Navigating Genres Reading Response

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Navigating Genres by Kery Dirk is a friendly and conversational essay addressing college composition students. After reading this essay, I felt that the overall purpose was to explain the importance of considering form, audience, purpose, and genre. These components make up rhetorical effectives in a piece of writing.
The country song analysis made it easy for me to relate to Dirk’s point about genre conventions and things that can be identified across the board. Dirk stresses the fact that genre isn’t “simply a matter of filling in the blanks.” I have often thought that certain genres had certain rules to follow for a piece to fit that genre, instead of seeing that features of genres can change even if the nature of those genres remains. I now know it is important to know characteristics and read examples of certain genres, as this can help me compose in a certain genre.
In high school, I wrote academic or persuasive essays the majority of the time. These have stricter genre guidelines and less room for creativity and growth in a genre. Dirk’s point of “location” in a genre opened my eyes to the importance of context in genre to show the purpose clearly. I also was taught the three points and “x because y” thesis methods in high school. But it wasn’t until AP Literature that I realized a thesis does not have to go at the end of the introduction. Dirk’s ransom note examples showed that it is important to match the right purpose to its corresponding genre.

Dirk friendly and informative essay on how to navigate genres enlightened me on many fronts. I now know that location is everything and rhetorical effectiveness is what will make or break a piece in any genre. I now know that having a base knowledge of genres will aid in future writing in those genres while still being able to grow and adapt in those genres as well. Understanding genre requires more effort than writing with set rules. And finally, the set of questions to help guide my thinking process while considering genre seems like it will help a lot. 

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 6, 2017 at 7:09 PM

    I also liked the comparison to the country song, it made the paper very relatable. In my high school experience I also wrote primarily timed writings with strict guidelines so this paper opened me up to how certain genres are more loose.

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