Content
As I have stated previously, this is a Multigenre Research Project. To tell you the truth, before completing this project, I was unsure of the definition of the term “genre.” Well, I think it is safe to say that I now have a clear understanding of this term. A genre is a type of writing that has a distinct voice. For this project, I developed six genres. Four voices are represented with these genres, including the clinician (speech-language pathologist), audiologist, client, and mother of the client. Of course, before I could develop these genres, I had to first decide what my topic would be and develop an essential question about the topic. After several revisions, I finally generated my essential question, which is “How can chronic otitis media cause a child to have a language delay?” From this question, I generated five foundation questions. The purpose of developing these foundation questions was to help me to answer my essential question. Again, this required much revision. Only after developing these questions could I even begin to decide which genres to include in my MRP. We were required to include six genres in our project, three of which had to be a PowerPoint presentation, webliography, and a poem. I was allowed to decide which other three genres I would include in my MRP. Choosing my genres was no easy task. I had to decide which genres would best represent my topic and answer my essential question. I also had to be sure to include at least three voices, which I took into consideration when choosing my genres. After much deliberation, I decided to include, in addition to the three required genres, a referral letter, a letter to the parent, and journal entries. The project begins with a PowerPoint presentation given by the clinician at a PTA meeting to an audience of parents and teachers. After learning this information, a parent decides to have her son’s hearing evaluated. The next genre is a referral letter from the audiologist to the speech-language pathologist (clinician), followed by a letter to the parent from the SLP. Included with this letter is a copy of a poem that the SLP helped the client, a five year old child, to write. In this letter, the parent is directed to the clinician’s webliography to find out more information about the clinician and the topic at hand. Of course, this still leaves one more genre, the journal entries. The journal entries are actually what tie everything together. The journal entries are written in the voice of the parent. They guide the reader through the project, beginning with the night of the PTA meeting, and ending with the discovery that this parent’s child has a language delay, thought to be caused by his history of chronic otitis media.

Process
I think it is safe to say that I have never done such an elaborate project. I think it is also safe to say that I have never felt so proud of myself and of my work. Of course, this sense of accomplishment did not come easy. To tell you the truth, I had no idea of what to think at the beginning of this class. I had been told by older students that this was an “easy A” class. Well, I would definitely have to disagree. There wasn’t anything easy about this class. This project required countless hours. When I first heard that we were going to do a multigenre research project, all I really paid attention to was the “research project” part. I figured the term “multigenre” was just a fancy word that didn’t really mean anything. By now, we all know that I was wrong. I previously explained what an MRP is all about. It is exceptionally different than the average research project. For a typical research project, I would expect to find as much information as possible about the topic, attempt to organize that information, and submit it for a grade. To tell you the truth, I have found that I haven’t retained much of the information that I have learned from doing that type of project. With the MRP, I still had to find a great deal of information about my topic, but it didn’t stop there. I had to be creative with this information. Instead of just organizing this information into a research paper, I had to use this information to develop my genres. In doing so, I had to express this information to the reader through the use of four different voices. This is what makes the MRP so unique. It required to me to view this information through the eyes of the clinician, audiologist, client, and parent of the client. Since this type of research project is extremely new to me, I had many confusing moments while developing this project. When I first composed my essential question, I thought that it would stay the same throughout the project. Even though Mrs. McComas told us that we would all need to make revisions as we progressed in our project, I was convinced that I wouldn’t have to do so. I thought that my question was specific enough. Boy was I wrong. I think that I ended up revising my essential question four times, the last of which was three weeks before the project was due! My essential question wasn’t the only thing that had to be revised. I revised my foundation questions and each of my genres several times.

