instructor is just wanting to introduce

the course to students, since its usually a freshman course which is designed for freshman

students who are new to the university and how the math department functions, so it tries to

provides everything a freshman student needs to know without neglecting the smallest piece of

information. In other words, the genre schematic structure is basically shaped by the instructor

according to what he considers are the needs of the community or audience the genre example is

directed to.

Language Thorns

Language used in the genre examples is formal with an implicit authoritative tune. For

example, in Math 111, the author is quoted saying Students are responsible for all missed work,

regardless of the reason for absence. It is also the absentees responsibility to get all missing

notes or materials (Dai). As we can notice the language used is formal which is utilized to

outline the relationship between students and instructors in a way that separates instructors from

students emotionally. This is used to let students be responsible for their actions since in this

level of education they are considered adults and thus are responsible for their conduct which is

why this convention of the genre exists. This is ubiquitous in every analyzed genre example.

In order to emphasize on certain points, the genre utilized italics, bold, CAPATILIZED
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and underlined texts. For example, in MATH 120R the author is quoted saying Also, a classkey

provided by the instructor will be required for successful Web assign access If you have not

used Web assign before, you are STRONGLYencouraged to use your University of Arizona

email address. (Foster). In these examples of the genre sample we can notice that the author is

trying to strongly emphasize on these points because they could be potential problem areas for

students. In addition, they also are used to grasp their attention because these matters are urgent

and usually need to be completed by the first week of classes to ensure to the class is up to date

with homeworks and announcements.

In conclusion, the genre is mainly used to include core information about a math course

and is mainly dependent on the audience. Convention of this genre includes language, font and

style used as well as a somewhat flexible schematic structure. The genre is very important to the

audience and is shaped by their attitudes and attributes. The university of Arizona math

department syllabi are very important since their conventions help easily produce a new sample

of the genre very easily for future instructors who need to come up with their own syllabi.
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Works Cited

Die, Yan. MATH 111 syllabus. University of Arizona: Math department, 2015. Print.

Foster, Steven. MATH 120R syllabus. University of Arizona: Math department, 2017. Print.

Gunton, Cody. Personal interview. 21 September. 2016.

Reyes, Steven. MATH 111 syllabus. University of Arizona: Math department, 2017. Print.