Reference no: EM133002421 , Length: word count:2100
Overview
This is our final week together. Your goal this week should be to finish the discourse community analysis. I am expecting it to meet the page count and to have an MLA Works Cited Page. This will help prepare you for 120 and the expectations that exist for this class. While you should spend a lot of time working on the essay, I do want you to look closely at the student examples. The final discussion board of the week will ask you to analyze the examples and give them a grade. This is similar to what you did for the literacy narrative. Also similar to that process, you will be asked to write a reflection on your discourse community writing process. The questions this time will be a bit more specific and also ask you to consider your research as well.
Development:
-Did you include discussion on goals, genres and lexis?
-Did you have enough analysis and reflection about your own community?
- Did you focus on how language is used in the discourse community?
-Did you interview at least one member of the discourse community (preferably more)? -Did you meet the 5-6 page limit?
Organization:
-Did your essay follow the format I provided in the assignment sheet?
-Did you have two introduction paragraphs, one about discourse communities in general and the other about your own discourse community?
-Did you have a methodology section were you previewed: who are you going to interview, what important questions will you ask, what lexis will you define in the observation section, and what do you hope to learn?
- Were your observation paragraphs focused on the goals, lexis, and genres and not on the people you interviewed?
-Does your conclusion address the significance of this discourse community to you and your own life?
Vocabulary, Sentence Structure, Grammar, Punctuation, Mechanics, and Formatting: /30
- Have you avoided use of the second person in your writing?
-Have you maintained a consistent academic tone through your essay? -Have you avoided fragments, run-ons, and awkward sentences?
-Have you avoided grammatical (verb tense, subject-verb agreement,) errors? -Have you avoided comma splices, other comma errors and apostrophe errors? -Have you avoided capitalization errors?
-Have you formatted the essay correctly according to the rules of MLA style?
Discussion Board: Discourse Community Analysis
For your seventh discussion board, you will first need to read the three student example discourse community analysis papers.
I am asking you to read each of the three student examples. Using the rubric (only as a guide, do not fill out or copy and paste the rubric. I want you to grade each student example. This can be a number or letter. Then write a paragraph of about 6-8 sentences about each example justifying why you gave the grade you did.
Your responses should be agreeing or disagreeing with what your classmates have to say and continuing the conversation about these examples.
Journal Entry: Discourse Community Analysis
Reflection
complete a journal entry (your final one) on the Discourse Community Essay. Please try to have this be about a page long and in essay format.
1.The Discourse Community Essay is an examination of the Communication Process. Briefly discuss this process.
2.What is your own writing process?ls your process changing and, if so, how?
3.What writing techniques do you think you utilized most effectively in writing this essay? 4.What writing techniques do you need to focus on to be more effective in your writing?
5.What is the Research Process? How are the steps of the research process similar to the steps of the writing process?
6.How does the Discourse Community Essay reflect the course goals? 7.What did you learn about your writing process during this assignment?
8.What were the strengths of your essay? What could you continue to improve?
Discourse Community Analysis
Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to help you more fully understand how discourse communities use language to function and accomplish their purposes and goals.
Description: Your goal is to compose an interesting description and insightful analysis of the language practices (spoken and written) of a discourse community of your own choosing.
Getting Started: Identify a discourse community that interests or intrigues you. You may be a member of that discourse community; you might be an outsider. For our purposes, a discourse community could be any group of people who identify themselves as a group. Some possibilities include a church group, a fraternity or sorority, a club or team, a social organization, an academic or professional organization, etc.
If you are uncertain whether a group is indeed a discourse community, use the readings from the textbook to see if you can find answers to the following questions:
Why does the group exist? What does the group do? What are its shared goals?
How do group members communicate with one another
4 What are the purposes of the group's communications (share information, reinforce values, make money, improve performance, offer support, declare identity, etc.)?
1 Which of the above communications can be considered genres (i.e., textual responses to recurring situations that all group members recognize and understand)?
4 What kinds of specialized language (lexis) do group members use in their conversations and in their written genres?
Who are the "old timers" in the group with expertise? Who are the newcomers with less expertise? How do newcomers learn the appropriate language, genres, and knowledge of the group?
Once you have identified a discourse community to study, you will need to engage in the following research activities:
• Observe and take detailed notes of members of the discourse community while they are engaged in a shared group activity. (What are they doing? What kinds of things do they say? What do they write? How do you who is "in" and who is "our?)
• Collect anything people in that community read or write (i.e., their genres)-"official" publications, newsletters, blogs, forms, Ns, texts, etc.
• Interview at least one member of the discourse community. (How long have you been involved with this group? Why are you involved? What do the terms X Y, and Z mean? How do you communicate with the group? How did you learn to write things to the group?)
Analyzing Information
As you gather and review information about the discourse community, what catches your interest most? What stands out to you about that community? What surprises you? Listed below are some additional questions that can help you dig more deeply for your analysis of the group:
• Are there conflicts within the discourse community? If so, about what? How do their genres address those conflicts?
• Which genres help the discourse community work toward their goals most effectively?
• Do some participants in the community have difficulty speaking or writing within it? Why?
• Who has authority in the discourse community? How was that authority established? How is authority demonstrated in written and oral language?
Essay Format
Introduction (2 paragraphs): In this section, you have two purposes, First, describe what a discourse community is in your own words. You've been practicing with paraphrasing, and this will be your first chance to show me how well you understand this important skill. Second, you will want to describe your individual discourse community. The order in which you do this is up to you.
Methodology (1-2 paragraphs): Here, you will tell me who you intend to interview, the kinds of questions you'll ask, and what you hope to learn. In addition, you may illustrate some of the words you'll be defining.
Observation (6+ paragraphs): This will be the longest portion of your essay. You will explain some of the lexis used in your discourse. Most importantly, you must tell me what you observed while at your discourse community. Remember to emphasize the way language is used, not necessarily the actions or behavior. Finally, highlight the most important quotes your interviees said in their interviews. Do not transcribe. Paraphrase what they said.
Conclusion (1-2 paragraphs): What is the importance of this discourse community to you and to the world at large? Why is it important to study this particular discourse?