The first characteristic of a discourse community is that it has a broad set of goals that are common to the public in that field and they are agreed upon by the members of the community. The second is that a discourse community has different medias in which it can be received, such media can include meetings in person or over telecommunications. From my experience this is achieved when meeting in study groups about certain topic either by phone or in person at a library. The third characteristic is that the community must be able to facilitate feedback. Fourthly it uses different genres that help focus the group to achieve the goals of the group, an example would be church service where it is focused on a certain topic. Fifthly it can use terms that are unfamiliar to the pubic but are focused and understood by the discourse community only. An example of this, from my experience, is using engineering lingo in the engineering club which the outside public, the school, does not understand. The sixth and final characteristic of a discourse community is that it has a limit on how many members can be in it because there needs to be a balance between experts and novices. How long the community lasts depends on the balance between expert and novice. This is also true with the engineering club in that the more experienced members will graduate and leave the novices with no guide so the group may and can die.