Writing Genres

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In completing any writing task, you need to consider the purpose (inform, entertain, persuade, instruct) and the audience as your style of writing needs to vary accordingly.

Once students have been taught different forms of writing, they can practise these different forms using the following activity by writing similar information in three (or more) different formats for different readers. It is always useful to link writing activities to other areas of learning.

Topic: Snails

Persuade Instruct Entertain
Friend How to care for snails
Parent Allow you to keep snails
Young child Snail tale

Examples:

Persuade

Imagine a pet that is friendly (it doesn’t run away or bite) and is suitable for children of all ages, providing hours of free entertainment. Imagine a pet that doesn’t need toilet training and doesn’t make a mess. Imagine a pet that is cheap and easy to feed.

What is the pet you ask? It is a snail. They can be easily found in any moist shady place and will live happily in a glass terrarium. All you need to provide is some soil out of your garden and left over vegetable scraps. How could you deny your child such a perfect pet?

Instruct

To start a snail colony:

  • Look in a moist shady area for two snails.
  • Cover the bottom of a glass terrarium with around 30 centimetres of soil.
  • Feed the snails vegetable scraps.
  • Spray the soil with warm water each day.
  • If the snail’s shell is damaged, cover it with sticky plaster.
  • If you take the terrarium outside, keep it covered so birds don’t eat the snails.

Entertain

As the sun slivered out from behind a cloud, a snail crawled out from under some leaves to play in the warmth. In front of it was a path, as wide as wide can be. On the other side of the path, the snail could see a jungle of green leaves stretching out towards the sky. “Those jungle leaves look delicious,” murmured the snail to itself, “I’m sure they’ll taste much better than these boring leaves.” The snail slithered over the path leaving a slimy, glistening trail behind. Halfway across the path, a giant shadow darkened the sky. The snail stopped and curled up inside its shells. A gull tapped on its shell. “Come out and play,” it chirped. “It’s a glorious day.” As soon as the snail poked out its head, the gull snapped it up in its beak and swallowed it in one gulp.