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Fanqi Jia
Roberta Wolfson
Writing 2
18 May 2016
Getting to Know Genre
At UCSB, Writing 2 is a requirement course for all college students. The main purpose of
this course is to learn about genre to improve students academic writing. I, as a student currently
taking this class, so far have learned to identify genres by analyzing conventions in the first
writing project, and how these methods apply into academic researches in different disciplines in
the second writing project. Now, I am coming to the end of these quarter and begin to apply what
I learned in practice by creating my own texts for two different genres. Compared to learn new
knowledge, creation is more challenging but significant to study on the way of being a true
writer. In this project, in order to make my open-genres more vivid as abstracts from the real
texts, during the process choosing genres, analyzing language styles, selecting and editing
evidences and setting up the whole text, I realize that to become a better author, a person must
conduct genre analysis carefully and necessarily on identifying potential audience, genre
conventions, and suitable format of the text.
The first essential element for writers to create good works is to clearly recognize their
genres gearing towards which kind of potential audience. In this writing project, the prompt
requires students to choose genres adapted by two significantly different group of audience, the
younger people and the older audience. Therefore, I choose the genres of diary which is popular
among the young and instruction manual which is acceptable by the older people on purpose.

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Though this is the final decision, the experience of deciding was not pretty smooth so that I
learned the significance to identify potential audience of a genre in person. The instruction
manual was the genre I chose at the very beginning, which I was inspired from the users guide
of the water filtration system at home, but I used to believe its potential audience was the
younger ones. At first, I thought that because the instruction manual is a guide to teach people
new things, it should be easily accepted by younger audience. However, what I neglected was the
true frequency of young children to read an instructional manual actively. Such users guides
always tell people how to use housekeeping appliances or machines, which a young child seldom
has chances to utilize. Though the explanation in the instruction manual is simple enough to
understand, it is the function and the purpose of the users guide but not the characteristic to
attract younger audience. After discussing with the instructor, I realized that this was a serious
mistake and switched the other genre of the newspaper to the diary, which is more common to
young children. Identifying potential audience is the basic and preparation of the whole text, and
also related to audience directly. If the basic of the text is not accurate and persuasive, then whole
structure of any words cannot be stable. Therefore, to identify potential audience of a genre is
significant.
The next element essential to compose a great work is to identify the unique genre
conventions. After deciding the genre of the diary and the instruction manual for this project, to
reach the fidelity of the genre and imitate sentences from sample genre vividly, the next step for
me was to explore characteristics of two genres, such as the language style. I have not written a
diary for a long time, so I read some published diary resources to explore its conventions. I found
that usually in a diary, sentences are most in free styles with special personal preference because
it is used for self-recording in order to recall conveniently in the future. Therefore, the language

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is informal and simple. When I wrote the diary genre, I added some emoticons, such as and
(_) ,and oral words like woohoo~ and made my day intentionally to express emotion
informally. On the other hand, when I read a sample instruction manual, I found most sentences
are imperative sentences in a short form, and the words are easy to understand to clarify the
reference. Hence, its language is clear and concise. When I applied these in the instruction
manual genre, I stated all sentences without subjects but just instructing the action directly, like
communicate and exchange ideas with your partner, explain comments and labels, point out
questions, to guide the audience to follow the step learn how to do the peer review. In this
process, I find that applying genre conventions to compose a precise genre is a good way to
convey writers goals in words to readers. There are always some texts combining multiple
genres together to entertain readers, but some specific genres are aim to state clear and accurate
information, so they are required distinctive and clear styles, which reflect on the language. For
me, this applies to accurate guides in the instruction and emotions in diary. Therefore, writers are
necessary to maximize the characteristics of genres by being familiar with their different
conventions in order to state their ideas in articles accurately.
The last element for composing a great work is to organize a suitable format in the text.
Before reading the words of the article, readers first expressions of the article are from the
format. Therefore, in this project, I emphasized this element by presenting the format of the title
and the citation in two different genres. Usually, in a diary, the citation is not pretty common to
record the daily life. Because of the requirement from the prompt that at least three citations
from the class reading, I still cite three articles in the diary, not in the format as the academic
paper with the MLA format but write down the authors names and summarize and paraphrase
their ideas directly, like I tried my best to do as Straubs methods, like understanding the

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contents and information, and playing back to the author. I balanced the criticize and praise
equally to reach the truly comment, which I believe just what he talked about. This is more like
an informal sentiment companied with a citation instead of citing this idea on purpose, which is
more closed to the real diary. Also, a diary always requires the specific date at the beginning, and
the title is not necessary for a private diary, so I just recorded the date in my open-genre.
In contrast, for an instruction manual, I noticed that there is always a title at the beginning
to let audience know that this is a users guide for them to learn how to use a new object, and the
instructions are listed in order with sequence numbers. Similar to the diary, an instruction manual
usually does not have citations as well. Because the instruction manual itself is a process of
teaching new things, there should not exist any externally new information to confuse audience,
such as the title of an article. Therefore, in this instruction manual, I just paraphrase part of some
scholars helpful ideas instead of introducing the whole article they published briefly, and use an
asterisk to show the original resources of these ideas, like *Reference to How to Read Like a
Writer by Mike Bunn, Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources by Karen
Rosenberg, Responding- Really Responding- to Other Students Writing by Richard Straub.
In the choice of citation, I consider in a peer review, an efficient way for reading the academic
part is necessary to get the main idea for students, so I paraphrase Step 2 from Karen
Rosenbergs article, Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources. In his article,
he introduces the method of reading scholarly sources, like joining the conversation, reading
the title, introduction, section headings, conclusions and to gain the main idea (Rosenberg). In
addition, I believe that peer review is a progress of the mutual studying, so I paraphrased the idea
from Bunns How to Read Like a Writer that when reading an article, considering writers
choices in writing strategies is a good way to improve a readers writing to Step 3. Then, for the

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revision part, I paraphrase Richard Straubs Responding- Really Responding- to Other Students
Writing that what you found interesting, what you found confused in the Step 4 as the part of
the real process of revising. Though these required a lot of effort, I believed it is more important
to convey the most accurate methods in efficient ways to the audience in an instruction manual.
To clearly understand and apply formats of a genre, an author can not only reach the purpose of
the genre, but also make audience less confused about the contents, so as to become a great
work.
Though these two genres are just prompt for a writing project, I believe that the main
goal of this prompt is to push me to fully understand how a complete genre organizes in details.
Therefore, my goal of these two genre is not only satisfying the prompt, but truly making readers
feel this is a true text from ones diary or one instruction manual though the topic is the peer
review. The whole process of creating the open-genre was complicated and full of the confusion
to me, but in the end, by summarizing what I learned in practice, I truly felt benefited in
conducting genre analysis on identifying a genres potential audience, genre conventions and the
suitable formats. Though this project is just an experience of applying knowledge of genre in the
real writing life, the skill I cumulated from it has the huge influence to change my mind in
dealing with a writing assignment. To be a better writer, I have to learn more writing skills for
sure, but conducting genre analysis, the basic of the writing process, will never lose in my mind.

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Work Cited
Bunn, Mike. How to Read Like a Writer. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing Volume 2
2011: 71-86. GauchoSpace. Web. 11 April 2016.
Rosenberg, Karen. Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources. Writing Spaces:
Readings on Writing Volume 2 2011: 210-220. GauchoSpace. Web. 20 April 2016.
Straub, Richard. Responding- Really Responding- to Other Students Writing. The Subject Is
Writing. Ed. Wendy Bishop. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 136-146. Print.