Article Review Sample. Beyond Is This OK?: High School Writers Building Understandings Of Genre

The paper revolves around the importance of understanding about genre especially when it comes to writing. The authors make their case for the importance of understanding genre as all the choices that a writer can make is related to the genre. Such choices are made in terms of conventions, form, persuasive moves, and form and even through various form of ideas. The whole article is about equipping writers with tools that will help them master genre awareness and mastery of genre analysis skills that they can proceed to use almost everywhere they go. The authors undertake a deep exploration in genre study with a class of high school writers with the purpose of ensuring that at the end of the program, the students will come out being comfortable working in a variety of forms as well as try new writing styles on their own. The idea is that as soon as a writer has mastered the full conception of genre, then he/she will be in a position to work with a variety of forms without any problem. The article heavily uses phrases and quotations to develop various points as well as presenting the points in a presentation format in a step-by-step manner.

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The one notable thing in the article is the frequent use of quotation marks to put emphasis on given phrases or words. A good example is where the authors used the phrase Letters to the principal. In this event, the authors were pointing to the letters that are written by various writers who have no idea of what a genre is. From here they start building the concept of genre as being important in any writing. Whenever one will be reading through the article, he/she will be used to imagine such kind of letters understanding how vague they are. Throughout the article, whenever the authors want to put an extra emphasis on a given idea they proceed to use quotation on selected words or phrases which will achieve exactly that.

The article is written in the form of a presentation where the readers are walked through a series of events that the authors put the high school writers. It is a step-by-step process where the authors proceed to build their theme of the genre by making sure that the reader is in a position of seeing the step that the writers went and the end result. This way, the readers are in a position to ask themselves question while reading the article where each paragraph and step will be one close to answering their questions. It is not an article that you can simply read a few paragraphs and get what the authors wanted to point to out.

At the same time, the authors also intentionally use other authors work to make their point. After making a point, the authors will proceed to quote works of other writers so as to ensure that the readers are presented with all the evidence that they need. Notably also, in all steps that the high school students were placed through, the authors will make sure that they present their reasons behind taking such steps, the objectives they want to achieve, and later on ensuring that they give feedback on the results. The authors also give case examples of the students in question outlining their development in genre mastery such as the example of Him who noted differences in how eulogies are written. The examples are very lively and serve the purpose of appealing to the readers to see the importance of the various steps that the students had to go through.

After keenly going through the article, it is my strong conviction that the article targets the teacher audience. The aim is that after reading the article, the teacher will relook the way they go about teaching students. The authors need a paradigm shift in how students are taught. They challenge the notion of having students who write to only fulfill their teacher's expectations. The authors of the article are teachers, and it is their wish that the step by step of teaching students how to write in the article will appeal to other teachers to follow suit.

Works Cited

Whitney, Anne Elrod, Michael Ridgeman, and Gary Masquelier. "Beyond Is This OK?: High School Writers Building Understandings Of Genre". Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 54.7 (2011): 525-533. Web. 20 Feb. 2017.