Emmalea Couch

“The multigenre paper” – Emmalea Couch June 24, 2009

In Adolescent Literature we discussed how incorporating multiple genres of literature into our classroom will probably lead to creating more avid readers. The more types of reading kids encounter, the more likely they are to find one they consider to be worth pursuing. Thus, to create lifelong readers, a good idea is to teach multiple genres of literature. Perhaps the way to create lifelong writers, is to teach multiple types of writing.

Multigenre papers can be useful alternatives to traditional research papers; they allow students to convey research through a variety of writing styles genres from poems to letter to birth certificates. Moulton’s article discusses how a class of college students (future teachers) reacted to this assignment. It had complications, but in the end seemed to be a very rewarding experience for most students. One problem encountered was that the documents produced themselves showed little research and did not provide a vehicle for in-text citations. However, the students and professor decided that footnotes could be provided, and often a lot of research was obvious in these. In all, students seemed more engaged in this experience than they would have been in writing a regular research paper. One other benefit that came from this assignment was that students tended to use more technology to produce it than they would for a standard research paper, so they learned more about hardware and software in addition to their topic of research.

One concept the article discusses was keeping learning logs throughout the experience. I really this idea. I envision something along the lines of a double-entry journal where researchers log the facts they find and then brainstorm how they could present this information.

I think that using a tool like this will be effective in my classroom, but I will definitely tweak it some. I have some reservations about the model presented here. For instance, in a standard paper, students must learn to tie in their different pieces of research to a cohesive piece of literature that flows. In doing so, they learn the skill of transitions. By allowing students to present their research in lots of different formats, they will not necessarily have to link their facts. I think this skill of transitioning is an important one to learn. Thus, I think I would want my students to do this multigenred paper in conjunction with a shorter research paper. I still think it’s important to teach students to write a research paper, but taking them through this process will hopefully make the paper itself more engaging. One idea I have is to have students present this paper in some form of “zine.” Zines allow for many styles of writing. Sidebars and poetry are often included. However, longer pieces of literature run for pages. The format of a zine would require students to use technology, but it would still allow for some long writing.

One other problem I have with the way the project was done in the article is that I feel like some students might would cop out and pick eight “easy” genres. I do not want eight lists and two-line poems. While these can be effective pieces, I would make a requirement that some of the pieces have to be certain lengthier writing styles.