Genre is something I’ve heard about in school since I was young, but after reading this chapter it seems that what I though genre was is wrong. I always thought that genre was just things like historical fiction, or fantasy, or comedy, so finding out that it means just a “composition’s kind, category, or sort” really changes the way I look at it. I thought it was interesting how genre even extended to the form of the composition because it really makes what my high school teachers told me about how authors never did anything by accident seem more realistic.
As a student this changes the way I write, because even though in AP Lang we were taught different papers to write, looking at it as an entirely separate genre makes the process easier to start. It also changed the way I looked at rhetorical strategies. I remember hating that term in AP Lang, because it seems like that was teachers every other word. But having the questions broken down to why and who makes finding how to write simpler. Thinking about the audience of your paper makes finding the right way to communicate with them easier.