Table of Contents

AI, Ethics & Human Agency

Citation

Collaboration

Genre

Information Literacy

Mindset

Research

Rhetoric

Style

Writing Process

Chapter: Genre

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Reviews and Recommendations, Writing Commons

Reviews and Recommendations

Learn to write convincing evaluations and improve your critical thinking abilities. Evaluate a performance (such as a movie, speech, or play), a visual (such as an ad or artwork), or a text (such as a Web site). Read exemplary evaluative texts, define appropriate assessment criteria, and write a convincing and well-researched evaluation.

Reviews present an author's opinion or interpretation. Writing an evaluative text involves defining criteria and then applying these criteria to assess a subject.

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Instructions & Process Reports

"How is this done? How can I do this?"-- These questions guide authors as they describe processes. Learn how to write instructions and processes so that readers know how to do something or understand how something is done. By viewing sample process texts, note the focus on the objective voice, numbered steps, visual rhetoric, and clever animations or video. Write a descriptive or prescriptive process report.

There are three types of process texts:

  1. Descriptive processes answer "How is this done?" These texts describe how a process occurs so that readers can understand it better.
  2. Prescriptive processes are instructions; they explain "How can I do this?" In other words, they prescribe how something should be done so that readers can do it.

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Autobiography

Who are you? How have your experiences shaped your sense of what is important or possible? Realize the benefits of using writing to reflect on your life. Read exemplary autobiographies and write about a significant, unusual, or dramatic event in your life.

Autobiographies are stories that people write about themselves. These stories can be factual accounts of significant, unusual, or dramatic events. They can be remembrances of  famous   or interesting people. And sometimes, when people slip from fact into fiction, they can be fictional stories, what some writers call "faction."