PB3A: Dr. Seuss and Your Mom

The scholarly article I am going to transform for my WP3 is called "An Examination of Risky Behaviors and Motivations for Alcohol Use in a College Sample." The two different genre's that I'd like to translate it into are as follows: For the younger audience, I will translate it into a format similar to that of a children's book by the famous author Dr. Seuss, and for the older audience I will rewrite it in the form of a newspaper.  The scholarly article I've chosen is examining an issue that is unimportant to children and is often misunderstood by the older generations. Therefore, beginning with the latter, I'd like to present it as an analysis of the reasons why students participate and of all of the psychological effects and social influences that are involved within the topic. It will be written in columns, strictly black and white writing with a two photos, one of the stereotypical view and another with a more realistic view. These photos would be followed by a brief description of each and then a detailed comparison/contrasting of the two. As for the Dr. Seuss version, I'd like to shape this article into a poem/rhyme that makes a teaches a lesson or moral discouraging drinking in their futures. When books appeal to children, often times the goal is to teach them something or instill an idea that will be important to them later in life. I will use the scholarly authors' analyses in a simplified way and mold it to fit the genre of a Dr. Seuss book. I will also include caricature versions of the diagrams in the article and add some animals or creatures to make it more fitting for the children's book.
The article I chose made it easy to separate my translations into different segments to break up the monotony of a scholarly article, so I will use those to separate each idea. The main purpose of my Dr. Seuss book will be to show children the effects of alcohol in a child-friendly way and teach them why to avoid drinking when they get older. The purpose of my newspaper article will be to educate the older generations on the pressures young adults face when coming into contact with alcohol and on how to better prepare their young ones for the different situations they will encounter when they themselves attend college. This will be more of an article geared towards parents.
Some moves I can make are using simplified language in both pieces, but each tailored toward its own audience. In the Dr. Seuss book I will have to change the terminology to words that will make sense to kids around the ages of 5-7, so this will most likely be my biggest challenge. As for the newspaper, I will be using different tones and words with specific connotation to encourage the feeling of empathy from my readers. In this way I am attempting to receive a very specific response from the readers and appealing to the protective parent.

These are only a few of my ideas and I am not completely sure that they are all acceptable but I believe that I am off to a good start in the right direction.

Journal Q&A

1. What did you think about yesterday's peer reader/review sesh? Better/worse/same as the old "hard copy" one? Explain!

A: I personally felt more productive simply for the fact that I could type my notes which goes quicker than usual. Had I only had a pencil and paper to do this review with, it would have gone much slower and I would have been unable to give as much detailed feedback as I did. All that being said, I don't think it was better for every kind of class, because when I was typing up notes, Senor De Piero didn't like it much and seemed to feel I wasn't paying attention, so maybe it's not so good for him.

2. How did WP2 go? Happy with? Not happy with? Why?

A: I was really happy with my structure this time around. I felt like there was a lot more flow to my paper than the previous WP. I also felt more confident in the points where I applied my own analysis as well as the places where I cited other sources. It was, I'm hoping, a pretty big improvement.

3. Which comments were most helpful to you? Why?

A: There were lots of very helpful comments about the structure of my intro and first body paragraph, which I have always had trouble with, so it was really helpful to see it from another persons perspective. I also received some positive feedback on the ways in which I inserted our readings and my sources into my piece, so it is good to see that I'm improving there. Also just the small, nit-picky comments really help me because I myself am that way when I read, so having someone else provide that type of feedback benefited me immensely.

PB2B: Navigating Genres vs Two Kinds of Thinking

When beginning to comprehend what a writer’s “moves” are, you can think about what meaning is accompanied by the word in our culture. “Wow, he sure put the moves on you!” or “Smooth move, man!” In each case, we are so familiar with the word “move(s)” that we know it represents some action or word choice specific to the subject. A move in text is the choices a writer makes that are specific to them and what point they are trying to establish in their writing. Kerry Dirk has quite a few eye-grabbing moves in her article “Navigating Genres”. Right from the beginning, her title is short and tells the reader exactly what they are getting themselves into, and this is her first move. The rest of the article follows this same to-the-point sort of speech. Another move of hers is that she speaks to her readers very informally, and by directly addressing them. For instance, the beginning of one of her paragraphs starts with this: “Let’s look into country music lyrics a bit more. Bear with me if you’re not a fan.” Here, she’s informally inviting the reader to continue to follow her train of thought, as well as jokingly addressing the readers’ musical preferences. This move makes the reader a bit more comfortable in their seats while keeping them interested in such a way that both fans of country music and those who dislike it are going to keep reading to discover just what idea she is going to get across to them. Another crucial move Dirk makes is her addition of multiple different kinds of examples to back up her work. Some are indented and bulleted points, others are simply indented blocks of text that are quotes from other scholars within her field of study. Not only does this move add credibility to the statements Dirk makes and the ideas she presents, but it keeps the reader following along and better establishes what is to be learned in reading the article. One more important move Dirk makes in this article is she gives a self-generated, extensive example to show visually what “navigating genres” really entails. She gives a scenario, specifically one that requires a ransom letter, and shows three different ways to write them after the example, Dirk analyzes the fact that the reader could pick out the most appropriate one without knowing that in doing that, they themselves were already navigating a genre. This move of Dirk’s is clever because it lets the reader see that they already had knowledge of the subject before they had ever read the piece.          

