Instructions
FAQ Analysis (A1: Rhetorical Analysis) Draft

Audience: Your instructor and other members of your discourse community.

Purpose: Locate and analyze three different FAQ pages in your discourse community for an evolved understanding of common questions and community-specific concerns and jargon.      ( Tribal police departments, Bureau of Indian affairs police…) 

Length: 4+ pages and References

Instructions: Compare and contrast three different websites or FAQ pages within your discourse community (for example, you could use one from a university, i.e. a major description or the website to a department, one from a corporation, and one from a non-profit) and then create your own FAQ. Include a References page in the style of your field.

Step One: Locate three websites or FAQs from your own discourse community. Past experience has shown that it is much easier if you attempt to establish the pages as part of a network of communication within a larger field. ( Tribal police departments, Bureau of Indian affairs police…) 

Step Two: Analyze each for a nuanced understanding of audience. For each page, youll want to:

1. Describe it:

Where is it from?
What is their layout like?
What kind of information is included?
What sort of language is used?
What sort of mediums are used? (Is it purely text or does it incorporate video, etc?)
2. Identify it:     

What information, language, jargon, terms, or references are included? Please use specific textual evidence with in-text citation.
Who is the intended primary audience? Who is the secondary audience? Why these conclusions?
3. Synthesize it:

What are some of the similarities and differences? Why are they occurring?
What are the general conventions of an FAQ page within your field?
Step Four: Create your own FAQ page. You have the choice between creating one for your major (with an intended audience of incoming students), or for an institution in your field where you can picture yourself as an employee sometime in the near future. Include at least seven questions and answers.

Writers Revision Memo

Explain the purpose of the first writing assignment — what were you trying to achieve by writing it? Do you feel that you successfully met your goal? Why or why not?
What do you see as the most effective part of your current draft, and why? The least effective?
Going into the peer review session, what concerns did you have about this piece of writing? Do you feel that they were adequately addressed by your readers? Why or why not? If not, what more could you and your readers have done to resolve your concerns?
Identify the most helpful piece of feedback you received on your draft. Why did you find it helpful? How are you going to apply it to improve the draft?
How did reading and responding to your peers’ drafts help you to revise your own?
Explain in detail what changes you are going to make to this draft before submitting it to me. Why those specific changes? What rhetorical considerations are guiding your decisions?
If you had unlimited time and knowledge, what additional changes might you make to this piece of writing? What are the things that you still think it needs but aren’t sure how to fix?