By now you will have decided what you will be researching for the rest of the semester and have been put into three groups of five, and this group will be whom you present with for the rest of the semester. After you have had your proposal approved, you (as a group) must determine your main argument, the main controversy surrounding your issue as we did with the advertising issue. After doing so, you will choose one of the genres from the D5 list and will write about the issue, in general, in this genre. While you will be working together to understand the readings and the issue, your writing will be individual. As a group, however, you will “report” to the class (P3).
After summarizing the issue, it is time for your group to find out what people are saying about it—what are the various problems? The text focuses on one or two areas, and if either of these interests you, feel free to use these. You must, however, find more of your own material, both individually and as a group. Your initial research will be magazines and the Internet and you may find any type of source that responds to this issue: music lyrics, editorial cartoons, visual images, etc., as well as editorials, magazine articles, etc. All sources, however, MUST BE CREDIBLE, which we will discuss in class. A non-credible source WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED and I’ll make you do the work over, so be careful right from the start. From these you personally must choose at least four, and these four must have different perspectives on the same issue (in other words, they can’t all be “on the same side”). Remember to narrow the issue down so that you are looking at various perspectives of the same thing: not large topics like “media” but narrowed down like “Marilyn Manson’s Lyrics.”
After doing this research, you will again choose a genre from the D6 list and write what you have found in one of these genres. The information found in the articles must be accurate and you must remain objective, as you did in your research paper. Through this genre you must somehow convey to your reader the various perspectives you read about in the articles, as you would in a research paper, while staying true to the genre. You must still, of course, cite properly if you quote or paraphrase.
As a group, you will then present the issue, the specifics, and the information conveyed in your genre(s) to the class. You must have some sort of visual aid for the class (a brochure, a handout, a PP presentation, etc.) and be prepared to answer questions and demonstrate that you have thought carefully and critically about the issue.
After the research is done and you have presented the views of others, it’s time for you to think critically again about what it is they have said. So you will choose from the D7 list and write up your analysis in one of these genres. This is a time for you to think critically and carefully about how you are being persuaded (or not) and why. Each genre allows for this kind of critical thought, so it will be important for you to convey this through your writing. As a group, you will post your analysis online (Moodle) and be responsible for responding to others’ postings as well. Each group will have a group page where they will post their individual writing and allow for responses. You will not be responsible for responding to the postings in your own group, only those in the other two groups. Your response, however, need not be to each individual posting but to the issue as a whole, considering all the postings. This will be explained further in class.
As you did before with the advertising issue, you have to come to your own conclusion about the issue you have researched. So once again you will choose a genre from the D8 list and use it to evaluate the issue. Your group will serve as a sounding board, where you will discuss the issue and come to conclusions—and these may not be the same conclusions, which is fine. Again, you will present these conclusions to the class, this time in the form of leading a discussion with questions that are meant to provoke debate and discussion with other class members. First it will important for you to be sure the other class members understand the issue and the various perspectives, then open things up for debate. Your “presentation” must demonstrate that you have thought carefully and critically about the issue and the various perspectives, that you have understood both sides and come to a conclusion that you can back up, especially with personal experiences.
By now you should have accumulated several pieces of writing about your issue, and your assignment is now to put these pieces together to create one “collage” essay or “multigenre” essay. Each piece you have written serves as a section of your entire collage. Together, these will create your collage essay or multigenre paper. Each of these pieces has been given credit previously but only considered as a rough draft. After each draft has been given credit, you will be responsible for revising, editing, and polishing all these pieces and journaling about the process as you go. After polishing each of the four pieces, you need to write a Prologue and an Epilogue to them: the prologue introduces the reader to your essay, briefly telling the reader about the journey she is about to embark on. The Epilogue wraps things up for the reader, reminding her where she has been. Before turning this in, you will be required to visit me for a conference or go to the Writing Center to work on your paper (and attach the Writing Center form to the back of your paper). Your essay must also include a works cited page at the end. And don’t be afraid to be creative about the presentation of your collage essay: it should come together to make one big statement and flow like an essay, which we will discuss further.