Audience Assignment
Format and Length Requirements: memo
Actions
(select memo hyperlink), 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 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 you are 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 them?
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 know 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 and other requirements. This may give you insight into the journal’s expectations and 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 and AI LLMs to spot other possible issues. Remember, these checkers and AIs 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 (Unit 2: Peer Review Assignment) as a PDF for peer review. Once your work has been reviewed and polished to perfection, you can submit your final copy to the unit’s last folder.
PreviousNext
Uhv library access user: 1857616
Pass: Graduate24!
major is psychology
