Transcript Lesson 7 Essentials Video: Genres

ALICE: The different genres that I have worked in in college so far would be reading responses, poems, short stories.

CHASE: I've written research papers, business papers.

DARRYL: I've, obviously, done analytical writing. I've done argumentative writing.

KENDRA: Where I've had to argue the opposite of what I may personally believe.

HUSSAIN: Lab report writing.

DEONTA: Lab reports, English composition papers, literary analysis.

DARRYL: Resumes, instructions.

DEONTA: Sociology papers, proposals.

HUSSAIN: And then I've had creative writing where I write my own short stories.

LINDSEY: Research-based papers for science.

DARRYL: Letters for scholarships.

DEONTA: So moving between genres sometimes is kind of hard for me. Sometimes I'll be writing a lab report, and it looks more like a English composition paper, so I have to start back over.

ANSEL: It's kind of an opportunity to exercise your writing ability, because if you're always doing the same thing every time, you're not creating. And to me, the fundamental part of the writing process is creation. So when you're adapting to a brand new writing style, it's really—you're learning a lot. I mean, for me, I'm learning a lot more than if I were to write the same thing every time.

ALICE: I define genre in my head in terms of how I write, mainly in terms of how formal I can be. I have to be extremely formal on the genre of lab reports, but when I'm writing reading responses or when I'm writing short stories, I don't have to be formal. I can loosen up a little bit.

GRETCHEN: And then I ask myself, how am I going to get the point across, and what is my tone going to be? Is this a serious piece? Is this a funny piece? Is this informative? Do I need to be serious so that the reader will take what I'm saying and go do something like a call to action? Or is this just a personal piece where I want the reader to feel emotion? And I start writing, basically, based off of what I want the outcome to be.

DAN: So I think in academia genre is vital. And then when you come to the digital world, genre becomes exploded and vast, and it also becomes something that you can readily change. Think about content management systems. You can write something—the genre is press release—and then all you've got to do is parse that out a little bit. And you can reproduce it as a feature story on your website. So digital technology sort of make genre and weaving between genres really easy.