Deconstructing a Genre: Letter of Recommendation Requests

(Class #2)

Let's take a look at some of my former students' letter of recommendation requests.  (Note: this isn't the same thing as a letter of rec, itself!) For this activity, I'm going to be asking us to think about our "genre question."

• What makes this thing... this thing?  
• What makes a letter of recommendation request... a letter of recommendation request?

Let's take the same step-by-step approach that we took to our country music activity:

1. brainstorm a list of conventions you'd expect to read/hear/find in this genre
2. find examples of that particular genre (I've included 5 in this handout!)
3. put your hypotheses (i.e., the brainstormed list) to the test -- consider which specific conventions were present
4. expand your original list of conventions: now that you've checked out some examples of this particular genre, what other conventions did you detect in the examples of this genre?
5. evaluate the role/importance that each convention plays in this genre