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Genre Analysis and Application Lab Report

The style of writing an assignment requires varies from course to course. Arts and

humanities courses, such as English or Social Sciences, typically utilize essays as assignments,

as these help the writer explain themselves in a logical way and help draw connections that may

be deeper than the mere facts. On the other hand, Science and Technology courses tend to use

lab reports to report their data; contrary to essays, lab reports state the facts and data collected in

a systematic, linear approach based on the scientific method, thus making it clear to the reader

exactly what was obtained from the experiment. The one thing that determines what style to be

used in each subject is audience. When analyzing these pieces of writing, the audience is like the

umbrella that ties everything together. From the exigence, to the constraints, to the style and tone

used in the composition of the text - these are all dependent on the audience the text has.

In this paper, I will be focusing on a lab report assigned to me this year in my Chemistry

Fundamentals I class. The assignment consists of writing a lab report determining the electrolyte

concentration of Gatorade by finding the conductivity of Gatorade and deionized water. The

community this applies to is simply anyone taking this course at UCF during the fall in 2017, as

well as Chemistry professors, specifically Dr. Heider. This community values the teaching of

chemistry and its application to mundane, daily activities. The main goal of this course is to

teach students different chemistry concepts in order for them to be applied in higher level

classes, as well as to give students the material necessary for them to draw connections between

the theories and ideas and their daily lives. This is seen as the lab report is utilizing Gatorade, a

very popular drink, as a way to explain electrolytes. Both the professor and the students want to

discover ways in which chemistry is applied to daily life; Dr. Heider achieves this by teaching
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and coming up with lesson plans, and the students accomplish this by attending class and reading

the textbooks assigned, making these the main literary activities the community engages in.

The main literary activities the community partakes in consists of anything that helps get

the experiment done. Before performing the experiment, it is important for the individual to have

an understanding of the scientific method, which is taught in the class. Attending the class

lectures and listening to the professor, reading the designated textbook for the course, performing

the practice problems are among the main activities members of the community engage in before

the experiment. When the time to do the experiment arrives, it is important to read the

instructions given by the Teachers Assistant to ensure the results are what they are meant to be.

After the experiment, the main literary activity is the final lab report. By following the rubric

given with the instructions, the members of the community are able to put their results in a

concise report that anyone in the Discourse would understand.

The community this lab report applies to is a discourse community, as it has the

characteristics, established by Johns (1997)., that makes a community a discourse community.

The broad set and public goals are discussed on the first day of class as the professor goes over

the syllabus, and they are discussed in more detail at the beginning of each chapter. These goals

are broken down into smaller pieces with each lab report, as each one is referring directly to a

different goal. In this case, this lab report exists in order for us, the students, to gain better

knowledge about how electrolytes exist in real life, and how of class as the professor goes over

the syllabus, and they are discussed in more detail at the beginning of each chapter. These goals

are broken down into smaller pieces with each lab report, as each one is referring directly to a

different goal. In this case, this lab report exists in order for us, the students, to gain better

knowledge about how electrolytes exist in real life, and how they
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The community also has a specific way of communication. Among students, we have

group-chat in the application groupme, where we go to when we have questions we feel other

students might have answers to. Theres also the course on canvas, where we have discussion

boards to ask TAs questions, as well a messaging system that allows us to email other students,

the TAs, and Dr. Heider. Here, we mainly use community specific language, as it is mainly a

forum for questions and answers about the subject. The community specific language includes

terminology learned in class, as well as specific words that are exclusive to the course at UCF.

This ties into how members can be part of the Discourse; if the person is not enrolled in

Chemistry Fundamentals I with Dr. Heider, then they simply are not in the Discourse, due to the

fact that they will not be able to participate in the lectures, discussions, or in the conversations

members have with each other, making the enrollment in the course a gate (Gee, 1989).

The literacy sponsors in this community are, essentially, the actual audience of the

assignment. The professor and the TAs are literacy sponsors, as they coach the way the students

learn. Through this, they monitor what assignments must be completed, when, and how they

need to be finalized. Because they are the individuals who will be grading the essay, then they

are the actual audience of the lab report itself. As literacy sponsors, they are the "leaders" of the

discourse community (Brandt, 1998).; they are coordinators of these assignments, as they will be

the ones reading the responses. This is seen in the assignment at the end, where there is an

extensive, detailed rubric on constraints on the assignment. For instance, the report must be

written in 12-point font, and it cannot be longer than one page. This is because this makes the

assignment easier to read, and it puts a limit on how much the student has to write thus how

much they have to read. The literacy sponsors compose the writing assignments, and they

determine what they want to see from the students' assignments as audiences. It can be
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determined that the actual audience are the professor and the TAs because they are the ones that

assigned the report and the ones who are reading it, as the students have to submit it for a grade.

The intended audience, however, is a little different. The intended audience is mainly

chemistry scholars. The assignment has to be written in a way where the student demonstrates

proficiency using community specific language, as well as demonstrating a deeper understanding

by making connections between concepts. This gives the assignment another constraint, as it

cannot be completed if the terminology is not known. It all ties together like a chain: because the

audience are chemistry scholars, the language used must be exactly community specific, and this

way the student can show proficiency in the concepts. The intended audience overlaps with the

actual audience, but it only encompasses the literacy sponsors side. Dr. Heider and the TAs are

chemistry scholars, as they have studied chemistry for years. It can be determined that the

intended audience are chemistry scholars as they are the literacy sponsors for this particular

discourse community, therefore, the ones who would be the most interested in it.

