Unit 2: Composition (Two Articles Audience Analysis Memo) ASSIGNMENT Submission Folder

Submit the final copy of your essay here. Essays can be submitted as PDF attachments. You must submit your final essay polished and free of grammatical errors.

Unit 2: Composition
Instructions

Audience Assignment

Format and Length Requirements:
memo (Google “memo format” and refer to the student example found in Unit
1), 2-4 pages (one page means one full page).

As indicated in the syllabus and
classroom discussion, this course is almost evenly divided between academic and
business writing.  And, since some of you may be new to your discipline,
this assignment is designed to allow you to familiarize yourself with the
requirements and conventions of working within your scholarly discourse
communities−the readers and writers who share assumptions about what channels,
formats, and styles to use, what topics to discuss and how to discuss them, and
what constitutes evidence. In other words, this assignment allows you to learn
more about one aspect of your professional academic community map.  

In another sense, this assignment
requires that you implement what you’ve been learning. You’ll need to
adapt your message to an audience (in this case, your instructor) as well as
apply the principles of you-attitude, positive emphasis, and reader benefits as
you make decisions about how to organize your information in paragraphs and
about what information (or details/evidence) to include to support your
points. 

You’ll complete a rhetorical
analysis of sorts to accomplish these tasks. Essentially, you will analyze the
written discourse of the audience you’re joining by earning a degree
(professionals within your field).  

Your assignment is to identify a
leading scholarly journal in your field and read TWO scholarly articles (two
articles from the same journal or two articles from two different but relatable
journals). The articles should be at least five pages long and cannot be book
reviews. The articles should include research. (You’ll find some suggestions
about appropriate scholarly journals at the end of the page.) Please look at
the articles and look at style, level of formality, types of evidence (kinds of
information) presented as support for arguments, and level of technicality of
evidence and presentation. Essentially, you’re looking for commonalities among
these articles that reveal how your discipline communicates (as the articles
represent the formal discourse of your discipline). 

Please include at the end of your
memo the name of the publication, the titles of the two articles you’ve chosen,
the authors, the dates the articles were published, and the page numbers.
Follow APA formatting guidelines for references if you are not an English or
history major. Follow MLA formatting guidelines for Works Cited if an English
or history major. Remember: article titles are in quotations; journal titles
are in italics. Google “Purdue Owl” for information on formatting.

And so, in a memo to me, describe
the preferences of the discourse community represented by the journal you
chose. Divide your memo into categories that discuss the following. 

A description of the
texts  

Questions you may wish to
consider include the following:

·      
What
are the purposes of the texts?  By what methods are the purposes achieved?

·      
What
format elements are consistent among both articles? Headings? Documentation
style (APA, MLA, Chicago)?

·      
How
difficult is the word choice?  Are buzzwords or jargon used? Are the words
simple and short, or are they more than two or three syllables?  

·      
How
is the piece organized? 

·      
Are
the conclusions reached based on logical reasoning?  Do the conclusions
follow from the premises?  Are the arguments valid and sound?  Are
some important points taken as assumptions with no evidence for support? 
Do these assumptions seem reasonable and would the intended reader find them
so?

·      
Are
most of the sentences relatively long or relatively short?  Is there
sentence variety within most paragraphs?

·      
How
long are the paragraphs? How many words are typical? How many sentences? 

·      
What
is the nature of the technical material? Theory? Equations? Models? Are visuals
used to present technical materials or to explain it?

·      
What
kinds of evidence are presented? Examples, personal experience, logical
arguments, statistics, appeals to recognized authority?

·      
How
does the text create goodwill?  How are reader benefits treated: Are they
presented implicitly or explicitly?

·      
How
does the writer build the text to meet the reader’s needs?

A description of the
intended audience of the articles  

Questions you may wish to
consider include the following:

·      
Who
is/are the intended audience(s) of the articles?

·      
What
beliefs and values do the audience seem to hold?

·      
How
does the writer appeal to the beliefs and values of the reader?

·      
What
level of technical knowledge does the audience have? 

·      
How
much explanation of technical material does the audience require? 

·      
What
are the audience’s attitudes toward the material? Toward the
writer?  

·      
What
objections or negative attitudes might the audience have?  

·      
What
evidence is preferred by the audience?

A description of the
writers

·      
Questions
you may wish to consider include the following:

·      
Who
are the writers?  What do you know about their backgrounds?

·      
What
is the writer’s level of technical knowledge concerning the reader’s level of
expertise?  

·      
What
effect does the writer want the text to have on the reader?

·      
What
are the implied writer’s attitudes toward the audience? Toward the information,
he or she is presenting? Toward the scholarly community? Toward himself or
herself? 

·      
How
formal is the writer, based on his or her relationship with the intended
reader?