After revising my foundation questions, it was time to decide which genres to include in my MRP. As I stated previously, this was not a simple task. It required much thought. I had to decide which genres would collaborate best to answer my essential question. After much consideration, I decided on my six genres, which were a webliograhpy, PowerPoint presentation, poem, letter to the parent, referral letter, and journal entries. I decided on these genres after deciding to use the voices of the clinician, audiologist, client, and parent of the client. Knowing which voices I was going to use helped me to decide which genres to use. The first genre that is included in my MRP is a PowerPoint presentation. This presentation is given by a speech-language pathologist to a group of parents and teachers at a PTA meeting. The PowerPoint presentation was possibly the most difficult genre for me to develop. This is because I had a difficult time deciding which information to include in my presentation. A typical PowerPoint presentation provides key points on the slides. The presenter discusses the supporting information. Since I was not going to be presenting this information, I had to decide which information to include that would educate the viewer of the topic at hand, while at the same time not including too much information on each slide. After making several revisions of my PowerPoint, I feel that I finally accomplished this. Anyway, the way my story goes, a parent decides, after listening to the PowerPoint presentation, that her son should have a hearing evaluation due to his history of chronic otitis media. From this hearing evaluation comes the next genre, which is a referral letter from the audiologist to the SLP. I certainly had my doubts about this genre. I was out of town when I originally developed this genre. I spent hours looking for some type of information on the Internet that would help me to write a referral letter. While I did find some helpful information, I basically had to rely on my own knowledge to develop this referral letter. It took me over an hour to complete, but I was actually quite proud of myself. Of course, it later required some revision, but so did all of the other genres. The purpose of this letter was to refer Ethan (the client) to an SLP for a speech and language evaluation. After the speech and language evaluation, the SLP sends a letter to the parent, which is my third genre. This letter is to describe to the parent the diagnosis of her son to have a language delay and to recommend therapy. This letter took more time than I thought that it would. I ended up researching some extra information to include in my letter. This information was to describe to the parent what a language disorder was and how it can affect the child. Included with this letter is a poem written by the client (five-year-old child) with the help of the clinician. This is my fourth genre. It tells how the hearing loss and the resulting language disorder have affected him. This, I think, is the voice that is the most unique in the MRP. It was also the easiest for me to portray. While I have never had a language disorder, my brother did. I know how it affected him, how it made him feel. This is partly what led me to want to become a speech-language pathologist. The only thing that I found difficult about developing this poem, was writing as a five-year-old child instead of as a 21-year old college student. I had to decide which words and line lengths were age appropriate. Thanks to the advice of my peers, I think that I finally accomplished this. The fifth genre in my MRP is the clinician’s webliography. In the letter to the parent, the clinician suggests that the parent visit her webliography. This webliography includes personal information and interests, as well as professional information and links to additional information about the topic of interest, which for me was how chronic otitis media can cause a language delay. I actually revised this several times. The final genre is journal entries written in the voice of the parent. The journal entries act as a way to provide the parent’s voice, expressing her feelings about everything that is happening and about what she is learning. However, the journal entries also act as a way to integrate all of my genres. Throughout the journal entries, I provided links to my other genres. I spent a lot of time developing the journal entries. It was important for it to tell the story of the mother, while at the same time providing links to the other genres and tying everything together. It was also important that it flowed. I didn’t want it to look like its purpose was to provide links. I wanted it to flow like a story. I feel that I accomplished this.

Premise
Throughout this project, I kept thinking about how I was supposed to find AN answer to my essential question, not THE answer to my essential question. The reason I kept thinking about this is that all of the studies that I read concerning this topic state that it has never been proven that chronic otitis media does, in fact, cause a language delay. That’s fine because I don’t have to prove that it does. I have to explain how it may cause a language delay. This made me realize how important the formation of my essential question really was. Before developing this project, I never developed questions about my topic before researching a topic for a project. This may be the reason that I never retained much of my information. Developing the questions for this project established a foundation for which my project was built. I had to consider those questions throughout the project, making sure that I answered the questions. I think that this process helped me to better organize the information and will help me to better retain that information. I also had never incorporated different voices into a research project. I actually think that this aspect of the project was fun and educational. It forced me to think about the topic from different perspectives. In doing so, I also had to think about how each of these voices would interact. I had to think about how chronic otitis media can cause a language delay, as well as the process of discovering this language delay, the effects the hearing loss and language delay have on the client, and how the parent views all of this. All of this probably would not have been included in a typical research paper. If I had done a typical research paper, I probably would have looked at this topic through the researchers point of view, which would have obviously been totally different than my MRP. I really don’t feel that I would have learned as much that way. I would have learned that researchers are inconclusive about if and how chronic otitis media causes a language delay. I think it’s safe to say that the MRP was the way to go. I learned more than I had expected to learn and feel very proud of myself for what I have accomplished.

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