The exigence of the assignment varies depending on which audience is taken into

consideration. If looking at it through the intended audience's perspective, the exigence is merely

the objective of the lab: to determine the electrolyte concentration of Gatorade by finding the

conductivity of Gatorade and deionized water. The intended audience of this assignment is

interested in the actual hard facts and data the experiment resulted in. Chemists want to see how

the data collected about the concentration of electrolytes in these substances correlate to the

definition of strong, weak, and non-electrolytes; this covers all the numbers measured, as well as

the graph that was made.

On the other hand, if looking at it through the point of view of the actual audience, it is

clear that the exigence is to show proficiency in the topic of electrolytes. By showing the
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correlation between conductivity and concentration of electrolytes, the student demonstrates their

understanding of the subject and their ability to make connections between topics. Although it is

not explicitly said that there's a relationship between the quantities of electrolytes in a substance

and its conductivity, the student had to make the connection through prior knowledge; since

electrolytes deal with charged atoms (called ions) and these ions help conduct electricity, the

more ions there are present in a substance, the more conductive the substance is. Strong

electrolytes have high conductivity due to the high amount of ions present in them, and weak

ones have low conductivity low amount of ions they contain. This connection is mentioned in the

"Results and Discussion" portion of the lab report, which is the section designated to addressing

the main question the lab postulates. If a student is able to answer the question asked at the

beginning of the lab, then they show proficiency in the topic as they were able to draw the

connections necessary to arrive to their conclusion.

A way to show mastery of the topics learned in this chemistry course is to use the

community specific lexis. Lexis is community specific vocabulary (Johns, 1997). These are the

terms that make this lab report about chemistry, and using these demonstrates a student's

understanding of the subject. Ions, for instance, are atoms that have charges due to them gaining

or losing electrons. Atoms have a neutral charge, whereas ions have a net charge that may be

either positive (if they lose an electron) or negative (if they gain one). Another important term to

know is Molarity, which is the way concentration is measured. Molarity is defined as the number

of moles in solute divided by the volume of the solution. Moles are the standard unit to measure

the amount of atoms or molecules. It was determined by the approximate number of atoms found

in Carbon-12 (a carbon isotope). An isotope is an atom that a different number of neutrons.

Solute is a substance that is dissolved in a solvent, and solvent is the means by which the solute
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is dissolved in; for example, salt is a solute and water is a solvent. These are community specific

vocabulary that were necessary to compose the lab report.

In terms of rhetorical moves that were used in this assignment, they may not be so

obvious. Considering how STEM reports rely mostly on facts and data, there's little to no room

to use the "common" rhetorical devices. These reports, instead, use the moves that are considered

moves but no one really thinks about them, although they may be slightly modified. For instance,

the objective of the lab that is included on the report is essentially the thesis of the report; it gives

the reader an idea of what the experiment consisted of and what the results will be like.

Summarizing is also utilized in this assignment, as the student must sum up the steps of the

experiment in the "procedure" section of the lab. Another rhetorical move used in this specific

lab report is defining, as the assignment asks for the student to define strong, weak, and

nonelectrolytes in terms of conductivity. Logos is utilized in every single lab report, although the

student may not think of it; it is used through reporting the measurements collected in the lab,

and in this particular situation, through the graph that was created with the data. Finally, the lab

report implements conclusions, as there is a specific section called "Results and Discussions"

which serves the purpose of giving space for the student to explain their findings and why they

are relevant, as well as to address the objective of the experiment (or the thesis) and how the

question was answered.

As demonstrated, even the writing assignments in the STEM field contain elements that

writing scholars study. This paper demonstrates how rhetoric and its elements apply to a

multitude of disciplines, although it may not be obvious at a glance. The terminology writing

scholars studies are analytics that can be looked for in any writing assignment and response, as

they are not limited to texts that are explicitly solely about rhetoric itself. This shows the
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versatility of these terms, and how they can help students do better on their assignments, as they

will know what to look out for in terms of how to write their papers structurally. Students can

break down their assignments and look at the audiences for it, and determine the exigence of

each kind, making the topics covered in the paper more relevant to the prompt. The variety of

uses for concepts developed by writing scholars highlights the importance of the study of

rhetoric, and how rhetoric truly shapes the way humans communicate with other another.
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Work Cited

Brandt, D. (1998). Sponsors of literacy. In E. Wardle & D. Downs (Eds.). Writing about writing:

a college reader. (pp. 84-100). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's

Gee, J.P. (1989). Literacy, discourse, and linguistics. In E. Wardle & D. Downs (Eds.). Writing

about writing: a college reader. (pp. 279-295). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.

Heider, E. (2017, September). Electrolytes and conductivity. CHM2045. Taught at University of

Central Florida, Orlando, FL.

Johns, A.M. (1997). Discourse communities and communities of practice. In E. Wardle & D.

Downs (Eds.). Writing about writing: a college reader. (pp. 319-342). Boston:

Bedford/St. Martin's.