If you already have an idea about
what you want to do for your research paper for this class, choose articles you
can use in your research paper.  If you don’t know what you want to write
your research paper on, use this opportunity to see what’s currently being
published in your field. 

To ensure that your articles come
from scholarly journals, please acquire your articles from the UHV
Library’s database: https://library.uhv.edu/az.php

Your memo should have an
introduction. The introduction should identify the purpose of the memo and its
audience. It should also specify your discipline and the journal. Your memo
should also have a conclusion. In this conclusion, tell me what you’ve learned
about your scholarly discourse community and its communication. 

You should avoid lengthy verbatim
quotations or paraphrases from the original articles. Most of your paper should
consist of your own discussion based on your analysis of the articles. 
You should bring in examples from the text as you need to prove your points−try
to summarize these (but do not merely summarize these articles for the entire
document. Summarization should be minimal.  Most of the work needs to
focus on the technical underpinnings of the articles). Be specific when you bring
in support, and indicate which articles prove your point and how they do
so. 

You should refrain from answering
the questions listed above in the order they appear. You may only need to
answer some of the questions, and there may be questions that you develop as
you read the articles. Your discussion should be thoughtfully organized within
the three main sections outlined above.  

If the journal has a website,
check it out.  Look for the submission requirements and other requirements
that the journal has. This may give you insight into the expectations of the
journal and its intended audience. 

Suggested Scholarly
Journals 

There are many, many other
journals available for each field. Remember, though, to fulfill the assignment
requirements, you must choose a scholarly journal. Below are just some of the
many scholarly examples you may draw from:

·      
Journal
of Applied Microbiology 

·      
Journal
of Ecology

·      
American
Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology 

·      
Business
Communication Quarterly

·      
American
Communication Journal 

·      
Communication
Quarterly

·      
International
Journal of Foundations of Computer Science 

·      
Journal
of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching 

·      
Journal
of Contemporary Criminal Justice 

·      
Journal
of Criminal Justice Education 

·      
Historical
Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History 

·      
Journal
of Contemporary History 

·      
Journal
of African American History

·      
Journal
of Children’s Literature

·      
Journal
of Modern Literature 

·      
Technical
Communication

·      
Mathematical
Sciences

·      
American
Journal of Psychology 

·      
American
Journal of Community Psychology 

·      
British
Journal of Clinical Psychology 

·      
Journal
of Applied Social Psychology

·      
Journal
of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology

·      
Journal
of Accounting and Finance Research

·      
Journal
of Accounting Auditing and Finance 

·      
Journal
of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation 

·      
Journal
of Business and Management

·      
British
Journal of Management 

·      
International
Journal of Commerce and Management 

·      
Journal
of Marketing 

·      
Journal
of Business and Industrial Marketing 

·      
Journal
of Database Marketing and Customer Strategy Management

·      
Journal
of Business and Management

·      
Journal
of Business Strategies

·      
Journal
of Business Forecasting 

·      
The
Elementary School Journal 

·      
Early
Childhood Research Quarterly

·      
School
Science and Mathematics

·      
Research
in the Teaching of English

·      
American
Educational Research Journal  

·      
School
Science and Mathematics

·      
Mathematics
Teaching in the Middle School 

·      
Research
in the Teaching of English

·      
Journal
of Special Education  

·      
American
Journal of Nursing

·      
Journal
of Perioperative Practice

·      
Clinical
Journal of Oncology Nursing

·      
Journal
of Nursing Scholarship

Pay Attention: The Unit 2
assignment is designed to analyze the details and mechanics of scholarly
articles (not random web publications and your friend’s blog). With that said,
make sure that your analysis centers on these two areas: details and mechanics.
Sometimes, students merely summarize the articles, focusing solely on the
content, not the mechanics. Don’t do this! You are analyzing the mechanics of
each article based on the information we’ve learned in this unit: sentence
structure, author background info, formatting, length, jargon, diction, and so
forth. This is not a research paper or literature review. You are analyzing the
discourse community of each article, not necessarily what the article is saying
or upholding.

Pick two different articles,
either two articles from one academic journal or two articles from two academic
JOURNALS. These journals must be in or close to your degree’s field. Once you
have your articles, dig into the details and mechanics of both articles.
Remember that article titles are in quotation marks while journal titles are in
italics. This rule applies in both APA and MLA formatting.  

After you finish writing your
composition, read it aloud and self-review your document. Then use the free
online grammar checkers to spot other possible issues. Remember, these checkers
are helpful but are not always accurate or correct. Use them cautiously and
scrutinize their findings. Next, polish your work and submit it to the
discussion board as a PDF for peer review.

Attachments

o  
Example
– Unit 2 Student Paper.pdf

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