Midterm Revision Proposal

Audience

Most of my original research paper focused on the aspects of the Catholic League that made it a discourse community, but I ended up writing about some activities and positions the organization takes on current issues. I think my revision would be good if I continued talking about the views of the Catholic League and gave detailed descriptions about the meetings from my past experience; therefore, the audience of this piece would be those who are interested in finding more about the group and who are playing with the notion of joining the club themselves. This audience would be those people who have heard about the organization and are in need of some kind of extra push and persuasion to make the leap and become a member, which is where my paper comes in: it will serve as a sort of advertisement or pitch for people to join the Catholic League. Hopefully, after reading the revision piece, someone who was considering joining the League would confidently be able to say they were ready to become a part of the community and its work.

Key Questions

1. "What does the Catholic League do in a typical meeting of a chapter?"
2. "What sort of activities is the Catholic League promoting/endorsing and encouraging members to join?"
3. "Why should I want to be a member of the Catholic League? Is there even a point to having the Catholic League?

These questions are all framed from the information I wrote in my researched analytical report of the Catholic League as a discourse community. Most of these questions were answered in my report, and in revising the report, I can answer these same questions for my audience to give some evidence as to why this organization is worth being a part of. I intend to answer these questions and others not listed here by describing the League and the people involved with it, and subsequently explaining to the audience that they too would be valuable additions to a group of this sort.

Writerly Challenges

One of my biggest concerns for this piece is for it to have a quality of professionalism while being persuasive, so I would like to set the goal of removing all surface/mechanical errors to eliminate any distractions from the aim of the piece that might make it seem not as convincing as a result. For instance, when an actor in a television ad makes a grammatical mistake while speaking, all I can think of is, "The writer of this ad had one job…only one job… and they still failed." I notice when this is the case, any interest I had in the object being advertised is dissolved by my distaste for the poorly written dialogue, and I don't want readers of my piece to go through this same reaction while reading my piece.

Since this is supposed to be a convincing piece, I know that I want to make it more personal since stories and personal experience sell like no other. To make another media reference, I imagine the people watching the commercials for weight loss products, especially when a model comes out and claims that she lost a whopping fifty pounds by eating anything and everything she wanted as long as she used this weight loss pill. Personal touches like that tend to sell, which is clearly seen by the amount of money spent on weight loss products, (CAUTION: about to get back on topic!) so I want to tailor my piece to be personal and engaging by using some anecdotes of my own about being at meetings and supporting the Catholic League. If I can recall my past good experiences with the group, it could be a strong contributing factor for someone deciding whether or not to join.

A third goal I have for this piece is to write in the active voice more often than not. I received feedback from my analytical report that I was using mostly the passive voice, but now since I am aware of that, I want to develop this writing in the active voice which will be more suitable anyway since I know exactly who my audience is. If I don't achieve this goal, however, the piece will read awkwardly because it will sound distant and detached even though its main objective is to pull the reader in.

Genre Model

I think an interesting genre to use for this would be an informational pamphlet that organizations often use to spread word about their products, new ideas, etc. Essentially, this means I will write the piece in parts, step by step that will be in a logical order for the reader. For instance the pamphlet might be called, "Why should I join the Catholic League?" Then, the piece will cover topics such as, "What kind of work does the League work on?", "What are meetings like?", "Would it be a good fit for me?" This type of setup will walk the reader through the basics of the League, informing the reader about the organization, and it will persuade him/her to join with the other topics which are included. Here is an example of an informational pamphlet, which uses some of the question and response methods I wrote about earlier:

http://www.end-your-sleep-deprivation.com/do-i-have-insomnia-brochure.html

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