Peter elbow, author of the article “Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking by Teaching Writing”, utilizes some similar moves to Dirk as well as some uniquely his. For comparison’s sake, Elbow follows Dirk’s first move in keeping the title relatively short and to the point. After reading the title, I’m almost positive I know at least the basics of what the article will discuss. Elbow also shares the move with Dirk of having a light and somewhat informal tone throughout his piece. Elbow then begins to diverge off into his own pattern of writing with his next move, to include himself in his audience. What I mean by this is that instead of directly addressing his audience with words such as “you”, he includes himself by using “we” and “us”. For example, when discussing his first kind of thinking, one sentence reads, “We use it when we write fast without censoring and let the words lead us to associations and intuitions we hadn’t forseen.” As Elbow continues with his writing, the most apparent contrast between his moves and Dirks is that whereas Dirk’s tone was that of an informal friend enlightening one on what they already knew but were unaware of, Elbow’s tone is more that of a friendly teacher introducing his students to something they actually do without being conscious of it. This move of Elbow’s is seen within his diction and strict “Point A to Point B” organization of the article. Another huge contrast in the way these two authors move through their writing is that Elbow does not use examples in the same way Dirk does. Elbow’s examples are few and far between, and when he does include them, they are scattered throughout the paragraph rather than completely separated and emphasized like Dirk’s. This move allows Elbow’s article to flow smoothly from one learning objective to the next, and to swiftly arrive at a purposeful conclusion without taking any breaks.

              

  In my reading of these pieces, I could not find any unsuccessful moves from either writers.  Both of these writers had mostly successful and efficient moves throughout their works. I believe Dirk’s providing of very specific examples, specifically the three ransom letters and following analysis, was the most successful move of hers. It both provided a real world image of what navigating genres looked like and at the same time showed the reader how they themselves already knew the correct and appropriate answer. The most successful move of Elbow’s is his instructional tone, The objective of Elbow’s piece differed slightly from Dirk’s in that his was aimed at teaching a new idea whereas Dirk was bringing to light already attained knowledge. His tone kept the reader interested in discovering just what the “two kinds of thinking” were, and how they themselves could be conscious of them.  

PB2A: SCIgen vs Scholars

In an attempt to find a scholarly academic publication that would be readily comparable to the “SCIgen” generated papers, I chose a publication from the Statistics discipline that discussed the causality between exports and economic growth in South Africa. The two pieces of text had more in common than I was expecting, however most of these comparisons involve the layout of the paper. Both begin with a title, authors below, and an “abstract” section providing a brief synapsis of the ideas explored within the following text. Both continue on into their introductions and body paragraphs, tailoring their vocabularies to academic audiences who are familiar with the field of work discussed. They provide graphs, tables and data from whatever it is they’re studying or testing, and examine the results of those physical representations in the body paragraphs. To finish, both have a brief conclusion summarizing what the work set out to accomplish and whether or not it succeeded, followed by a series of references to support the claim.

The similarities between the “SCIgen” generated publications and the actual scholarly papers are uncanny, however when examined closer, the differences are crucial to the validity of the reports themselves. The glaring difference is the sheer length of the “SCIgen” generated papers. These are short, and have much less raw data than any of the actual scholarly publications. They have pictures and graphs, however the snippets below that are supposed to be explaining them simply restate what the graphs themselves say. These generated papers also lack any real citation throughout, unlike the scholarly papers, and therefore make it easy to question the references at the end of the work. Though they have similar language and format to the real papers, these generations are simply a skeleton of an actual academic paper, appealing to a general scholastic audience without any definite subject matter or purpose.

The actual scholastic publication I studied was very different in actual content. It starts off with an understandable title followed with many authors’ names and each of their credentials, already instilling confidence in the text that follows. In the abstract it does the same as the “SCIgen” papers in that it provides a paragraph or two telling what the paper will investigate, followed by the introduction that explains why. The difference here is that the main purpose of the paper stated here will be revisited multiple times throughout the work adding more and more data and explanation to elaborate on and support it. These body paragraphs are much longer than the generated papers and contain more than one type of experiment and data presentation.  It is appealing to its specific audience, those well-versed in the language used within the discipline of Statistics and interested in the topic stated by the title, and doesn’t stray from the clearly defined purpose it has. Another huge difference is the massive amount of citations throughout this type of publication, continually providing as much support possible to build the paper’s credibility in the academic community. Following the body paragraphs are lengthy conclusions restating the original purpose and explaining what the paper found within that purpose. They finish by including a reference to every single source used in the findings.

I believe that the most important aspects of the scholarly piece I chose are the many citations scattered throughout the text and the multiple experiments investigating the papers’ questions it presented in the introduction. The citations provide continuous credibility to every claim and statement made based off of the data it shows. This kind of credibility is valuable to an academic reader because they can see the citation and check the validity of the statement themselves outside of the actual paper. The multiple experiments assist the paper in elaborating on its initial claims as well as keeping the work interesting for its audience. Especially in an academic paper, visual representations are useful in both capturing the readers’ attention as well as giving a physical form to its verbal claims.