Developing Literate Readers and Writers in the Freshman Composition Classroom: Using the Multigenre Paper To Teach the Research Process.

The second semester of Freshman Composition at Troy State University focuses on writing about literature and writing a traditional research paper not necessarily based on literary research. One spring, the required reading was Shirley Ann Grau's novel, "The Keeper of the House." This novel, set in an unidentified Southern state, traces the history of a family from the early 1800s through the 1960s and deals with issues of racism, civil rights, and women's rights. This document outlines a multigenre approach which fused the literature and research requirements of this course. For each reading assignment of the text, students responded to a journal assignment and their response became the basis for class discussion and served as prewriting for the three required essays. In the multigenre portion of the project, students completed several in-class writing assignments to review the concept of genre: a biography poem based on one of the characters; a headline and news article based on one of the events; and a journal entry from a character's point of view. Appended are journal writing assignments, three writing projects and rubrics based on the novel, writing topics for the third assignment in the course, and the multigenre assignment and its holistic evaluation (PM)