In the first unit of this class, you discussed your ideas about writing; in the second unit, you listened to others; in this third and final unit, you’ll try to convince others of beliefs you have about writing/language/etc. Before you start writing, I want you to give me a sense of what you want to do for this final project, so that I can give you feedback. 

In order to properly plan for this project, you’ll want to have chosen a genre, and thought about who you want to address, and what lessons/ideas/claims you want to focus on. Please write me a detailed topic proposal that answers these questions (if it helps, you can view a  student sample working plan): 

Please write me a detailed topic proposal that answers these questions: 

Who will be your audience? 

Remember this should be more specific than “everyone.” See the assignment sheet for audience suggestions and guidelines on how to pick an audience. 

What will be your purpose for writing for this audience? Again, see the assignment sheet for what your purpose might be for this project.

• What specific genre will you write for this project? 

Please include links or screenshots of two example texts in this genre that you might use as a model. These might be examples we used in class this semester or examples you find on your own.

• Describe at least three characteristics of this genre. Here, you might consider the visual aspects such as use of images, graphs, videos, etc. You might also consider the organization style of the genre – does the genre typically use paragraphs, columns, bullet points, headings/sub-headings? How does the genre usually reference sources? Are there hyperlinks, in-text citations, a reference list at the end? Different genres do different things, so it is important to recognize the characteristics of your genre so that the text you create fits in with that genre. For example, an email and a tweet are very different and an essay and a report are very different. If I were to describe a lab report, that description would not match the description of an essay. 

Why have you chosen this genre for your audience and/or for the message you’ve chosen? In other words, how does this genre make sense given your specific audience and purpose? 

What are the 4 lessons/claims/advice that you will cover in this text? You should state each of these claims/lessons as complete sentences. 

• If you don’t know what you want to write about yet, you can suggest more than 4. Remember that you can look back at the assignment sheet, which has guiding questions to help you brainstorm. 
• You can look over the whole semester, or look over what you wrote in Module 0 | Reflecting About Writing (Discussion), to see what you’ve learned or how your ideas have changed.