University of Phoenix Advocat

In everyday life, we write in many different genres, including more formal genres for college or work. Becoming familiar with a variety of genres will help you create a writing toolkit to leverage throughout your career path and personal life.

This week you will demonstrate your ability to adapt to a particular rhetorical situation and writing context. You will write a piece that achieves a specific goal. This assignment allows you to demonstrate how effectively you can compose an original

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Define Your Purpose

Hi, I’m back with a tip to help you complete your week five assignment, define your purpose.

You have many decisions to make this week, from choosing a topic, the genre and audience and a message, and that’s a lot of decisions to make.

So if you’re finding that you’re having a hard time getting started with the week five assignment, reach out to your instructor for help.

Now, to get started on this assignment, what I did is I defined my purpose.

Doing that helps me make the other choices to be a successful communicator.

So here’s what I did.

I decided that my purpose would be to obtain more funding for the high school, Battle of the Books Team.

Now, my son is a member of the team and it’s a great program that gets kids reading by sponsoring a trivia contest on a list of books and the students compete against one another and there’s even a state competition.

But the children at my son’s school were having trouble getting access to the books for the trivia competition.

So I decided to write a letter.

Now at first, I thought I should write a letter to the principal of the school because he sets the budget.

But I considered this further and I found that in order for the trivia competition to be effective, students at all the local high schools needed access to the books.

So I needed to address my letter to the school board to ensure that all high school students had the funding they needed to participate in the program.

So defining my purpose helped me make some other choices to make sure that my message is received and is effective.

So, I urge you this week, as you work to pick an audience and pick a genre, to define your purpose first so that your message is heard loud and clear by the people who can make the changes you are advocating for.

And again, if you’re getting stuck at any point in this process, reach out to your instructor, they will be happy to help you make the choices that will yield an excellent final product.written work that employs appropriate rhetorical situation, genre, and organization.

Watch “Define Your Purpose.” There is also a transcript available. Complete Parts 1 and 2 below using the corresponding instructions. 

Part 1:

Choose 1 topic you are interested in and ensure it can be written about in 1 of the following genres:

• Professional email advocating for a change at work 
• How-to essay describing a process at home or work
• Civic action letter to an official or authority
• Persuasive essay on a debatable issue 
• Personal brand story based on your journaling and the Personal Branding Guide (Note: Refer to the Model Brand Story for a personal brand story example.)

Create a maximum 525-word written piece that includes the necessary components for your chosen genre.

Address the following in your written piece:

• The genre’s audience and your faculty member
• Samples and trends (e.g., citations, word choice, writing to the correct official, etc.) for your chosen genre
• Correct formatting for your chosen genre

Part 2:

Insert a page break after your piece of writing.

Write a reflection addressing the following questions in at least 1 sentence each:

• What genre did you choose for your written piece? How does your writing demonstrate this genre?
• All writing has a purpose that is unique to the situation. What did you hope to accomplish with your written piece?
• What research did you do for this assignment?