Benefits of Multigenre Folklore Research Projects

Multigenre folklore research projects can:

• Affirm home and community cultures. • Incorporate interviews, oral history, folklore, and academic research. • Present multiple, conflicting perspectives of one event or topic. • Stimulate critical analysis and higher-level thinking. • Engage writers in a meaningful communication experience. • Require a personal investment of time and effort. • Allow meaning to dictate form, rather than vice versa. • Demonstrate a sophisticated knowledge of diverse genres and uses of

language. • Create a rich context for an event or topic. • Implicate ethical choices and affective learning. • Promote awareness of audience needs and interests. • Employ strategic planning and thematic transitions. • Integrate factual information into a meaningful text, verses copying or simple

recall. • Develop research skills and the academic use of quotation and

documentation. • View language diversity as an asset. • Make coherence and unity a rhetorical problem to be solved. • Foster creativity and risk taking. • Permit the author to highlight personal interests and special expertise. • Encourage full use of new media literacies and multimodal formats. • Result in aesthetically attractive projects for sharing at school and home. • Offer an opportunity to take pride in what writers have accomplished. • Demand careful reading and response.

Dr. Nancy Mack Multigenre Research Projects: Multifaceted, Multipurpose Writing Assignments

Teachers College Press