ENG3010 English Intermediate Writing
ENG3010 is the Gen Ed Intermediate Composition Course. For the first assignment, students have an optional activity (which many pursue) to interview a librarian about the communicative practices of the student's selected discourse community. Students are provided a set of prompt questions. The discourse community is usually aligned with the student's major.
Answer
A discourse community is a group of people who share a set of discourses, understood as basic values and assumptions, and ways of communicating about those goals. Linguist John Swales defined discourse communities as "groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals."
Students should not copy/paste the interview prompt questions into a chat box or email. A complete set of videos on how the student should approach this assignment and discover preliminary answers to the prompt questions can be found on the ENG3010 Researching Discourse Communities LibGuide page https://guides.lib.wayne.edu/c.php?g=889255&p=7194885. Additional support for answering sticky questions can be found on the guide's main page https://guides.lib.wayne.edu/ENG3010
Documents attached include the Project 1: Personal Research Guide Assignment and a set of standard responses to questions a student may ask for this assignment.
If a question comes into chat or email that is outside the general scope, please have the student contact the Subject Specialist Librarian for their discourse community for a follow-up appointment. https://library.wayne.edu/forms/consultation_request.php